Could a robot reporter have investigated D.C. sleaze better than I did in the 1970s?
Charles Smith , Future scandals , GSA , Media , Politicians , Sen. Ribicoff , The Solomon Scandals

Could a robot reporter have investigated D.C. sleaze better than I did in the 1970s?

David Rothman 0 comment

Could a reporter bot have been me in real life in the 1970s—or Jonathan Stone, the far more dashing investigative journalist in my novel The Solomon Scandals? And who would have made a better sleuth, humans or AI? With the above in mind, let me share a cautionary story about a CIA-occupied building and an […]

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GSA , Media , The Solomon Scandals , Washington area life

Beyond GSA ‘crats at play: Scrutinize office leasing

David Rothman 0 comment

Tax dollars at work, GSA style Angry taxpayers are buzzing over the organizational “culture” at the General Services Administration, the federal procurement agency. I don’t mean Chaucer, Mozart or Van Gogh. Enjoy this spoof video for a GSA conference—rudely picked up by ABC News and others. Hey, you helped pay for it. GSA was supposed […]

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GSA , The Solomon Scandals

Mind reader and clown helped kill GSA leader Martha Johnson’s job

David Rothman 0 comment

”Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader, $6,300 on a commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle.” – Washington Post report on $823K splurged on a 300-employee federal conference in Las Vegas. Ouch. The gems in the sentence above don’t even include […]

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GSA , Washington area life

The Solomon Scandals’ bureaucratic setting—a few decades later

David Rothman 0 comment

Much of The Solomon Scandals is about conflicts between friendship and duty. A rickety high-rise may tumble as a result, with hundreds of IRS and CIA workers inside. Washington has a culture of traded favors, one reason why Congress and the Interior Department unwittingly let the oil spill happen in the Gulf. And how about […]

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GSA , The Solomon Scandals

Martha N. Johnson: GSA’s new leader vs. dirty politics—the ‘Solomon Scandals’ angle

David Rothman 2 comment

A sad and bizarre update: Here. Margo Danialson, Oberlin B.A., is reporter Jon Stone’s partner in crime or anti-crime in The Solomon Scandals. She’s a 20-something real estate specialist at the government’s business agency, for which Seymour Solomon, a well-connected federal landlord, has built a rickety high-rise on the banks of the Potomac River. Now […]

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Buying info

‘Solomon Scandals’ goes on sale now as e-book; January delivery in trade paperback

David Rothman 0 comment

Psst! Advance promo copies of The Solomon Scandals are on sale now in e-book format (retail $5.95 USD). Twilight Times Books is also taking advance orders for First Editions in trade paperback (retail $16.95 USD). The paperbacks will ship in January 2009. These are “pre-release promotional copies.” Twilight’s phone number is 423-323-0183, and other ordering […]

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Uncategorized

Deep Throat is dead—and so are the old rules of investigative journalism

David Rothman 0 comment

Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, the whistleblower in the FBI who blew open much of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, is dead. Leonard Downie, a Post staffer at the time, writes how much investigative reporting has changed since then—for example, technologically. Imagine staying in touch with a source who totes a prepaid cell […]

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Politicians

Two Chicagoans: President Bullard vis-a-vis Obama

David Rothman 1 comment

Both are self-made men from Chicago—intellectual politicians with law degrees. And like me, both are on the liberal side. No doubt, a few superficial parallels exist between my fictitious Eddy Bullard and President-elect Barack Obama. And it isn’t even deliberate. Thirty years ago when I conceived The Solomon Scandals, President Bullard held a law degree […]

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