Cranky Wanky Media: 'Round the Blogs

Jane Hamsher says that “White House Pool Boys Get Crabby” ….

“I can’t take it any more,” complains Jane Hamsher. “Jay Rosen sent me an article by the Washington Post public editor that said the folks in the newsroom don’t like Dan Froomkin because he’s too liberal, and they’re miffed that the Technorati tags on their articles lead to bloggers who criticize them.

“Where do we start,” asks Jane.

“Number one, Dan Froomkin’s column is often the only thing worth reading in the Washington Post, the one thing they’re managed to do right as they crawl their way out of the 18th century amidst a series of spectacularly bad decisions that have blown their credibility and set them in lockstep with the wooly mammoth …” Read all of

Jane’s rant at FireDogLake

P.S. Don’t miss the photo of the hottie owner of Crooks & Liars. Jane snapped the picture.

Froomkin responds to Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell …

“There is undeniably a certain irreverence to the column,” writes Dan Froomkin about his WaPo column. “But I do not advocate policy, liberal or otherwise. My agenda, such as it is, is accountability and transparency. I believe that the president of the United States, no matter what his party, should be subject to the most intense journalistic scrutiny imaginable.”. … Read all of Froomkin’s response via Media Matters (And that cranky-looking lady in the photo is the WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell.)

Newsweek granted anonymity to White House aides praising Bush …

Notwithstanding Newsweek guidelines for the use of anonymous sources, at no point did the writers explain why sources who were praising and defending the president required anonymity. Neither did they explain how readers were served by having praise of Bush from subordinates and friends conveyed anonymously. … Read all at Media Matters

And the RASPBERRY OF THE DAY goes to Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker …

Tucker claims the country is not ready to elect a woman president. … Read all at Media Matters

P.S. The Top-Performing News Sites on Google News …

Guess which UK news sources aren’t on the list. BBC News, Guardian UK, or Sky News? … Via PoynterOnline.

11 Comments

sbj on December 12, 2005 at 10:02 pm

Here’s a copy of my LTTE to the WaPo ombudswoman in response to her unfortunate column. (She could give former NYT public editor Daniel Okrent a run for his money as the most irrelevant and dysfunctional ombudsman of the year.

TO THE OMBUDSWOMAN,

I’ve frequently wondered why the Washington Post website carried articles and information that reflected a generally deeper enthusiasm for investigating current events and a far more developed perspective within which to communicate the results of those investigations and analyses to the public than the print version of the Post does.

Thanks to your column today I understand that the primary reason for this seems to be that the Post website is not directly managed by the mandarins in the Post’s print version’s editorial process.

I’m sorry to see the print edition of the Post falling away from it’s potential this way. As a former longtime resident of the Washington area I remember when the Post was a truly great paper.

It’s always sad to see greatness erode, especially when the tools that might help restore it lie within reach.

Sincerely,

I realize the first sentence is especially clunky but I didn’t have the enthusiasm to really try to fix it because in all the years I’ve been writing letters to the editor, WaPo is one of the only really major papers in the country to never print one.

Chamonix1 on December 12, 2005 at 10:19 pm

read this diary. It is going into the margins and diaries on the right side of the page. Dennis Prager is an Asshole.

Dean Pajevic on December 12, 2005 at 10:32 pm

I’m using permitted code but it is different from what I usually try.

Let me change it, and will you tell me if it’s okay then for you?
- Chamonix1 on December 12, 2005 at 10:35 pm
  
  thank you…
  - Dean Pajevic on December 12, 2005 at 10:37 pm
    
    We aim to please. You’ve heard about our money-back guarantee, right?

Janet Strange on December 12, 2005 at 11:18 pm

You’re dissing one of my heroes. Debbie Howell was my high school journalism teacher. She was a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times then and taught just the one course at my high school. She was probably 24 or 25 years old at the time. This was Texas in the mid-60’s. The only career advice I ever got was – you have to be a secretary – it’s the only decent job for a woman. What else are you going to do? Teach school? No pay, no respect, you’ll end up an old maid school teacher. Or be a nurse? Yuck – disgusting things with sick people.

And into this world stepped a real life Lois Lane. I had no idea women could even be reporters outside of a comic book. She was one of the “cool teachers” – smart and funny and energetic. When the violence and abuse got too bad one night at my house, she took me in and found me a safe place to stay.

I read her column and I’m not seeing an attack or anything like it on Froomkin. She’s just explaining the difference between WaPo print paper, and the .com and reporting some of the tensions between them. She never says she doesn’t like him – she’s just telling us that some of the political reporters in the newsroom don’t.

