News junkies were on hand last night at as the National Journal's Hotline hosted a game of Political Pursuit at D.C.'s famed DAR/Constitution Hall -- but it was the old, school ink-stained wretches who took top honors at the second annual event that helped kick off White House Correspondents' Dinner weekend.
"[There are] two types of people in this town: the policy nerds and the political geeks," National Journal editor at large John Fox Sullivan said in his introductory remarks.
But clearly the old school crowd had an edge on both.
There was lots of good-humored trash talk among the three teams -- Broadcast, Members Only and Old School.
The team boasting the old-school print reporters (who took a lot of ribbing about their dinosaur status from their broadcast colleagues) included Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, Jay Newton-Small of Time magazine, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report and Shira Toeplitz of Roll Call.
The broadcast news contingent was made up of CNN's Dana Bash, Jonathan Karl of ABC News, NBC News' Chuck Todd (who has an eerie ability to recall campaign trivia) and Judy Woodruff of The News Hour.
The third team, last year's reigning champion, was comprised of Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Tom Davis, Sen. Roger Wicker and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
"Congress is actually liked in this crowd," quipped Sullivan.
The Hotline's Amy Walter and John Mercurio took turns playing a political-savvy version of Alex Trebek.
When Mercurio acknowledged to the broadcast team that the questions were difficult, Sen. Whitehouse deadpanned: "It's hard when there's no Teleprompter." But it was the tough-talking broadcast team that aced the quickest response when posed the question: What fast-food chain was a young Rahm Emanuel working in when he sliced his finger? (Answer: Arby's)
The Members Only team was then peppered with more than their fair share of bad jokes and puns when they got stuck with the "Scandal" category. Ah, that would be Mark Foley, John Edwards and Mark Sanford.
At the end of the evening, it was the Old School team who bested everyone with 225 points. Members Only placed second with 190, and Broadcast rounded out the lineup with 165.
