Parade complies with Obama’s request to write Father’s Day article
What do you do if you’re a magazine publisher and the president calls and asks to write a Father’s Day article for you — even if it means pushing deadline and bumping another writer?
In the case of Parade Magazine, it was “Yes Sir, Mr. President.”
Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp reports:
Editors had initially had a story about Bob Woodruff written by his wife, Lee, for the June 21 cover. But when Obama’s office called less than a week before deadline asking if he could write for Father’s Day, Editor Janice Kaplan says they couldn’t say no.
“It came out of David Axelrod’s office,” Kaplan recalled. She said the magazine closes each issue two and-a-half weeks before it is distributed. That meant the June 21 issue had a deadline of Wed., June 3.
Kaplan said the president’s request came in six days before, on Thurs., May 28. She told his office that the piece had to be in within two days. “We said we would need the story by Saturday,” she said, adding that he made the deadline. “It wasn’t a panic once we knew and we had the story ready to go.”
Obama’s Father’s Day article will be his third for Parade. In Sunday’s piece, Strupp writes, “Obama recalls growing up without a father, reflects on being a father, and calls on other fathers to “step up” and take responsibility for their children.” Kaplan says the Woodruff article will appear at a later date.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
This is being orchestrated with his apprearance on the All Barack Channel (ABC) on June 24th and I find that disgusting but I’m sure he has some nice things to say and he and his speechwriter will do a good job of writing it. I hope he also mentions in the article on how being raised by a single parent lead him to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine.
Parade…yet another over-Baracked publication I’ll have to stop reading…
Could they have said `no?’ Of course they could have. Mr. Obama doesn’t run everything.
This is just lovely. After calling conservatives “small-minded” and “not being realistic”, when bringing up the issue of single-motherhood,
libs finally may listen to the exalted O.
Now can we please get on with the story about the illegal firing of the 2 IGs who happened to be questioning “irregularities” in the administration? After all, you ARE beholding to no party, right?
Dr D, whatever you do, don’t call Parker and ask him about Walpingate. He refuses to answer the question and hangs up on you. The White House has not given the P-D permission to report the story fairly and accurately.
Our so-called media watch dogs have their heads so far up a certain spot that they refuse to investigate this travesty. What is the point of even having a media? Mr. Pulitzer must be turning in his grave over this one.
Regardless of the possible impact Obama’s piece could have on those in our society who most need to read what he has to say on this subject, some still want to make the emphasis political.
Oh well, unless they put a copy of ‘Parade’ in ‘The Saint Louis American’, I doubt many young fathers and future fathers will see it anyhow.
I honestly can’t get too worked up about this one way or another. Obama is a media whore, but all politicians are. Parade wasn’t going to tell him no. Personally I wouldn’t read it regardless, so time for me to move on…
Steve,
See you are back to peripheral topics and no traffic. Might be a good time for that piece on the IG’s who were illegally fired by the O for asking about irregularities in the administration.
Suck it up, man, give us that “not beholding to any party” paradigm, once and for all.
Thank God the Parade was somehow left out of my Sunday delivery. Didn’t even miss it.