She does think that the title of his column should be changed, because it give the impression that he is a White House reporter – which he’s not. From her column:

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular . . . . Froomkin said he is “happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I’m not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I’m doing, namely scrutinizing the White House’s every move — with an attitude — is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism.””

So she says that Froomkin is “highly opinionated and liberal.” This is some kind of insult? Seems to me like that’s just a fact.

And she was the one who described Woodward thusly:

While Woodward is listed as an assistant managing editor, he has no management duties. He comes and goes as he pleases, mostly writing his best-selling books on what happens behind the doors of power, and he reports only to Executive Editor Len Downie. He is allowed to keep juicy stories to himself until his latest book is unveiled on the front page of The Post. He is the master of the anonymous source.

[Damn – no link, but it’s from a comment of mine when I was reading that column of hers.]

I think she’s getting a bum rap here. Cranky. Sheesh. Here’s one of the women who really inspired me to think I could break out of the rigid female roles that were being force fed to me . . . and now she’s just a “cranky lady.” It’s making me cranky.

AlanDownunder on December 13, 2005 at 12:25 am

Howell’s only mistake was to give Harris the time of day. Correction: no mistake – his complacent idiocy needed airing.
- Janet Strange on December 13, 2005 at 1:05 am
  
  Exactly. No mistake. Told y’all she is smart.

philinmaine on December 13, 2005 at 7:35 am

Great diary, lots of useful stuff and raised a ? for me. Not sure if comments is the place to start but where do people get their news from? A news aggregator like Google or a bunch o blogs or? Reply with links, so we can check them out.

Cali Scribe on December 13, 2005 at 12:24 pm

I’ve always admired her writing. I haven’t read the column in question yet, but on a gut-level, I fear she may be right — in our current “national security”/”war on terror” mode, there are quite a few folks (of both genders) that still see women as not being built of the Right Stuff to be leaders, Golde Meir and Margaret Thatcher notwithstanding. I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing a woman as Vice President first anyway — it’s been over 20 years since Mondale had the cojones to put Ferraro’s name in the slot as his running mate. It turned out to be a flawed choice, but because of her (and her spouse’s) baggage, not her gender.

Note to Phil in Maine: I usually skim the headlines using the RSS reader built into Safari (Mac OS X); it comes with several built-in RSS sources and it’s easy to add others. (Someone more familiar with RSS can maybe suggest ones for other browsers — I know that the Sage extension for Firefox is pretty good…)

Dean Pajevic on December 13, 2005 at 2:45 pm

I usually skim the headlines using the RSS reader built into Safari (Mac OS X);

Where do I do that?

Ohhhhh … I’m so excited … Cali, we share the same system! But I’ve always been a PC girl until my last PC crashed, and my daughter helped me get a baby I-Mac. (It’s so cute.)

I downloaded the stand-alone RSS feed app, Newsfire, and love it. My daughter did too…. she uses a Mac laptop.

I also use My Yahoo’s RSS feeds for news. And I’ve sorted it so that the news sources I most want to read are at the top.

One bad thing: I’ve added too many RSS feeds to NewsFire, and now I hardly ever make it through them all. But I hate to take off any of them, because there are TIMES when I need to search Newsfire for — let’s say — “Karl” or “Plame” or “Fitzgerald” — and, voila, there are all the blog posts AND news posts on those folks. So sweet.

sbj on December 12, 2005 at 10:02 pm

Here’s a copy of my LTTE to the WaPo ombudswoman in response to her unfortunate column. (She could give former NYT public editor Daniel Okrent a run for his money as the most irrelevant and dysfunctional ombudsman of the year.

TO THE OMBUDSWOMAN,

I’ve frequently wondered why the Washington Post website carried articles and information that reflected a generally deeper enthusiasm for investigating current events and a far more developed perspective within which to communicate the results of those investigations and analyses to the public than the print version of the Post does.

Thanks to your column today I understand that the primary reason for this seems to be that the Post website is not directly managed by the mandarins in the Post’s print version’s editorial process.

I’m sorry to see the print edition of the Post falling away from it’s potential this way. As a former longtime resident of the Washington area I remember when the Post was a truly great paper.

It’s always sad to see greatness erode, especially when the tools that might help restore it lie within reach.

Sincerely,

I realize the first sentence is especially clunky but I didn’t have the enthusiasm to really try to fix it because in all the years I’ve been writing letters to the editor, WaPo is one of the only really major papers in the country to never print one.
Chamonix1 on December 12, 2005 at 10:19 pm

read this diary. It is going into the margins and diaries on the right side of the page. Dennis Prager is an Asshole.
- Dean Pajevic on December 12, 2005 at 10:32 pm
  
  I’m using permitted code but it is different from what I usually try.
  
