I am continually amazed how out of touch with reality that the press is 
today.  They lost their moral standing with the conservatives over 15 
years ago.  It just continues to get worse and they are finally starting 
to notice, just before they go under....


===============================================

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-
blog/2010/06/blogger_loses_job_post_loses_s.html



Blogger loses job; Post loses standing among conservatives
Post blogger Dave Weigel, who wrote about the conservative movement, 
resigned amid controversy today following disclosure of disparaging e-
mails he’d written about some of the very people he was hired to cover.

Weigel bears responsibility for sarcastic and scornful comments he made 
in e-mails leaked from a supposedly private listserv called 
“Journolist,” started in 2007 by fellow Post blogger and friend Ezra 
Klein. Weigel’s e-mails showed strikingly poor judgment and revealed a 
bias that only underscored existing complaints from conservatives that 
he couldn’t impartially cover them. 

But his departure also raises questions about whether The Post has 
adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral 
reporters or ideologues? 

And, given the disdainful comments in his e-mails, there is the separate 
question of whether he was miscast from the outset when he was hired 
earlier this year. 


Raju Narisetti, the managing editor who oversees The Post’s Web site, 
said Weigel called him last night and offered to resign after Fishbowl 
D.C. initially revealed some damaging e-mails. Narisetti said Weigel 
alerted him that another Web site, the conservative Daily Caller, 
planned to disclose more e-mails today.

"This morning, after reading them, I accepted his resignation," 
Narisetti said. Contacted by e-mail, Weigel replied: “I no longer work 
for the Post.”

The e-mails made negative comments about Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, 
Ron Paul, and conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, among 
others. One suggested it “would be a vastly better world” if Webmeister 
Matt Drudge “decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, 
and set himself on fire.” 

Weigel apologized online yesterday, but the damage was too severe to 
save his job.

“I don’t think you need to be a conservative to cover the conservative 
movement,” Narisetti told me late today. “But you do need to be 
impartial... in your views.”

He said that when Weigel was hired, he was vetted in the same way that 
other prospective Post journalists are screened. He interviewed with a 
variety of top editors, his writings were reviewed and his references 
were checked, Narisetti said. 

“But we’re living in an era when maybe we need to add a level” of 
inquiry, he said. “It may be in our interests to ask potential 
reporters: ‘In private... have you expressed any opinions that would 
make it difficult for you to do your job.”

Weigel’s exit, and the events that prompted it, have further damaged The 
Post among conservatives who believe it is not properly attuned to their 
ideology or activities. Ironically, Weigel was hired to address 
precisely those concerns.

With bloggers such as Weigel, “I think The Post needs to decide what it 
wants to be online,” said Dan Gainor, a vice president at the 
conservative Media Research Center. “Does it want to be opinion? Or, 
does it want to be news? The problem here was that it was never clear.”

“If it’s going to be opinion, it ought to have somebody on the 
conservative side -- something Dave Weigel never was,” he said. 

If The Post wants to assign a “good neutral reporter” to cover 
conservatives, “we’d be thrilled,” said Gainor. But quickly added, 
Weigel “wasn’t one. He looked at the conservative movement as if he was 
visiting a zoo. We’re more than that.”

Gainor raises valid points. Klein’s blog posts clearly pass through a 
liberal prism. For that reason, liberals have a comfort level with what 
he writes, and conservatives know where he’s coming from, even if they 
disagree. In contrast, Weigel’s blog seemed to confuse many 
conservatives who contacted me. Was he supposed to be a neutral 
reporter, some wondered? Others complained that he was a liberal trying 
to write about conservatives he disdained.

“We will look for someone to replace Dave,” Narisetti said.

Instead of just a replacement, The Post might consider two: one 
conservative with a Klein-like ideological bent, and another who can 
cover the conservative movement in the role of a truly neutral reporter. 

In the meantime, Post managers would be wise to remind all staffers that 
personal opinions, expressed privately on listservs or through social 
media, can prove damaging if made public.

Klein addressed that danger this afternoon in a thoughtful blog post 
explaining why he is closing down Journolist, and why he is saddened 
that leaks from the listserv led to the resignation of Weigel, a “dear 
friend.” Klein wrote:



There's a lot of faux-intimacy on the Web. Readers like that intimacy, 
or at least some of them do. But it's dangerous. A newspaper column is 
public, and writers treat it as such. So too is a blog. But Twitter? 
It's public, but it feels, somehow, looser, safer. Facebook is less 
public than Twitter, and feels even more intimate. A private e-mail list 
is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is 
protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. 
It's easy to talk as if it's private without considering the 
possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public.


Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s 
archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result 
is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing 
among conservatives.

By Andy Alexander  |  June 25, 2010; 5:24 PM ET

CMPQwk 1.42-21 9999 
Democrats --  The party of economic destruction ....

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