by Matt Martinez

Morning Meeting

"Morning Meeting" is a recap of our daily editorial meeting. If we had a show today, these are some of the stories you would probably hear.

Hi everyone — just finished our very first editorial meeting here in the BPP Editorial Complex. To quote Alison, "Well, that wasn't horrible." She's right — it was a pretty good meeting. About thirty minutes longer than I wanted it to be, but I was never bored and that's always a sign of a good meeting (which is rare).

Meeting Rundown. In attendance: Alison Stewart, Luke Burbank, Matt Martinez, Dan Pashman (producer), Wright Bryan (web producer)

LEBANON — The first ten minutes of the meeting were about the situation in Lebanon, it's the story dominating the cable networks and will be the lead story on every newscast tonight. Our question was: Why should we care? It's obviously a big story — but why? We're going to talk with former NPR producer — now independent producer — Ben Gilbert in Lebanon. We're going to give him 60 seconds to make us care about this story. We're actually calling this segment "Make Me Care" — it's a way to take these big stories that are played out in the media for days and really get to the heart of the matter. And after we run the segment, our question to you will be — did we make you care? Stayed tuned — this is the story we're following later today.

MICHAEL MOORE AT CANNES — Alison brought up the Michael Moore movie Sicko that played this weekend in Cannes. It's about America's health care system. We thought it would be great to talk with someone who saw the movie — get a quick review, then talk with a culture type about Michael Moore movies in general — has it gotten to the point that Moore is simply preaching to choir, that he is not actually convincing/converting people to his side?

RON PAUL — Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) is all over the 'net these days. He has been for a while, actually. There's been this huge push for the presidential candidate on Digg and a massive letter writing campaign to The Daily Show of all places, urging Jon Stewart to interview him. It's a fascinating Howard Dean-ish campaign story. The momentum could propel him to some sort of front runner status, but will that translate to votes, will he founder like Dean? We're thinking we go to the guys who run Politico.com and get their take on the Ron Paul situation.

GANG BANGER UNIONS — Luke saw this interesting piece in the L.A. Times about former and current gang bangers in unions — thought it might be a nice conversation.

SPORTS — The big hockey game this weekend was sidelined for the Preakness pre-show. The PRE-SHOW! Where's the outrage? The Ottawa Senators claimed a 3-2 win in overtime over the top-seeded Buffalo Sabres on Saturday — but you probably didn't see it because NBC cut out for the bigger money-making Preakness coverage. The Senators advanced to the finals — they're waiting for the Anaheim Ducks and Detroit Red Wings to settle the Western Conference finals. (Not that you — or NBC — care.)

BOOMER WEALTH GAP — Alison pointed out the great enterprise story on the cover of USA Today this morning, about the wealth gap between Boomers and younger people — from the story:

Nearly all additional wealth created in the USA since 1989 has gone to people 55 and older, according to Federal Reserve data. Wealth has doubled since 1989 in households headed by older Americans.

Not so for younger Americans. Households headed by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s have barely kept up with inflation or have fallen behind since 1989. People 35 to 50 actually have lost wealth since 1989 after adjusting for inflation, Fed data show.

We thought a conversation with Dennis Cauchon, the guy who wrote the story, might be nice. We may not get around to this today — but go read the story. Very good.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD! — We had a conversation about the Chinese food story in this weekend's Washington Post, which freaked out Wright — he had no idea that tainted food from China may be getting into the US — he was even more freaked out that we were even getting food imported from China. I think his alarm is triggered because food is such a personal thing and to not know where it's coming from is a bit uncomfortable to deal with. That led to a discussion about increasing corn prices, which are leading farmers to feed their livestock trail mix. There's some kind of food conversation to be had here — perhaps with a fellow like Michael Pollan, who wrote the equally fascinating and devastating "Omnivore's Dilemma."

ON THE DIAL— If we were on this morning we'd have a Soprano's wrap up, talk about The Simpsons and Family Guy episodes (which lambasted their own network last night — FOX) and look ahead to later this week: American Idol finals, the premiere of So You Think You Can Dance? — and preview our movie discussion this Friday with critic Bob Mondello this Friday. (More on all this later.)

We aren't going to follow up on all of these stories — the idea is that we pluck one or two and give it a go. As we grow and get more feedback we'll start plucking two or three ideas from the meeting and eventually, we'll have an entire show to give you.