  Let me change it, and will you tell me if it’s okay then for you?
  - Chamonix1 on December 12, 2005 at 10:35 pm
    
    thank you…
    - Dean Pajevic on December 12, 2005 at 10:37 pm
      
      We aim to please. You’ve heard about our money-back guarantee, right?
Janet Strange on December 12, 2005 at 11:18 pm

You’re dissing one of my heroes. Debbie Howell was my high school journalism teacher. She was a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times then and taught just the one course at my high school. She was probably 24 or 25 years old at the time. This was Texas in the mid-60’s. The only career advice I ever got was – you have to be a secretary – it’s the only decent job for a woman. What else are you going to do? Teach school? No pay, no respect, you’ll end up an old maid school teacher. Or be a nurse? Yuck – disgusting things with sick people.

And into this world stepped a real life Lois Lane. I had no idea women could even be reporters outside of a comic book. She was one of the “cool teachers” – smart and funny and energetic. When the violence and abuse got too bad one night at my house, she took me in and found me a safe place to stay.

I read her column and I’m not seeing an attack or anything like it on Froomkin. She’s just explaining the difference between WaPo print paper, and the .com and reporting some of the tensions between them. She never says she doesn’t like him – she’s just telling us that some of the political reporters in the newsroom don’t.

She does think that the title of his column should be changed, because it give the impression that he is a White House reporter – which he’s not. From her column:

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular . . . . Froomkin said he is “happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I’m not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I’m doing, namely scrutinizing the White House’s every move — with an attitude — is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism.””

So she says that Froomkin is “highly opinionated and liberal.” This is some kind of insult? Seems to me like that’s just a fact.

And she was the one who described Woodward thusly:

While Woodward is listed as an assistant managing editor, he has no management duties. He comes and goes as he pleases, mostly writing his best-selling books on what happens behind the doors of power, and he reports only to Executive Editor Len Downie. He is allowed to keep juicy stories to himself until his latest book is unveiled on the front page of The Post. He is the master of the anonymous source.

[Damn – no link, but it’s from a comment of mine when I was reading that column of hers.]

I think she’s getting a bum rap here. Cranky. Sheesh. Here’s one of the women who really inspired me to think I could break out of the rigid female roles that were being force fed to me . . . and now she’s just a “cranky lady.” It’s making me cranky.
- AlanDownunder on December 13, 2005 at 12:25 am
  
  Howell’s only mistake was to give Harris the time of day. Correction: no mistake – his complacent idiocy needed airing.
  - Janet Strange on December 13, 2005 at 1:05 am
    
    Exactly. No mistake. Told y’all she is smart.
philinmaine on December 13, 2005 at 7:35 am

Great diary, lots of useful stuff and raised a ? for me. Not sure if comments is the place to start but where do people get their news from? A news aggregator like Google or a bunch o blogs or? Reply with links, so we can check them out.
Cali Scribe on December 13, 2005 at 12:24 pm

I’ve always admired her writing. I haven’t read the column in question yet, but on a gut-level, I fear she may be right — in our current “national security”/”war on terror” mode, there are quite a few folks (of both genders) that still see women as not being built of the Right Stuff to be leaders, Golde Meir and Margaret Thatcher notwithstanding. I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing a woman as Vice President first anyway — it’s been over 20 years since Mondale had the cojones to put Ferraro’s name in the slot as his running mate. It turned out to be a flawed choice, but because of her (and her spouse’s) baggage, not her gender.

Note to Phil in Maine: I usually skim the headlines using the RSS reader built into Safari (Mac OS X); it comes with several built-in RSS sources and it’s easy to add others. (Someone more familiar with RSS can maybe suggest ones for other browsers — I know that the Sage extension for Firefox is pretty good…)
- Dean Pajevic on December 13, 2005 at 2:45 pm
  
  I usually skim the headlines using the RSS reader built into Safari (Mac OS X);
  
  Where do I do that?
  
  Ohhhhh … I’m so excited … Cali, we share the same system! But I’ve always been a PC girl until my last PC crashed, and my daughter helped me get a baby I-Mac. (It’s so cute.)
  
  I downloaded the stand-alone RSS feed app, Newsfire, and love it. My daughter did too…. she uses a Mac laptop.
  
  I also use My Yahoo’s RSS feeds for news. And I’ve sorted it so that the news sources I most want to read are at the top.
  
  One bad thing: I’ve added too many RSS feeds to NewsFire, and now I hardly ever make it through them all. But I hate to take off any of them, because there are TIMES when I need to search Newsfire for — let’s say — “Karl” or “Plame” or “Fitzgerald” — and, voila, there are all the blog posts AND news posts on those folks. So sweet.

Cranky Wanky Media: ‘Round the Blogs

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