One from column A….
I blinked and missed the entire tenure, scandal, and resignation of conservative blogger Ben Domenech at WashingtonPost.com. I was busy working. Sorry.
But I think it’s absurd for the paper to hire a conservative blogger for the sake of having one. First, by believing you have to hire someone from the right to fill a void you are tacitly acknowledging that you’re liberal — but without actually saying so. Just say. Repeat after me: I’m liberal. I’m liberal. I’m liberal.
Second, why do you feel as if you have to buy, rent, lease, or own a blogger? There are tons of good bloggers out there from the right, left, and libertarian persuasions. Quote them. Link to them. Blogroll them. Aggregate them. Sell ads on them. You don’t have to hire them anymore. This is the distributed age, remember? And here’s the fringe benefit: When they F up, you’re not responsible for them. You just link to another. Cool, huh? It’s called the web.
Tags: newspapers, Weblogs
March 24th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Or, they could have let Krauthammer blog.
My hunch is that they wanted a big flame war.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:00 am
There was something bizarre about the way they suddenly had a conservative in captivity for everyone to gawk at. (And just go read a few of the liberal sites commenting on the horror of conservative opinion under the Post monicker…) Basically, it’s treating blogging like the horoscope or the bridge column. It’s affirmative action for conservatives.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:17 am
i agreed with everything until you hit “sell ads on them.”
please explain that philosophy for me.
March 25th, 2006 at 1:42 am
I wouldn’t give up my blog for the Washington Post, and I hope I wouldn’t give it up for any other organization.
What I love about blogging is that no one tells me what to do, or hires me for a purpose. It’s my voice, and I’m proud of it.
March 25th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Whether the WaPo is truly “liberal” or not isn’t entirely clear. I know illegal immigration is off JJ’s radar but since I follow it closely the main media source of misinformation right after the AP is the WaPo. Cui bono when the WaPo lies about illegal immigration? Low-wage Americans, or those who profit off that illegal activity?
And, click my link to read about me being banned from RedState after posting a blog there since 2004.
March 25th, 2006 at 4:39 am
i know it probably sounds ridiculously idealistic, but how about hiring good writers because theyre good writers?
furthermore i also disagree that by going out there to intentionally hire a Conservative makes the WaPo admittedly liberal, nor does hiring a Conservative make the WaPo more balanced. However to those who look at news outlets as lefty or righty most veiw the WaPo as Lefty therefore kudos to them for trying to at least appear like they want to become more balanced in their columnists.
the truth is it’s very difficult to be a conservative columnist/blogger/politician these days without looking at least a little bit full of shit, so my hat’s off to anyone with the chutzpah to take on that task particularily in the WaPo.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:11 am
I only read theis far, “In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.”
That’s because they are spinning things for the right wingnut agenda, staying on message for the administration. Jeff is dangerous because he writes original stuff. I’m dangerous too. We are living in dangerous times, so there may be no avoiding it. Domenech may of just been greedy and the flip side of greed is fear. It makes the Washington Post look dumb or at least strategically challenged.
March 25th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Tony,
“the truth is it’s very difficult to be a conservative columnist/blogger/politician these days without looking at least a little bit full of shit,”?
It also seems very difficult these days to make money and gain an audience with socialist pabulum.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Making money isn’t supposed to be easy captiousnut.
Sometimes worthwhile things involve great difficulty.
Capitalism isn’t a free ride. People living and competition, all I want is my piece of pie. You have to work it out and it will work out.
That’s the secret to getting rich, work! Unless you are born rich, which most people aren’t. There’s beer to be drunk, work to be done and virgins to be had. People hate work and they hate success. Why this is, is a mystery.
Making a movie is a lot of work and it costs millions, so people can sit there and enjoy the work that was done for them. Some jobs are easier than others. What can you do?
March 25th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Funny stuff: Marginalizing Morons
http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/
The morons can do that with no help from above or below.
This seems like setting up a blog to prove drunks drink too much.
Then you complain about having no audience because everyone is too drunk to read your blog. Some things are self evident. Is it really so difficult?
March 25th, 2006 at 11:10 am
“Second, why do you feel as if you have to buy, rent, lease, or own a blogger?”
Succinctly put. After all, newspapers have used stringers for centuries. Why should this be anything new?
