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Thursday, September 11 at 10:30 pm
"Bring me only bad news. Good news weakens me." A film about a man, a magazine and the media, How Washington Really Works is a 30-minute documentary about Charles Peters, the founding editor of The Washington Monthly. Wanting to examine Washington the way an anthropologist would a South Sea Island, Peters began The Washington Monthly in 1969 and served as its editor in chief for 32 years, retiring in 2001. The Monthly focused on the culture and politics of Washington and government operations, but also cast a skeptical eye on how the national press reported on Washington and government. As well as being an under-the-radar journalist to the general public, Peters and The Monthly were at the forefront of the neoliberal movement that spurred the Democratic Party to re-evaluate itself. While neoliberalism has become known as an economic policy that championed unrestricted markets and non-regulatory regimes, Peters' neoliberal manifesto was about community, democracy, and prosperity. Using a two-year tour of duty scheme borrowed from the Peace Corps, he developed a stellar corps of young writers who apprenticed in what has been called "Charlie's Journalism School of Indentured Servitude." While not only experiencing financial duress, young reporters also had to endure Peters' unique editing style called "rain dancing." Also featured in the film are Jonathan Alter, Jennifer Barrett, Taylor Branch, Matthew Cooper, Michelle Cottle, Gregg Easterbrook, James Fallows, Paul Glastris, David Ignatius, Nicholas Lemann, Suzannah Lessard, Joe Nocera, Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller, and Amy Sullivan.
