After two years at the St. Regis Hotel, The Week switched to a new venue for its seventh annual Opinion Awards on Tuesday, drawing A-list journalists and politicians to honor the best of opinion journalism at the W Washington, D.C. near the White House.
Nearly 150 guests gathered at 6:30 p.m. for Dark and Stormy cocktails on the W’s roof deck prior to the awards dinner and panel discussion, including guests like the news and opinion magazine's editor-at-large, Sir Harold Evans, Tina Brown, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Republican Whip Eric Cantor, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the evening's special guest and speaker.
The Week marketing director Alain Begun chose the W for its location. “People with busy schedules like Rahm Emanuel can come to the event and speak with us and it’s just around the corner [from the White House],” Begun said. “We could probably see him when he walked over."
Sponsored by Chevron, this year’s awards presentation in the W’s Altitude room was hosted by M.C.s for the first time. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe helped present awards to Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, The New Republic columnist Jonathan Chait, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers.
During the awards and a bipartisan panel discussion titled “Battle for the Soul of a Party,” guests dined on a Jean-Georges Vongerichten-designed meal of shrimp salad, seared beef tenderloin with gingered shitake mushrooms in a soy-caramel emulsion, and chocolate opera cake and clementine sorbet for dessert.
