Somebody Save Jaclyn Cosgrove

Who the heck is Jaclyn Cosgrove? She's a young award winning journalist from Oklahoma. She's beloved by her peers and great things are expected of her. But like many young professionals, she is starting out as an intern. And although interns are often taken advantage of, Ms. Cosgrove seems to have it particularly bad.

You see, Jonathan Riskind has got her writing the fluffy press releases for Pat Tiberi that he normally writes. The pro-puppy statement will be coming soon.

I'm assuming that the blog format of the Daily Briefing doesn't require things like bill titles or numbers, but the foster care bill referred to in that first piece is HR 6307. Pat cosponsored the bill, along with 26 others, about half of whom had cosponsored a similar bill from the same sponsor that was last seen disappearing into committee. Pat didn't cosponsor that version. The current version passed on a voice vote, meaning that simply asking for verbal yeas and nays made it obvious that at least 2/3 of the House supported the bill.

So, Pat recently hopped on a bandwagon, (supposedly) voted just like everyone else did to pass a bill, says it's good for kids without giving many details beyond more federal spending and a preference to keep siblings together, and... This is News.

This is not news. This is free media during a campaign season. Riskind has no credibility when writing about Tiberi, but Jaclyn Cosgrove has a long career ahead of her. It'd be a shame for her to end up in PR instead of journalism.