Found Bombshell Book on Shelves? Oh pulleezze...!

When Mike Allen of the Politico broke the story of Scott McClellan's new kiss-and-tell book Tuesday night, he explained that he just happened to spot the epistle while browsing at a local bookstore.

Then reporters for other newspapers, who already had the book, began dishing from its pages. Some of them explained that they too just happened to spot it on the shelves.

So remarkable was the coincidence that Neal Conan, on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" Wednesday, asked Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal when she had acquired the book.

CONAN: When did you actually get a copy of this book?

Ms. RADNOFSKY: Late last night. I was on my way home.

CONAN: And you just happened to see it in a bookstore?

Ms. RADNOFSKY: Yes, on sale in a Washington bookstore.

Ms. Radnofsky emailed me that she actually did see the book in a local shop, and has the receipt to prove it.

But let's cut to the chase here. We are living in an era when book publishers make deals with news organizations to control the media rollout for a hot book. They give you an advance copy so you can actually read the tome, but dictate when you can write about it. Reporters who get itchy for a scoop and decide to break the embargo? Yes, you got it, they saw it on the shelves at the local bookshop!

Maybe Mike Allen did, as he said, just happen upon it. For the rest of us, enough of the hypocrisy. End the shellgame. Please, my colleagues, come clean. Otherwise you'll have to endure more embarassing moments like this one, when NPR's Conan sounded a note of incredulity over the whole affair.

CONAN: Louise Radnofsky, you and reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico, the website, all happen to come across it in bookstores here in Washington last night?

Ms. RADNOFSKY: I didn't know if it was the same bookstore, but yes.

--Johanna Neuman