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Archive for the 'Washington Post' Category

Weekend Update

Published by William Beutler on February 10, 2007 in Blogs vs. MSM, Entertainment, Iraq, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, New York Times, Newspapers and Washington Post. 0 Comments

The Iraq war-supporting and -opposing halves of the political blogosphere don’t agree on much, but one thing they do have in common is an abiding mistrust (or distrust) of the mainstream media, especially when the subject is Iraq.

This lack of trust often begets outright derision, sometimes even overt attempts at and references to comedic entertainment. Today, as juxtaposed at Memeorandum, the Washington Post takes a whack from the right and the New York Times takes one from the left:

Neo-Neocon, on Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith’s “Official’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted”:

Neo-Neocon and Emily Litella

A Tiny Revolution, on Michael R. Gordon’s “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says”:

A Tiny Revolution and Michael Gordon

There’s some mild irony here — the editorial division of the New York Times has mostly opposed the Iraq war, while the Washington Post’s editorial page has mostly supported it. Of course, today’s complaints are directed at the ostensibly impartial news division. Editorial editors may have their fans, but among partisans, the straight news reporter has no advocates.

The Other Side of Wikiality

Published by William Beutler on December 3, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Entertainment, Washington Post and Wikipedia. 0 Comments

Last week I pointed out a promising development at Wikipedia — that at least one law professor is assigning his students to write entries for the online encyclopedia — and wondered if anybody would report on the fact. After all, the press Wikipedia gets tends to be skeptical at best.

I see nothing yet, but for the time being I will certainly settle for the article in today’s Washington Post by staff writer (and JewsRock.org co-founder) David Segal:

Casual readers might assume that Wikipedia’s goal is a complete account of all earthly knowledge, but the site maintains a rather elaborate set of criteria for admission. The several thousand unpaid volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia spend a lot of energy ensuring that people, bands, companies, and everything else meet what it calls “notability guidelines.” … Wikipedia jettisons more than 100 entries every day, many of them from people who posted autobiographies after registering on the site. (Writing your own entry, as we will see, is “strongly discouraged.”) The list of nominated rejects is posted each day on a page titled “articles for deletion,” and because all of Wikipedia is transparent and public, anyone can watch the editors’ votes roll in, and witness those ultimately deemed non-notable slink away, in real time, after getting cyber-gonged off the stage. Type “wikipedia deletion log” into Google for a peek at the latest.

Standards? Who knew?! Thanks to Mr. Segal, a few more Washingtonians than yesterday. Being primarily a music writer, Segal focuses on some of the bands and artists who didn’t make the cut:

The thumbs-up-or-down debates can rivet those in danger of Wiki deletion. Chicago composer and writer Matthew Dallman noticed last week that the fate of a biographical entry about him, which he says he didn’t write, was being debated and on Wednesday, it was gone. On Thursday, it was back. “It looks like the votes are running five to three in favor of deletion,” he said on the phone from his home in Chicago. “I’ve been watching for a few days and I’ve got to say, it’s really perplexing and very surreal. There’s this debate going on about me, but Wikipedia seems to dislike self-promotion, so saying anything on my own behalf would probably undermine my cause. It’s like I’m on trial and I can’t testify.”

It’s an interesting process to watch, as the votes trickle in and administrators state their reasons. To my knowledge, my only friend with a Wikipedia entry is policy maven, entrepreneur and columnist Phil Kerpen. His page just barely survived a deletion debate this summer, and is still the locus of an ongoing edit war.

Dallman, however, may not get the chance. Also this morning, he’s commented on the story at his own blog:

It looks like the page is going to be deleted. Oh well. The argument that my work hasn’t achieved recognition in the wider world, when compared to many, many other figures on Wikipedia, certainly isn’t wrong. As someone else in the Post article is quoted, its their site and they have their rules. The silver lining is that my take-away is the reminder, that if I do my work, and get it out there, then things like having a page on Wikipedia will take care of themselves.

Which is exactly the right attitude to have about it — and that ones’ own Wikipedia page is considered a status symbol at all is an interesting development. Maybe society can acclimate to something as apparently confusing as Wikipedia.

You So Crazy

Published by William Beutler on September 21, 2006 in Lamont v. Lieberman, MSM vs. Blogs, Netroots and Washington Post. 3 Comments

At the risk of giving over this week’s blogging entirely to surveying opinions about bloggers by writers for the Washington Post Co., two more caught my attention today. First there’s David Broder in this morning’s Post (though of course available at Post.com last night), lamenting the polarization of politics in Washington and touting apparent countervailing forces:

Now … you can see the independence party forming — on both sides of the aisle. They are mobilizing to resist not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society — the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the doctrinaire religious extremists on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents.

And in a dispatch filed late this afternoon, Slate’s John Dickerson described Hugo Chávez’s United Nations speech thusly:

“It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of,” he said, as he stood at the U.N. lecturn where Bush spoke the day before. It was hard to tell which was stranger, that the United Nations had let a blogger take control of the podium, or that the delegates who are famously comatose and unresponsive during General Assembly speeches stirred themselves to applaud the diatribe.

