All that said, my view remains unchanged. I think the paper and it’s readers would be served better with a more descriptive, accurate, less reportorial sounding name. It’s a reasonably small issue in the end, I’ll leave it at that. Also, full disclosure: I like Froomkin’s column, read it regularly, and glad no one is arguing it should go.

Here is White House Briefing. It says at the top, White House Briefing Dan Froomkin, Columnist (with his picture). Slightly above that to the left it says washingtonpost.com Columns and you say it’s not labeled a column? My word.

You’re right, it does have his picture.

It says this:

“Dan Froomkin’s White House Briefing, a review of media coverage about the president and his staff, appears weekdays.”

I think it’s the combination of “White House” and “Briefing” that misleads. “Briefing” doesn’t mean “opinion” or “column” or “commentary.” It connotes factual instruction or recital. Note that nearly all of the other columns on the WaPo political page are labeled as such (only Kurtz’s isn’t).

Also, couldn’t find anywhere where Harris was demanding the words “White House” come out. I bet they’d be fine if it was called “White House BS Detector” or “White House TruthMeter” or “White House Daily Column” or “White House Sketch.” Or, I bet they’d be fine with “Froomkin’s Briefing” — that sounds like a personal view.

Still say it’s labeled as if it’s reporting?

They want the words “White House” taken out. That is the newsroom’s demand.

Also, think you miss the real issue here. It’s not a fizzure between the online and print worlds (I know, that fits your worldview so much better) but a battle between a bunch of beat reporters and “upstart” online writers and bloggers.

The beat reporters spend their days trying to wrangle info out of their wretched sources, and write under deadline. Many of them have been at it a long time, it’s hard work, they feel like they’ve paid their dues, and are pissed guys like Froomkin (and bloggers like Kos and Marshall) haven’t. And let’s be honest — it’s a hell of a lot less work to sit there and spout off and be entertaining than to report. So I confess I have a little sympathy with their point of view.

Does Harris really think he can forget the other side, that if Froomkin is not allowed, then Drudge, O’Reilly, Novak are going to have to be ‘fair and balanced’? Or that there isn’t any audience for slanted news?

For all its interesting and useful features, some things I don’t like about the on-line crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness and tendency to blow issues way out of proportion.

After I popped off on some of these issues, some colleagues gently suggested I might be flirting with these traits myself. (They are liars and no longer my friends.)

tsu·ris also tzu·ris Pronunciation (tsrs, tsûr-)
n. Informal
Trouble; aggravation.
[Yiddish tsores, pl. of tsure, from Hebrew râ, from rar, to become narrow; see rr in Semitic roots.]

source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com, via Firefox plugin…

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