In addition, it would be consistent with what is happening in the country in general. Employees no longer work for one company for major portions of their working life. More and more are becoming free agents, by necessity. With more free agency, “news” becomes the focus, rather than “the newspaper.”
Finally, by hiring Domenech, washingtonpost.com has put its imprimatur on his columns — no matter what the editors say about the columns being the opinions of the individual. Even if plagiarism weren’t an issue, the tone of the columns is outside the mainstream (sorry about using that word) of Post writing.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:16 am
A month or so ago Confederate Yankee did a “guest blogging” stint at the Post, and it was fairly well received.
I think based on that they decided on hiring a full time “righty” blogger. Which of course wasn’t as well received.
Jeff is correct though, if you say you hired a conservative to fill a “void” that make your paper liberal.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:17 am
I don’t think it’s absurd for a liberal paper to hire a conservative columnist and vice versa. In fact, it’s a good thing. A quality paper should always have at least one columnist that its readers will disagree with, just to make them question their own assumptions.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:33 am
The whole thing was crazy and badly handled.
I’m doing a series on news media personalities so yesterday I wrote about this Post screw-up
and one about Judith Miller and how respectable publications should just stop hiring her so maybe she’ll leave the biz.
March 25th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
I get so tired of this liberal media bullshit, especially for papers like the Washington Post. Since September 11, 2001, the Washington Post has been, for the most part, a Bush supporter and apologist. Does that make them Conservative, no; does that make them Liberal, hell no. The media in general is so frightened that some trumped up blogger will call them liberal that they go out of their way to make themselves look the opposite. In the end, all they do is look pathetic and stupid; become followers instead of leaders. If anyone can truly say that today’s media is overly liberal, then they are not only blind, they have their heads in the sand, as well. The Post problem is not that it is Liberal or Conservative, it’s that the Post is a pathetic shell of its former self.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:16 am
“First, by believing you have to hire someone from the right to fill a void you are tacitly acknowledging that you’re liberal”
No, not necessarily so. It very well may be that the decision makers think the paper isn’t right-wing enough. Pls note the difference: Moving to the right DOESN’T imply you’re liberal now. You may be middle-of-the road or even on the right side, but may think it would be advantagous to move further right.
I think that’s the reason behind WaPo.com’s ‘ballance’ initiative. Kate Graham is long gone, and today the WaPo company is driven by corporate interests. Bif business interests are better served by the Bush administration. I’m not sure if Brady really likes to reposition WaPo to the right, but imho his superiors press him to go that way. Of course, this is a balance act, obviously the corporate interests collide with the political preferences of the majority of the readers very often.
In the case of WaPo, there are also some conflicts between the demands of local and national readership involved, not to speak of the difficult relationship between print and online business, so I guess it’s a sure bet we’ll see more controversial decisions in the future.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:44 am
“I don’t think it’s absurd for a liberal paper to hire a conservative columnist and vice versa.”
Glyn, that’s not the point. Firstly, in the eyes of many, if not most liberals, WaPO isn’t a real liberal paper. Just compare their attacks against Clinton with the stance towards Bush and you’ll see the difference. Secondly, WaPo, the newspaper, has lots of conservative columnists. In addition, WaPo’s online edition has bloggers, too, and this is about an alleged lack of ‘a social conservative voice’ among them. Though Brady denies it, this idea started when GOP heavyweights complained about a perceived liberal bias at WaPo.com’s most popular ‘blogger’ Froomkin (in fact, he’s an experienced journalist, but doing online-only stories right now).
So, there isn’t a huge discussion about the ballance of the paper, but only about it’s website. Personally, I don’t see any need for an additional conservative blog. Imho all of WaPo’s blogs are very mainstream, especially Arkin and Achenbach, and they don’t challenge the Bush gang enough. But even if a ’social conservative’ blogger was needed, Domenech was the wrong choice. He isn’t conservative, but a Bush supporter who mostly parrots talking points from Rove and the christian right. There is no compassionate social side in his work. He is almost as foul-mouthed as Ann Coulter, and thus isn’t on the level of discourse of mainstream media. Plus his journalistic ethics are lousy, as evidenced by the numerous examples of plagiarism. Good that Domenech didn’t make it, but the powers behind WaPo will contract another GOP operative soon, no doubt about it.