Glad you are okay. Sorry to learn of the packing-up and moving efforts.

remember when the repuglitards were gonna sweep the Virginia and New Jersey gov races

faux gnus an the wapoop been tellin me that since March

now, it don’t look so likely

faux gnus an the wapoop only report reality after the election, when the cold hard numbers show how stupid their predictions are

remember when the repuglitards were gonna hold their 2008 senate losses to 3 seats ???

supporting the wapoop and faux gnus is reinforcing FAILURE

I await the day when America rejexs these liars wholesale

won’t be long now

Reporters (who are a problem) report to editors (who are a bigger problem) report to publishers (with the ownership being the biggest problem).

Sure, Judy Miller was a terrible reporter (except for the people who were managing the WMD disinformation campaign, whom she serviced well). But she only writes the stories. The editor, Bill Keller, is even worse (except for those he really services, of course), since he’s the one who assigns the stories, prints them or buries them (as with warrantless surveillance), and lays them out (on page A1 or A18 or whatever). And Sulzburger’s the biggest problem of all, since he’s the one who signs the checks for it all. Of course, the owners are doing what their owners — the Buffets of this world — want.

We in the blogosphere, for whatever reason, seem to focus on the Judy Millers and not on the Warren Buffets.

I have no idea what Buffet’s role is at WaPo, but Graham hired this guy because that’s the kind of guy he wants.

Same for Sulzberger at the NYT. These guys aren’t bystanders, they’re the ones who make things happen. (Both of them run both the operations end and the business end, and the business end comes first.)

I’ve spent years trying to convince people that a fish rots from the head down, as they say, and that the ones to complain about are the ones at the top. Those two guys want bad journalism and hire with that in mind.

The Times and the Post are gone. The Czar isn’t going to save us — he’s our main enemy.

i go back and forth on this. yes, these are accomplished businessmen. the wapo mothership is one of the most successful media companies in a deeply distressed industry.

but then graham and his niece, waymouth, seem to have no sense of the intellectual integrity necessary for a newspaper to be a first-rate corporate product, nor do they seem to care if the wapo is first-rate or not.

it really is possible to run a first-rate corporation, make some good coin, AND produce a first-rate product, but graham and weymouth just don’t seem to care enough to make this happen.

when weymouth came in i thought for sure that hyatt would go and the editorial page would pick up a paul krugman or two.

that has not happened and i now doubt it will.

newspapers need to understand that the distinction journalists like to draw between “opinion” and “news” is no distinction in the minds of their readers.

as McLuhan might have said “the opinion is the news”.

which means, of course, that opinions (editorials, op-eds) must be thoughtful, accurate, and above all, not propaganda for a cause,

as well as being one person’s opinion.

and, for example, as george will’s, c charles krauthammer’s, robert samuelson’s, et al, rarely are.

(in my opinion!!)

and so i conclude these are rather stupid business leaders, but one could just as easily use “cynical”, “timid and risk averse”, “manipulative of readers”, “uncaring about the public good”,

or even “republican”.

“Normally, for something like this, I’d expect the editor and the publisher to descend like locusts, lay waste to the diseased areas, and rebuild.”

precisely.

It is truly a shame to see a once-mighty paper hit the wall…and slump quickly into Rupe’s lair…

aimed at avoiding another episode that could damage the paper’s reputation.

What reputation?