Thanks for the kind words -- good coinage, too. I call the enemy combatants "journopolemicists". I suppose "apparatchiks" would also be appropriate, but unrevealing of their use of journalistic cover.
My nomination for Alpha Male Journopolemicist is David Broder. You can almost see his metaphysical "I'm-smarter-than-you-and-know-tons-more" briar pipe stuck in his little stealth-liberal smirk. His affectation of eirenic equanimity, triangulating himself perfectly above the fray, was already wearing thin on me when finally his mask slipped one day. During an election-coverage broadcast in 2000, he was at table with the usual suspects from, iirc, ABC News, when someone brought up the name of Alan Keyes. Instantly the mask of imperturbability fell away, his lip curled into a picture-perfect snarl, and he absolutely sneered aloud at the name of the hated Keyes -- I bellowed aloud, "AHAAAAAAA!!!!" -- flushed out at last! I knew it!! Revealed at last!
If Alan Keyes never again does anything worth talking about in his public life, he will have flushed one of the biggest undercover Clymers in all of print and electronic media.