For those who may have missed it, Brad left John Harris slack-jawed and naked in a phone interview.

Harris clearly had no idea what he was getting into.  It's odd.  He clearly pays attention to the blogosphere--he has opinions on its valuelessness, and he has to pay attention to make an assessment.

Didn't he know what would happen if he tried to do this in public?  It's really hard to pull off this kind of thing in an atmosphere where everybody checks up on you.  

What's also interesting is that the Post clearly has a pretty good grasp on what the internet is good for.  They've got interactive features, content that crosses platforms, like Kinsley's columns, integration with Newsweek, very interesting on-line only content, like Froomkin.  Maybe part of what is going on here is that the journalists in the meatspace are worried about their future.  Reporting may be turning into an essential but low status job--kinda like it used to be, actually.

Yes, a central irony in all this is that on the substance, Harris is right.  There's no harm in clearly delineating commentary from reporting  Everybody's said they don't really think it matters if the name of the column is changed.  I happen to think they should really name it "Cooking with Walnuts."

The way in which it happened--publicly, through the ombudsman--is what blew it up.  There must have been some kind of turf battle going on as well--Brady getting his back up on getting orders from the news division on what titles to use on his columns.

Nonetheless, it was revelatory. It was clearly the result of pressure from the White House, and the Post reporters clearly respond to that pressure not by saying "it's our business, not yours" but by saying "So sorry. We'll get right on that."

I did find disturbing the notion, apparently laid to rest by Brady that there would be an accompanying "Cooking with Pecans" column from a conservative pov.  Harris et al can deny it all they want, but saying you need to counter Froomkin's "liberal" identification of contradictions and deceptions does distinctly imply that being conservative means ignoring contradictions and deceptions.

But then what would the other guy write about?  The First Lady's social calendar? The nature of the column is inherently adversial toward the white house, not the right. That Harris doesn't seem to understand that is troubling.

And the second irony is that if the goal of the White House was to lower Froomkin's influence, well, that didn't work out so well.  His pageviews must have been at record levels this last week. 

What's behind the b.s.?  Yes, it is the Washington Post trying to appease Republican operatives at the White House.  But, there is also the turf conflict between the old, dying newspaper and the new, rising website.

I think what Froomkin does is what is appropriate to a news website.  It would never work in a newspaper -- not because Froomkin has a point of view -- but because Froomkin is linking to news.  What Froomkin is doing, is the future of news reporting.

If the Post organization were smart, they would transfer the three White House reporters from the newspaper to the website, and have them report to Froomkin.  Let Harris mine the website to fill the newspapers's column space. 

I believe that Dan Froomkin would say (I haven't asked him) that he's not the future of news reporting. He would say that what he is doing depends on and is secondary to the real news reporting done by real reporters. But he would also say that the is the future of what used to be called "news analysis".

I agree that it is primarily a turf battle between the dead trees and bits.  It reached a point where Brady's unwillingness to do Harris's bidding forced Harris to turn to Howell, the ombudsman.  The trouble is that made the dispute public, and in making it public made it clear that the ultimate source of the complaint was the white house.

But the fact that they are tussling over turf isn't nearly as interesting as the fact that Post kowtows to the White House in this way.  The problem arose when the White House kept complaining, and Harris had to say "There's nothing I can do about it." 

Big swinging dick reporters like the White House editor aren't supposed to not be able to do anything about.

Hey, that points out another irony.  If Harris had just said "Screw you.  We're not taking orders from you." this wouldn't have happened. 

For those following along at home, this is the exchange referred to here:

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Q: You also said, “I perceive a good bit of his commentary on the news as coming through a liberal prism—or at least not trying very hard to avoid such perceptions.” But you don’t give any examples or links to past columns, and Deborah Howell, who also made this point, doesn’t give any examples, so it’s hard for readers to judge what these observations are based on. Could you help me out here? What issues does [White House Briefing] tend to view through a liberal prism? Can you point to columns that you had in mind? You also say that it may be true that Froomkin would do the column the same way if Kerry had won the ‘04 election; but if that’s so, doesn’t that undercut the notion of a liberal prism?

John Harris: How Dan would be writing about a Kerry administration is obviously an imponderable. Does Dan present a liberal worldview? Not always, but cumulatively I think a great many people would say yes—enough that I don’t want them thinking he works for the news side of the Post.

Without agreeing with the views of this conservative blogger who took on Froomkin, I would say his argument does not seem far-fetched to me.

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It's clear to me in context that there was no doubt who the blogger was. And, since the whole point of the flap is that the ones who didn't understand that this was a blog appear not to exist, picking this guy out was a pretty big gaffe.  He had to know this question was coming, and that's what he had?  Even now, all he's got is one liberal friend and some emails to the ombudsman.  (Now, mind you, if they are really confused, they wouldn't be complaining about being confused, being confused.)