Broder is referring specifically to the Lamontsters, while Dickerson didn’t bother to make any ideological distinctions. What’s to be gleaned from this? Not much, really. It shouldn’t be news to anyone that bloggers are viewed skeptically by the mainstream reporters they so frequently criticize. Nor should conservative bloggers be surprised they’re easily lumped in with their more widely-covered counterparts. I do find these references somewhat annoying, but the stereotypes didn’t come out of thin air. And will the bloggers-are-crazy meme ever go away? I certainly have my doubts.

As for WaPoCo’s third major property, Newsweek, there’s nothing especially notable from them blog-wise today — although I am at least a little disappointed to see they appear to have discontinued their blog roundup.

Kos Who?

Published by William Beutler on September 20, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Campaigns, Daily Kos, George Allen, Midterms '06 and Washington Post. 0 Comments

I have been regrettably AWOL in discussing the blog-related kerfuffles in the Senate races to my immediate left and right (Ben Cardin’s “Persuasionatrix” and Jim Webb’s “Lowell Feld”), so consider this at least some attempt to rectify things, and say something about something related to one of these two races.

For instance, this passage caught my eye from today’s Washington Post, on the Jewish question at Monday’s debate between Webb and George Allen:

Yesterday, [Allen manager Dick] Wadhams accused Webb’s campaign and liberal bloggers of anti-Semitism for raising the issue of the senator’s religious background. Bloggers, some of whom are on Webb’s staff, spent yesterday writing furiously about the debate question and Allen’s answer. “What does Allen have against Jews?” one headline read on a national liberal blog. “Introducing religion at all into the debate was inappropriate. It makes no difference what anybody’s religion is,” Wadhams said.

That “national liberal blog” happens to be Daily Kos, and the blogger quoted is Markos Moulitsas himself. If there is any blog or blogger whose opinion is liable to be cited by name in a political newspaper, it would be this blog and blogger.

That Kos and dKos is is reduced to a “national liberal blog” — months after the Post and virtually every political news outlet lavished attention on the related Yearly Kos conference — puts into perspective just how much (or how little) the blogosphere is part of the debate even three years after the Dean campaign.

Are the blogs worth consulting? From time to time, certainly. Is it worth differentiating among them? It appears not.

On The Relevance of Caca (And Mohawks)

Published by William Beutler on August 17, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM, Earned Media, George Allen, Midterms '06 and Washington Post. 0 Comments

Not to keep picking on AMERICAblog, but it is an influential site with 70K+ readers daily, and one of its chief contributors completely botched a development in the George Allen story yesterday. Here’s Joe in DC, commenting on the latest explanation for “macaca”:

The Allen campaign has come up with another very tortured explanation for the “Macaca” scandal. Apparently, in their world, calling Mr. Sidarth a “shithead” is somehow acceptable. Seriously, that’s their explanation. They’re claiming that Allen meant to call the guy “a shithead.” Makes this whole thing even more suspicious, considering shithead doesn’t sound a lot like macaca - yet a French slur for dark-skinned north Africans sounds exactly like macaca, and George Allen speaks French and his mom was a white French citizen from north Africa. Gee what a coincidence.

The post is based on a report at Hotline On Call by my former colleagues, Jonathan Martin and Marc Ambinder. Here’s what they wrote:

According to two Republicans who heard the word used, “macaca” was a mash-up of “Mohawk,” referring to Sidarth’s distinctive hair, and “caca,” Spanish slang for excrement, or “shit.” Said one Republican close to the campaign: “In other words, he was a shit-head, an annoyance.”

Did Joe in DC actually read what Hotline reported? It seems more like he skimmed it, and thought he saw what he wanted to see. And in the comments, you have to scroll past two dozen comments to find someone who grasps the relevance of “caca.” If this new explanation is true, and I don’t dismiss it out of hand as Joe does, it reinforces the argument that Allen is mean-spirited and a lousy extemporaneous speaker, and doesn’t really say anything about his alleged racist tendencies.

Meanwhile, AMERICAblog and Media Matters and doubtless others are pointing out that the MSM reports are leaving out the fact of Allen’s mother’s heritage. That’s certainly a valid cause to take up, and it should be reported as part of the story. Because the origin of “macaca” is rapidly turning into a Rohrschach test, it’s important that all the relevant details get in. But if that is worth including, then so is the fact that S.R. Sidarth has indeed sported a mohawk-like hairstyle, and they definitely do not call for greater reportage of that underreported fact. Perhaps Aravosis should tweak the site’s tagline to: “Because a great nation deserves the partial truth.”

That said, they do have a point. So far, the only MSM outlet that matters in this race, but by no means the only outlet that bloggers are watching, has reported on the latter argument in the Metro section — that “faux-hawk” photo helps — but left the former to the letters section. I’m almost tempted to judge it a make-up call for splashing the initial story on A1 in the first place. Almost.

P.S. Apparently “Colbert” is the new “First”/”Frist”/”Fitz”. Also, this guy? Wow.

Opportunity Knocks

Published by William Beutler on July 31, 2006 in Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Middle East and Washington Post. 0 Comments

Over the weekend, the Washington Post’s Peter Baker sought out Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass’s response to Bush’s “public optimism” re: the Two Weeks and Counting War on the eastern end of the Meditteranean. Apparently Bush used the word “opportunity”; Haass retorts as only a former State Dept. official can:

“An opportunity? Lord, spare me. I don’t laugh a lot. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what’s Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?”
Haas literally wrote the opportunity book on U.S. foreign policy. His title? “The Opportunity.”