Inside the Fourth Estate

Newsweek tells us about a man who used to write for Newsweek:

Traditionally, punditry in Washington has been a cozy business. To get the inside scoop, big-time columnists sometimes befriend top policymakers and offer informal advice over lunch or drinks. Naturally, lines can blur. The most noted pundit of mid-20th-century Washington, Walter Lippmann, was known to help a president write a speech—and then to write a newspaper column praising the speech.

In this last case, the inside scoop
seems to be a pile of poop.