Breaking at WaPo: It's August

Dan Zak at WaPo wants you to know it's August, and he has some thoughts on it. The weirdest part is that he actually quotes from Erik Wemple, writing in 2007, on how the Post has written silly ramblings on August for years and years.

Shameless plug: WaPo hit

WaPo ombud Patrick Pexton's column this weekend is on the Post's inadequate coverage of the storm aftermath in the DC region, where hundreds of thousands were without power for days. His third paragraph quotes from my post on this from Tuesday.

Ken Cuccinelli, in context

WaPo columnist Robert McCartney had a great column the other day: "For Ken Cuccinelli, losing big cases won’t work forever." It was so refreshing to see someone say, hey, this VA AG dude, he's a joke.

It was a better debunking than I could do of the Post magazine's Aug 2010 fluff piece on Cuccinelli, by David Montgomery. That piece had presented something of the opposite thesis: Cucinelli's the real deal!

It's so fitting that one of the cases Cuccinelli just lost recently, as noted by McCartney, was one trying to undermine climate science.

The WaPo magainze had mentioned that territory, but only in an oddly positive way. We had learned from the magazine only that in Cuccinelli's crusade against climate scientist Michael Mann, he "demanded that U-Va. hand over documents connected to a former professor's work on climate change, to determine whether the professor used false information to obtain taxpayer-funded research grants." And: "Two weeks hence, he would demand the climate change professor's records from U-Va."

Those basic facts were all correct -- and they make the whole exercise sound rather reasonable. Yet what Montgomery never told readers were some other basics: Michael Mann has already been cleared of wrongdoing in inquiry after inquiry. Cuccinelli had been caught quoting Mann out of context, and in one place even quoted a different scientist but attributed it to Mann. And more than 800 scientists and academic leaders in VA responded to Cuccinelli, calling on him to end his "unwarranted" investigation.

Two years later, McCartney's piece on Cuccinelli is a neat antidote to the Montgomery nonsense. Fluff pieces don't usually fare well, and this one is no exception.

Breaking from WaPo

Take a look at the 5 stories below from today's "Afternoon Buzz" email from WaPo. What do #'s 1, 3, 4 and 5 have in common? They're not news! Who cares about these things? (re #4, the patent bill itself is a real story, but it's over -- it's done).



***

Today’s News Update

Justice Ginsburg aboard plane evacuated at Dulles International Airport

Ashley Halsey III and Patricia Sullivan

United Airlines Flight 586, scheduled to depart Dulles airport at 12:34 p.m. for San Francisco, has been evacuated after a fire was reportedly spotted in an engine.

• More from Dr. Gridlock

No abortion ban in Senate D.C. spending bill

Ben Pershing

Advocates for District autonomy and abortion rights won a partial victory Wednesday, as the Senate released a draft spending bill that does not include a ban on the city using taxpayer money to fund abortions for low-income women.

U-Md. plans major classroom facility

Daniel de Vise

A $10 million gift from a Baltimore developer will enable the University of Maryland to build a “world-class teaching and learning center.”

Obama to sign patent bill in Alexandria

Ben Pershing

One week after going to Richmond to deliver a speech on jobs, President Obama will cross the Potomac River again Friday to sign legislation.

Aruba suspect’s family hires Casey Anthony’s attorney

Maggie Fazeli Fard

Jose Baez has been retained to defend Gary Giordano, who has been jailed in Aruba in connection with the disappearance of a Maryland woman.

A Dupont Afternoon of Snowmageddon

Photos from Saturday afternoon, in the Dupont area.


This snowball fight will be covered live. Obvi.




"They're from New Jersey!" was heard. All cars rounding the circle were pelted, I should say. Because.




Connecticut Ave.

DCist has photos of the Dupont snowball fight and the streets in the area, and City Paper has great photos of the one at Malcolm X park. WaPo has a big lovely gallery here. Including a number of photos of cute dogs.

Post fronts Facebook for 14th time

The Washington Post's obsession with Facebook continued Sunday with the 14th Facebook-focused story on the front page in under three years.

Here's the list:
Sept 2006, Oct 2006, Feb 2007, Nov 2007, March 2008, April 2008, May 2008, June 2008, July 2008, Sept 2008, March 2009, April 2009, Aug 2009, Aug 2009.

The new piece, by religion reporter William Wan, is "Soul-Searching on Facebook; For Many Users, Religion Question Is Not Easy to Answer." It says people often aren't sure what to write and/or are worried what others will think. The Post got Facebook to compile a list of the top ten religions; Christian, Islam and Atheist are 1-2-3 and Jedi is 10. But that's not all the Post found:

The complete catalogue of entries easily numbers in the thousands, Chin said. But even offbeat answers like "Seguidor del Wiccanismo" and "Heavy Metal" garner more than 2,000 users each. There is also, Chin noted with a laugh, a surprising number of people online who identify themselves as Amish.

All this is more than the company has ever revealed on the matter.

Alright, that's kind of interesting, but, you know, not the most important scoop ever.

