At his Media Myth Alert blog, W. Joseph Campbell has some fun with the Washington Post’s latest ombudsman, who’s ready to switch his Rock’em Sock’em Robot toys into full-on automatic for the people mode:
The ombudsman of the Washington Post, Patrick Pexton, weighs in today with platitudes and hang-wringing [sic--Ed] about the newspaper. He mostly misses the mark.
Pexton writes in his column that the Post’s “future lies not with the rich; it lies with the citizenry.
Advertisement“This newspaper must be the one source of high-quality, probing Washington news that readers in this region and across the country can look to for holding their government accountable. This publication must be for all Americans.”
Oh, brother.
But wait: Here’s more vague abstraction:
“The Post,” Pexton writes, “can’t be a liberal publication or a conservative one. It must be hard-hitting, scrappy and questioning — skeptical of all political figures and parties and beholden to no one. It has to be the rock-’em-sock-’em organization that is passionate about the news. It needs to be less bloodless and take more risks when chasing the story and the truth.”
A “rock-’em-sock-’em organization,” eh? Well, that’s useful guidance.
In his five or so months as ombudsman, Pexton hasn’t dared touch the electrified third rail about the Post, which one of his predecessors, Deborah Howell, gamely if belatedly addressed.
That’s a decided lack of intellectual diversity in the Post’s newsroom. In mid-November 2008, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Howell wrote in her ombudsman column:
“I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.”
Howell’s column quoted Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism as saying that “conservatives are right that journalism has too many liberals and not enough conservatives. It’s inconceivable that that is irrelevant.”
Wait, hasn’t the Post been in rock’em sock’em mode enough already? One of writers founded an email listserv for 400 or so of his fellow leftwing writers on which the following was written:
SPENCER ACKERMAN, WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT: Let’s just throw Ledeen against a wall. Or, pace Dr. Alterman, throw him through a plate glass window. I’ll bet a little spot of violence would shut him right the fuck up, as with most bullies.
Also on the list, fellow “liberal” Dave Weigel, then with the Post (now with Slate, which is owned by the Post) wrote:
”This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.”
That doesn’t sound like it’s in the Marquess of Queensberry boxing rules. Neither does Ackerman egging on his fellow JournoListas to “take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country?”
Curiously though, as Byron York of the competing Washington Examiner noted last year, “At Washington Post, mum’s the word on JournoList.”
Which sounds like it’s still very much the case there, based on its ombudsman’s latest column. But then, as the quotes above from the JournoList illustrate, whatever rock’em, sock’em slugfest the Post thinks it’s in, the paper has been on the receiving end of most of the blows in recent years, as it increasingly loses its fight with reality, who tends to be a rather unmerciful sparring partner.
Incidentally, if the Post’s ombudsman really does believe that the future “lies not with the rich; it lies with the citizenry,” he might want to inform the paper’s writers of this notion. Because they’ve been most unhappy with America’s citizenry for the past three years.
Related: More rock’em sock’em action here, Fast & Furious style:”The Washington Post has a Partner’s Share in Terry’s Death,” Neil W. McCabe of Human Events writes. “Instead of reporting on Fast & Furious operation, they were its PR team.”
Keep rockin, dipwads!
WaPo the paper (Pravda on the Potomac) has been losing money for years. Their ownership of Kaplan is all that keeps them afloat. They have been giving me the weekday paper free with my Sunday subscription for over 2 years now, just to keep their circulation numbers up.
It’s all very sad really. I like newspapers. But WaPo bought out all their expensive older people (Tony Kornheiser) and replaced them with J-school graduates most of whom have hyphenated last names, and all the J-school outlook on the world.
The Post’s editorial/opinion pages have actually gotten a little more balanced in the past 5-6 years. It’s the news pages and sections like Style that are in the tank for Obama and in denial about how their bias is negatively affecting their bottom line.
When I (rarely) read Wapo, its only to see what BS the left will float next.
“Hang ringing”? Apparently the Post’s deficiencies even extend to proofreading dictated stories before they are published. Makes me want to ring my hands…
Good point, but I think you (and they) mean wring, not ring.
That’s from Joseph Campbell’s piece, not me.
“Less blood-less” means bloody, no? So much for the New Civility.
The WaPo is quite useful when one wishes to see the unabridged talking points out of the White House or DNC, or to see what the radical left’s take on a subject is at the moment. It’s also great fish wrapper when one can find stacks and stacks of unsold copies for free.
If the post really beleives that “the future lies not with the rich; it lies with the citizenry” they should really love the Tea Party, since they are a true grass roots organization composed of “the citizenry”. But of course grass roots “citizenry” organizations are only good if they are composed of left wing citizens, bought by George Soros. Otherwise they are racist mindless violent terrorist extremist rubes that are duped by the Koch Brothers.