 

I had the following letter published in E&P in response to a online freakout by Peter Baker. Maybe this and other reaction let Baker in on the fact that he doesn't have to play court stenographer, we want some thought put into White House reporting. Instead of the next lame Scott McClellan quote just thrown out there, they could say:

McClellan, while flipping me off with one hand and wiping the sweat off his reddened brow (all while looking nervously at his feet) responded to my question by saying he answered it yesterday. Through vigorous research it was determined that McClellen had in fact answered it yesterday, when he spoke "I answered that one yesterday".

Froomkin Dispute Part II

It was via the article "Update: 'Wash Post' Editor and Others Want Froomkin Column Renamed--But Online Chief Says No" by Joe Strupp that I was alerted to the online chat with Peter Baker and his money quote on White House reporting (Baker defends himself and his fears of Dan Froomkin with a self flagellating response to whether he felt threatened by Froomkin):

"Insecure? Jealous? Need a life? All of the above. Threatened by Dan Froomkin's column? Hardly. Dan compiles links to other people's work and throws in some thought, analysis and opinion of his own. There's great value in that. But it's a different thing from being a White House reporter."

Let's break this down: Froomkin "compiles links to others works". You mean he actually takes what he is fed into a broader societal context, instead of wrapping himself into the same disingenuous bubble as our President and his main man of disinformation Scott McClellan? What nerve! He actually throws in some thought, analysis, and opinion? Would that involve doing research and having to ask hard questions? Or follow-ups? Does that include fact checking? Boy, that might really cut into those post-briefing happy hours and piss off the leader. Such duties do seem vastly different than being a "White House reporter [sic]".

I do want to emphasize "essential" though.  For reasons that Brad cites in the other link I posted, I think reporters are going to come to be seen as extractors of raw material. But the yields are low.  And what they do is gonna change. For example, bloggers don't go the White House press conferences. Why should they? There's a transcript.  It's tremendously inefficient getting the administration on the record. They poke, the prod, they ask the same question different ways.  But if you didn't have that roomful of people, you don't have a transcript, because there aren't any questions.

I agree that they may do a better job if they are less well off. They may also be crabbier, like they used to be. There may even be more people in the business out of an interest in principles of newsgathering and an open society.  Woodward as a hero is a two-edged sword.

In  http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/12/the_froomkin_fo .html Joel Achenbach fully expounds the turf war angle as a WP insider - to the total denigration of the GOP appeasement angle.

My reply there was as follows:

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Say what, Joel?

"This is a tough time to wear the "objective" label, since everyone's so partisan. The middle ground has become a killing field."

You don't distinguish between "objective" and centrist either? I guess it's a great timesaver. Is it a WP efficency measure?

Thanks for the internal details -- they tell us why no-one inside WP could see the journalistic travesty for the homepage turf war -- but Mr Downie has already revealed that this is fundamentally about appeasing the White House:

"We want to make sure people in the [Bush] administration know that our news coverage by White House reporters is separate from what appears in Froomkin's column because it contains opinion," Downie told E&P. "And that readers of the Web site understand that, too."

(he knows that the White House was never confused about Froomkin's role at WP)

 

 

The WP is like the NYT, like the Chicago Tribune and its western tributary, the former LA Times....

Contributors of stock profit to hedgefunds to pay out to millionaires.

The hedgefunds don't like that the papers are only making a 20% profit (geez, color me ancient, but when I took grad school economics, a 7% return was considered "right") and the "editors" at these organizations no longer see their job as protecting their reporters, but rather bending over and spreading for the publisher and the advertising sales department, lest the newest "greed is good" owner fire them.

And this is why Haris and the rest of those with their pants around their ankles don't like guys like Froomkin and the rest of us - caged birds never like the birds looking in at them from the other side of the window pane.

After reading the LA Times since arriving out here more years than I'm willing to admit to ago, I am letting my subscription to the Chicago Tribune West die when it runs out this month.  Plastic litter box liners work better for the kitties than the Times does anymore, and for too long, that's been its major function here. They fire Robert Scheer and keep that talentless moron Ramirez, and bring my favorite pear-shaped coke-bottle-eyed serving-his-country-dodging semi-literate uncreative-typist (but only with his forefingers) Jonah Goldberg on, while keeping the talentless Cunningham-loving Tony Perry and dropping George Skelton, who's forgotten more about Sacramento than the current crew of kindergartners up there will ever know (combined), and then call it a "news"paper.  I've just greed up 90 minutes a day for productive activity.

John Harris and the rest of those idiots should be shaking in their boots if Ben Bradlee ever shows up in the foyer looking "bulky" in a big jacket.  I'm sure Samson would love to pull down the Temple.