The story is alright for what it is, but as usual with the Facebook stories, it simply does not belong on the front page. There's more important news going on. Here are a few ideas: Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras, Mexico, global warming, health care, homicides in DC, the 4th anniversary of Katrina, and the whole economy thing.

Please, WaPo. Do report on Facebook. Don't put it on A1 unless it's really really important, though.

OMG No Blackberrys in the Cabinet Room! WaPo, LAT, Roll Call Get Confused Over Old Policy, Flip Their Shit

Wednesday's meeting between President Obama and House Democrats about healthcare was long and intense. And secretive!

The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery reported:

For Wednesday's session, Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid and other key Democrats gathered in the Cabinet Room just off the Oval Office -- no cellphones or BlackBerrys were allowed, a restriction that left aides on Capitol Hill starved for information.

The LAT's Janet Hook and Noam Levey said:

At Obama's request, senior Democratic lawmakers surrendered their BlackBerries and cellphones when they began meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to a senior Democratic aide.

Roll Call's Emily Pierce and Steven Dennis declared:

Everyone was asked to leave their cell phones and BlackBerrys at the door, the source said.

But at the AP, more careful heads prevailed. Erica Werner cooled things down with the actual story:

Lawmakers shed cell phones and Blackberries, standard procedure for a meeting in the room they occupied.

Oh.

That's right, in fact the White House once posted a photo of a collection of Blackberrys outside the Cabinet Room. They featured it in a video, too. Reuters once published a photo of the basket. TIME had a photo, too, captioned "All who enter the Oval Office, Roosevelt Room and Cabinet Room are asked to leave their mobile devices in baskets like these, stationed around the West Wing."

Look, I bet this story happened by accident: the Democratic 'aide' who was noted as the source in two of the stories was probably someone in Pelosi or Reid's office who didn't know the deal. Perhaps all they knew was the boss didn't get to have hir blackberry in a many-hour meeting, and that seemed unusual to the aide. Who knows.

But a meme is a meme, and is there always time to make sure it's right? Not for the Post's Dana Milbank. On Sunday, he took the story one step further, using the episode as one of his examples of 'panic' for the WH and the Dems:

Skittish White House aides took the unusual step last week of confiscating their fellow Democrats' cellphones and BlackBerrys as administration officials negotiated a health-care deal with lawmakers in the Cabinet Room.

Right.

Patrick Pexton, New WaPo Ombudsman, Meet Struggling Paper. Tough Love, Please.

The seat may have gone cold for a few weeks, but no more: the Washington Post's new ombudsman starts his gig today. Patrick Pexton, formerly deputy editor of National Journal, will be the ombud, serving for two years, the paper announced last week.

Pexton has his work cut out for him.

The situations is this. Whole magazine articles could be written on the decline of the Post (right). It sounds tacky when people say it, but it's true: the Post doesn't know what it is, and is struggling to hold on to a niche. Is it for DC insiders? Or is it for a general audience? It's not exactly either. That's a problem.

Ultimately, the Post cannot save itself by trying too hard to save itself. Putting stories about Facebook on the front page, or trying to use hip headlines, is not going to help; it only comes across as forced and awkward.

To compete nationally, the Post can't keep playing catch-up; it needs to be more aggressive. The paper needs to focus its web content on being unique and high quality, and not try to do things it can't do well. And the paper needs to correct clear errors when it has been informed of them.

Andy Alexander, the last ombudsman, said he thought the Post's journalistic quality had declined ("Can The Post regain its legacy of excellence?"). In the end, he said, it's all about the quality.

The new ombudsman will surely investigate and offer his opinion on the debates du jour (i.e., was the Post right to withold the CIA affiliation of Raymond Davis in Pakistan?). But the worst thing Pexton could do would be to spend too much time calling a series of balls and strikes. Instead, he ought to spend many of his column inches on the bigger picture systematic problems, like the over-the-top use of anonymous sources, the still-broken corrections process, and the tendency toward he-said-he-said political reporting.

These are the kinds of things that need to be taken on and improved, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because they will help the Post's future business chances. Would fixing these problems suddenly bring the Post a wave of new paying subscribers? Of course not. But a path to continued viability, whatever exactly that looks like, will ultimately need to include better news reporting, and fewer front page gimmicks. As tempting as gimmicks are, you can't out-Gawker Gawker, because Gawker will always be better at what they do. You have to go for the quality niche, and win there.

That's the challenge for the Post. For it's own good, the Post needs some tough love to get there.

WaPo's latest Facebook front-pager

I stopped counting these a while ago, but I can't claim to have totally lost interest. When I saw the piece this week, I thought it looked more serious ("Facebook stock decline shows Wall Street is wary of give-it-away-free approach").

But CJR says the article gets it all wrong.

Why is this woman on the front page of the Washington Post?

Tuesday's Washington Post featured a front-page photo of one Frances Howard, accompanying the article "Two teens charged in death of D.C. principal."

Here's the caption:

Frances Howard of Northwest Washington lives next door to the mother of one of the men charged in the slaying of D.C. principal Brian Betts. The woman, Artura Otey Williams, faces credit card charges but is not charged in the homicide.

