Before he was the Most Powerful Journalist in Washington (according to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, who ought to know), Mike Allen covered Hartford for the NYTimes.
It was the late 1990s and Allen was a one-man bureau, covering everything from the state legislature to the Aquan Salmon shooting to Gov. Rowland’s failed scheme to bring the New England Patriots to Hartford.
Allen now writes Politico’s influential tipsheet, Playbook and he’s the subject of an amazing and lengthy profile by Mark Leibovich in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.
In the piece, Allen is described as an incredibly well-connected albeit sleep-deprived politics junkie with an encyclopedic mind, a million sources, an endearing conversational style of writing and a possible hoarding affliction.
He’s “part-mascot, part sleepless narrator of our town,” one DC insider tells Leibovich. The title of the story? “The Man the White House Wakes Up To.”