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The Friday Reporter

The Friday Reporter

De : Lisa Camooso Miller
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The Friday Reporter was created to better understand the news process from a journalist's point of view. After nearly three years, the guest list has expanded to include newsmakers, policymakers and image makers. It's a show about public affairs and the contours of how business is done. Lisa Camooso Miller is the host and a D.C.-based public affairs professional who is asking the questions.

newsletter.fridayreporter.comLisa Camooso Miller Economie Politique et gouvernement Sciences politiques
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  • Part Two -- Congressional Softball and Young Survival

    Part Two -- Congressional Softball and Young Survival
    Sep 19 2026

    And we’re back with Part Two of this week’s Congressional Women’s Softball Game special.

    If you listened to my first conversation with Senator Shelly Moore Capito and Emily Goodin, you already know this game is about a lot more than what happens on the field.

    For this second episode, I’m joined by Atalie Ebersole and Mary Ajango, who bring another perspective on the game, the Young Survival Coalition and the community that has grown around this really remarkable Washington tradition.

    We talk about why this night matters, what the Young Survival Coalition means to the women it serves and why showing up — literally — can make a difference.

    The game is next Wednesday, September 23, at Audi Field.

    So if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, this is your nudge. Come watch Congress take on the Washington press corps and support a cause that deserves the attention.

    Tickets are available at congwomensoftball.org.

    And with that, here’s Part Two.



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    17 min
  • The Congressional Softball Game is September 23

    The Congressional Softball Game is September 23
    Sep 19 2026

    THE FRIDAY REPORTER

    This is a special two-fer edition of The Friday Reporter because sometimes one conversation just isn’t enough.

    This week, I talked with four women who know the Congressional Women’s Softball Game from very different angles — Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) and Emily Goodin (New York Post), team captains for the two teams and then Atalie Ebersole, President of the Congressional Softball Game and Mary Ajango, Young Survival Coalition.

    And if you know anything about this game, you know it’s about a lot more than softball.

    For 18 years, women Members of Congress have taken on the women of the Washington press corps (Bad News Babes) in a bipartisan game that has become one of Capitol Hill’s great traditions.

    But the reason this game exists — and the reason it keeps going — is the Young Survival Coalition, which supports young adults diagnosed with breast cancer.

    Since the game began in 2009, it has raised more than $4.3 million for YSC.

    And that’s what really struck me in these conversations: the game is fun, it’s competitive, there’s plenty of trash talk — but underneath all of that is something pretty powerful. Women who spend their days on opposite sides of politics come together around a cause that has nothing to do with party.

    The 18th annual game is next Wednesday, September 23, at Audi Field here in Washington.

    So if you’re looking for something to do next Wednesday night, go watch some women in Congress take on the press corps — and support a really important cause while you’re at it.

    Tickets are on sale now at congwomensoftball.org

    Tune in and play ball!



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    16 min
  • Stay Safe, Stay Here

    Stay Safe, Stay Here
    Sep 11 2026
    I was serving as Special Assistant to Acting Governor Donald T. DiFrancesco then — his traveling aide, at his side almost every day. Some days that meant Drumthwacket, the Governor’s residence. Some days it meant the Statehouse. Some days I’d start at his home in Scotch Plains instead. You didn’t know which until you knew.That morning it was Drumthwacket. I parked and walked into the command center to find the troopers on detail that day, the way I did most mornings. One of them was racing out as I came in — his father was in one of the towers. A plane had hit, that much everyone knew. That early we thought it was small, contained, and an accident.I walked through the side door into Drumthwacket and saw the televisions on in the troopers’ offices, and that was the moment I knew. This is not what I had in mind for today.The Governor himself was further inside, in the parlor, with a group of Holocaust survivors the state was hosting for breakfast, deeply engaged in a room you don’t want to interrupt. But reports were coming in that the National Mall was on fire, that this wasn’t contained to one place and we had to get to State Police headquarters.What I remember most about those first hours isn’t a fact. It’s the fear — deep and gut-level. I was twenty-six years old, and for most of that day I wouldn’t let Rae Hutton, the Governor’s press secretary, out of my sight. I needed an adult in the room, even though by then I was supposed to be one.The reporters wanted the same thing from us. What do you know? What can you tell us? It sounded like a question about facts, but really it was a search for reassurance, for some sense that someone, somewhere, had an answer. That day was the first time in my life I understood that the adults did not always have the answers.There was no way to check on the people I loved either. My boyfriend at the time — now my husband — and my sister were both in Washington. None of the calls were going through. The troopers and I had two-way pagers, a little texting, nothing more. No BlackBerrys, no iPhones. You sat and watched broadcast news, and that was the whole of what you knew, professionally and personally, at once.I had friends at the Port Authority. Several were running late that morning and never made it in. I think about that luck often. Others weren’t as fortunate — New Jersey lost more than seven hundred people that day. I still remind people of this: we were closer to Manhattan than Albany was. We were on the ground before the Governor of New York even arrived. One woman on the Governor’s staff lost her brother in the towers. I went with the Governor and the troopers to his funeral. I have never once heard bagpipes since without feeling that day in my bones.Later that day, before any of the funerals, the Governor prepared to board a Black Hawk for Liberty State Park. He turned to me first.“Not today, Lisa. I do not know what we will see. Today, I would like you to stay here and stay safe.”He was the one flying toward it. I was the one told to wait. Twenty-five years later, I’m still not sure which of us had the harder job.Debbie Baker went with him — the same trooper who’d first told him a plane had hit. When she came back, she had a blank look on her face. I asked her what she saw.“There was nobody there,” she said.That night I drove myself home, alone on roads that should have had other cars on them and didn’t. I have never been more frightened in my life. I got home, turned the television on, and didn’t turn it off. I don’t think I slept.The next day, we went into the city by boat — the Holland Tunnel was closed, so boat was the only way in. What I saw at the site looked like a war zone, except it wasn’t a war, and everyone there knew it. Hundreds of people moving in near silence, still searching for anyone who might be alive.I sat in the biggest rooms and the saddest ones after that — meetings with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, watching men try to make decisions about a catastrophe no one had a playbook for. I remember Giuliani pushing to get government buildings back open — something close to we need to show them they can’t win — and someone telling him, gently, that the work wasn’t done. Not cleanup. Preservation. It was still a recovery site.I watched medical students give their time to identification work with no clean edges to it. I walked past telephone poles covered in photographs — faces, names, phone numbers, taped up by people who hadn’t stopped looking yet. There was a smell in the air for weeks I have never been able to describe to anyone who wasn’t there. I will never forget any of it — the rooms, the poles, the smell, the quiet next to the loudest grief I’ve ever been near.I can’t believe it’s been twenty-five years. Those memories are seared into me in a way almost nothing else from my life is.That day is the reason I moved to Washington. I wanted to be part of ...
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    19 min
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