Big bucks bankroll nonprofit journalism

Not every part of her job is depressing. She got to hang with the "slightly eccentric" Al Pacino for a "60 Minutes" profile that aired Sunday. Lately, says Couric, she's been "exercising a lot of muscles."

Winning the afternoon

The Huffington Post launches a new feature Monday -- a roundup column that won't post until 6 p.m. Kind of the opposite of Politico's "win the morning" approach, a phrase coined by Mike Allen, who puts up the early-morning Playbook.

"There's a lot in the morning -- I personally love Mike Allen -- but not in the afternoon," says founder Arianna Huffington. "It's the equivalent of an afternoon newspaper when you're on your way home, except now you're reading it on a handheld."

HuffPost Hill will be tightly focused on the Capitol Hill community, but Huffington says the target audience is anyone obsessed with politics. "It will have news, talking-head appearances, gossip, who is getting married, who is getting divorced -- a mix of high and low," she says.

Ryan Grim, the Web site's congressional correspondent, will oversee the new column, to be written by Eliot Nelson. He says it will include a daily wrap-up, a look at what's on cable news that night (the latest Arianna appearance?), and the scoop on what Politico, Roll Call, The Hill and CQ Today will be leading with the next day.

"What will really make it pop is that we're going to include fundraisers and happy hours," Grim says. "A lot of free things are going on that staffers are happy to take advantage of because of their paltry salaries." I wonder if that will boost attendance at these functions, at least those with the best h'ors d'oeurves.

Where did the idea come from? "The conversations we have among ourselves -- did you hear this or that?" Huffington says. "The things you discuss at dinner." Almost like being a guest at Arianna's L.A. manse.

Gibbs on the record

I sat down with Robert Gibbs for an interview that aired Sunday on CNN's "Reliable Sources." Among the highlights:

--I asked him about administration leaking, and he said: "We had a discussion with the White House correspondents earlier in the year about the use of background sources. And I offered the Correspondent's Association -- I said, 'Let's end background.' Right? We won't do background. You don't do background.

"And the specific offer was if you've got a background source, you should put them on the record. And if you're not going to put them on the record, then have somebody at the White House, give them an opportunity to say that that is or is not true. And we would attach our name to it." The idea went nowhere.

--The president often derides "cable chatter," so I took that up with his spokesman: "The truth is what makes really good television are not two people that are at the end of a four- or five-minute segment going to come to an agreement. But at the end of the four- or five-minute segment are, you know, maybe 30 seconds away from doing each other bodily harm."

--What about Obama calling out Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh by name? Gibbs denied that the president was boosting their stature and tried to cast it as a matter of accountability: "The media in some cases covers the food fight, but doesn't necessarily check who started it and whether they started it for a reason that was legitimate or not."