Sister Toldjah places the revelation of first JournoList, and now, as Howard Kurtz has dubbed them, “The Media Elite’s Secret Dinners” (or “Watergate-Gate”, given their location, Jim Treacher quips) into context:

Has there been a liberal media conspiracy all this time that no one has known about, one that has secretly met every day to talk about how to frame liberals and liberal policies in the best possible light while painting conservatives and their policies as cruel and heartless? Media watcher and former CBSr Bernard Goldberg has accurately written before that no such thing existed – that in fact that’s just how the media was. While the latter is true, it sounds like the former isn’t anymore. They may not be meeting every day, but liberal opinion writers, “mainstream” media journalists, policy wonks, and powerful DC movers and shakers etc are clinking glasses and spilling their guts “off the record” in a posh office overlooking the Potomac, while other agenda-driven liberals – journalists, bloggers, opinion writers – are exchanging policy ideas with each other on “secret” websites in coordinated efforts to influence public policy.

If you’ve ever wondered how it is that liberals and their ideas have gained so much traction over the last couple of years, now you know that the GOP’s scandals were far from the only reason.

Meanwhile, as media elites exchange light gossip over swank dinners, things aren’t looking anywhere near as fun in the circulation and advertising departments.