Why the Nerd Prom Matters

Think you know everything about the White House Correspondents' Dinner? Behind the glitz and the jokes, it's a chance for journalists to build relationships—and raise some money. VIEW OUR GALLERY.

Between Twitter, C-SPAN, and today’s wall-to-wall news coverage of Obama roasting Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh, you already know everything that went down at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Or do you? As more than 3,000 of Washington’s finest cozied up to the media that cover them—when they weren’t gawking at Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Don Draper, and Chuck Bass—who knows exactly who said what to whom, exchanged business cards, were introduced by an unexpected common friend? You don’t know. That’s the point.

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It’s fashionable to deride the Correspondents’ Dinner—or “Nerd Prom,” as it was dubbed on Twitter—but the fact is, such events can be damned useful. Perhaps not for the person sitting beside Tom Cruise, unless you’re looking for the latest news on Thetan-spotting, but for reporters working a beat and juniors coming up in the ranks, these events provide a great opportunity for meeting, greeting and making an impression. Will it lead to a headline-grabbing Pulitzer-winning scoop? Probably not, but the relationship begun—or facilitated—on that evening just might.

Don’t take my word for it—though, as a veteran of a whopping two WHCD weekends, I can attest to its connection-making and background-getting value—take it from someone who has been “attending these dinners since the 1980s”: “It can be very valuable, but only if you strategically invite your guests,” says a source, who warns against counting on the big names to dish over dinner. “Lower-level staff people appreciate the invite more, and often show it later.”

As for the bellyaching over journalists being “too cozy” with those they cover, another D.C.-based reporter disagrees: “If anyone thinks that keeping sources and journalists in separate corners is going to improve either journalism or government, they’re fooling themselves. Journalism, like in every other aspect of life, is about relationships. This weekend helps feed that and it’s up to the journalists to be smart enough—which most, but not all, are—to not be co-opted by the process.”

Is that a risk worth taking? I say yes, my photo with Sherri Shepherd notwithstanding. That photo, and others like it, is not the ends of events like this, it is the means. Put it this way: How many of last night’s big fish, or the minnows swimming with them, would have attended a somber, decorous, business-casual, Ashton-less event? The stars serve as glittery, flawlessly complexioned bait, enticing those fish into one big pond. So why not get along swimmingly?