Media

Reflecting Pool Renovation Hailed After Successfully Reflecting Entire Media Industry

Bob Callahan says the algae, paint, donor angles, and vandalism speculation did what infrastructure rarely does: reveal everybody's priors in daylight.

WASHINGTON - The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has achieved what most White House communications operations can only attempt: it made the press look directly at its own habits for more than one news cycle.

Coverage treated the newly renovated pool as an algae story, a paint story, a donor story, a vandalism story, and finally a story about which of those stories everyone had already decided to prefer. This is understandable. It is also why the pool may be Washington's most productive public works project.

"A reflecting pool is supposed to reflect. This one reflected the monuments, the water chemistry, and four assignment editors deciding which paragraph made them happiest." Bob Callahan

The Mirror Worked

The positive case is not complicated. The pool was cleaned, watched, argued over, photographed, diagnosed, and inspected in public. Most infrastructure fails quietly. This one became a national seminar with better sightlines.

If a renovation produces algae, officials have a maintenance problem. If it also produces a live demonstration of how quickly a capital story becomes a Trump story becomes a media story, the renovation has provided more transparency than half the watchdog reports on Bob's desk.

"I put it in the OOPS LOG under Infrastructure, subheading Water Features That Became Media Criticism. It is a strong tab." Bob Callahan, eating lunch

The scandal may become a scandal. Or not. That is the part the old industry used to wait to learn. For now, the Reflecting Pool has done the one job nobody can plausibly deny: it reflected.

Editor's note: This article takes no position on algae, which has not returned our calls.