WaPo: “This Should Solve The Problem!”
By Mitch Berg
I’m envisioning the publishers at the Washington Post in a meeting:
GILES THROCKMORTON: “Muffy, put a bump on this cognac? Thank you, dear. OK, everyone. We’re getting are ah-sses handed to us. Ideas?
BENTLY FITZWILLIS: “NPR and Romanesko all say we’ve been swinging to the center…”
SADAH COHEN: “THAT’S the problem!”
THROCKMORTON: “I concur. What do we do?”
DEREK MICAH DU FRESNE: “I don’t know; we’re laying people off as it is…”
THROCKMORTON: “Damn finances; we need a stronger liberal presence!”
(The previous conversation was fictional. All celebrity voices were impersonated – badly)
Far fetched? Maybe. But I’m trying to figure out a better reason that the WaPo would hire Ezra Klein, currently with the Prospect and formerly one of the interchangeable giggly fratboybloggers from Pandagon.
Is there method to the madness? Perhaps:
The benefits to Klein are clear. He gets a potenitally larger audience and one would assume paycheck for the move.
Is there madness to the method?
As for the Post the benefits are less clear as they add to their overhead which they have been chopping at the print edition and their is no guarantee that Klein will attract enough readers to increase the web site’s revenues which is what I assume they are striving for.
And the real question:
After all the paper and web site already lean left so do they really need to add to that side of the ledger?
Having observed the behavior of the Twin Cities media in the past few weeks, I wonder if anyone in the media even recognizes the concept of “leaning left?”
Example: A journalist generally regarded as credible writing at a local “progressive” publication, covering the Tea Parties, used the term “Teabaggers” in his headline. Didn’t seem to have a clue anyone would see a sign of bias or slant in it.
If you question a typical journalist, he or she will deny any personal bias (possible), and usually any on the part of the media as a whole – which either means a massive conspiracy to brainwash reporters (implausible) or a persepctive utterly foreign ot most of us.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Can you spot the differences in these two lines, from a recent Star Tribune article (I’ve made it easy for you)?
Sen. Amy Klobuchar saying the state “has that right to two senators.”
and
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nevada, who repeated GOP talking points that “votes [of all Minnesotans] should be treated the same.”
April 24th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
The Prospect’s gain is the Washington Post’s loss.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
That was subtle, MoN.
While I agree that many reporters have bias issues, it’s the editors that matter. They can get rid of biased comments if they choose, but many don’t. And in the very stories that they assign to reporters, they dictate what gets covered.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
My biggest complaint about Minnesota bias is the stories they run on Governor Palin and Michelle Bachmann, vs Democrats. Star-Tribune still runs about 2 hit pieces a week (online edition) on Palin, yet I don’t believe they have covered slo Joe Biden’s coke snorting daughter getting filmed doing the nose candy last month.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
The Strib is a joke.
Liberal Fascists won’t admit their liberal bias.
Man up Peev, admit it. Dogcrap? AssClown?
April 24th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I did a post about a Strib article on the state Senate proposal to cut K-12 funding by 3%. The article iused the word “slash” three times in the first three sentences (including the sub-head).
No bias there. No siree.
April 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
The Strib is such a poor newspaper that I don’t read it.
Good observation about the use of langauge Kermit, not only on the bias of the language, but poor vocabulary.
Back in college, I did a paper for a lit class on the use of language by Swift in his satiric “A Modest Proposal”. For those who either haven’t read it or don’t recall the title over your morning caffeine of choice, it’s where Swift proposes treating Irish peasant infants as an agricultural crop, like cows. Swift makes the use of human hides for gloves seem chillingly reasonable through a brilliant use of words. In order to better understand how he did it, I used the very low tech method of taking two colors of high lighter to the pages, using one color for very detached, objective, clinical language, and another vividly contrasting color for emotional, subjective or sensational language. Two things became apparent in the text after adding the over-coloring; the contrast between unmarked white text and the areas of colore text showed clear progression. But more marked was the shift over the length of the piece in colors – I think I used a blue and a yellow highlighter – from all or nearly all one color, to a mix shifting to nearly all the other color. I included the highlighted text with the paper, so the person grading it could evaluate how accurate I had been in identifying language to be colored.
It is a handy filter to do the same exercise mentally when reading newspapers, or the equivalent when observing broadcast media. Not just for the political bias, but also the other qualities. Some days I am relieved if they simply manage not to mangle their pronunciation too badly, or don’t misuse words too often.
Swift at least was subtle, even masterful in his manipulation through language. Most of the newspapers are not only clumsy in their manipulation, they have no love for the language.
Good observation Mr. D., about story assignment. With fewer staff reporters on papers, there is going to be an even greater bottleneck of information produced, both of the intentional and the unintentional variety. It will be interesting to see how much or how little of the slack is taken up by free-lancers.
April 25th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
You seem to have lots of fantasy conversations Mitch.. perhaps that’s not so good?
Kerm, the grammatical quality of wrting of the Strib exceeds that of the PiPress, and is WELL above that of the Washington Times. I suppose, to you, that means both of those papers are below the bar in terms of quality, and definetely relative to the Strib?
April 25th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Pen,
Kermit’s point wasn’t about grammar. It was about loaded word choice.
April 25th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Your right, journalism needs more affirmative action for conservatives.
April 25th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
I really don’t know if journalism needs any more “yes action”, but it seems to be getting enough “fail action” to need to try something else. *shrug*
April 25th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Most conservative writers would. I think, shy away from describing themselves as ‘journalists’. “Writer” or “reporter”, maybe, but not “journalist”. “Journalist” sounds too academic, like your folks could afford grad school but you had to switch from Harvard Law to CSJ after saw your LSAT numbers.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Kermit’s point wasn’t about grammar. It was about loaded word choice.
That and steering readers to a biased conclusion.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Peev = FAIL
Coward.
Man up and admit the bias of the Red Strib.