That's right. They couldn't get, or at least didn't print, a picture of the suspects, or of the mother of the suspect (who police say used the murdered man's credit card). But photographer Linda Davidson got the neighbor to appear in a picture, and they stuck it on A1. News value: 0.

Dear WaPo: if you don't have the shot, you don't have the shot. Not all pictures are worth a thousand words.

WaPo Facebook

Oh hey there's Facebook on the front page of the Post again. It appears to be a legitimate story, though. [[Facebook flexes political muscle with provision in immigration bill]]

NYT, LAT edit pages criticize WH for not pushing Dawn Johnsen confirmation

Two good editorials today.

NYT:

It was clear that the White House was not going to fight to save her from Republicans who were refusing to allow a vote on her confirmation.
...
The White House let Ms. Johnsen twist in the wind for more than a year and then chose to abandon her nomination rather than get into a battle over an appointment just before Mr. Obama makes his second nomination to the Supreme Court.

The LAT is even more forceful:

Dawn Johnsen, who withdrew last week as President Obama's nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has a legitimate grievance against her fair-weather sponsors in the White House.

... Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) never rallied forcefully to her defense, instead allowing themselves to be intimidated by Republican (and some Democratic) opposition.

The administration's unwillingness to fight back against efforts to portray Johnsen as "outside the mainstream" is not just a shame for her and the office; it augurs ominously for nominees who may be similarly smeared -- including Goodwin Liu, the Berkeley law professor Obama has nominated to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as the yet-to-be-named nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Update: Even the WaPo edit page is now upset with the White House on this one.

WaPo fronts Twitter in Sunday edition

Trends to watch out for... the Washington Post puts Twitter on A1 today. The story, "With Twitter's Arrival, NFL Loses Control of Image Game," is enjoyable, though hardly front-page news. It has nuggets like this:

On Friday, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman punched into his Blackberry: "Coach said we cant tweet in the blding so i called my lawyer and found a lupo [loophole] in that contract...tweeting outside yeaaaaa."

At least it's better than their article about couples who fight over at what temperature to set the air conditioner.

Washington Post Alternate Reality: Public More Concerned About Deficit Than Jobs or Economy Overall

A stunning front-page article in Saturday's Washington Post moves the paper firmly into conservatives' dream universe on deficit policy. "Stimulus plans run up against deficit fears" by Lori Montgomery serves up this whopper:

If Congress doesn't provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat -- the exploding federal budget deficit -- seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters.

There you have it: the budget deficit is an issue that's resonating more with voters than the issues of high unemployment or the possibility of further economic downturn generally. It's a trendy right-wing meme of the last few months, but here it is in the news pages of the Washington Post.

But is this notion supported by what the polling actually says? No. Not even close.

A Pew Research / National Journal poll from early June asked "Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?" Number one was "job situation" with 41%. "Federal budget deficit" got 23%.

An NBC / Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked "Please tell me which one of these items you think should be the top priority for the federal government." Sure enough, "job creation and economic growth" won with 35%. "The deficit and government spending" got 20%.

A Fox News poll also in early May got even more dramatic results. "Economy and jobs" topped the priority list with 47%, while "deficit, spending" garnered only 15%.

A CBS / NYT poll in early April found 27% prioritizing "jobs", 27% the "economy" and 5% prioritizing "budget deficit/national debt."

The only recent poll that gives the slightest hint of support for the Post's thesis is the USA Today / Gallup poll from late May (not even their newest). Participants were asked "How serious a threat to the future well-being of the United States do you consider each of the following." For "federal government debt", 40% said extremely serious, 39% very serious, and 15% somewhat serious. For "unemployment", 33% said extremely serious, 50% said very serious, and 15% said somewhat serious. If you use only the "extremely serious" numbers, you get 7% more for the debt. Greg Marx at CJR makes the case that this poll, nevermind its headline, should not be read as some sort of overwhelming evidence of a shifted public view.

And in fact a newer Gallup poll, from a week ago, asking "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" finds the economy and jobs on top. "Economy in general" gets 28%, "Unemployment/Jobs" gets 21%, and "Federal budget deficit" gets 7%.

The Washington Post's own polls have not asked a question that directly addresses the matter.

If the Post -- and one of its reporters most focused on deficit issues -- really thinks the public cares more about the deficit than about the jobs and the state of the economy generally, this is worrying news.

Update: follow-up and analysis on this from Atrios, Digby, Andrew Gelman, Annie Lowrey, Dean Baker, Ezra Klein and FiveThirtyEight. Thanks for the links!
Update 6/22: NYT has a new poll in today's paper. Economy gets 20%, jobs gets 20%, and budget deficit gets 5%.
Update 6/23: Jon Cohen from the Post argues that the paragraph in question means to be saying that the deficit resonating "more powerfully" means, essentially, increasingly powerfully. In other words, that the sentence is about a trend over time, not a comparison of the public's concerns over the debt with the public's concerns about jobs/economy.
Look, I can't divine what is going on in anyone's heads. What I can say is I just can't imagine very many readers reading the paragraph that way. If that's what they actually meant, there are a million ways they could have written the sentence to say so. Read the paragraph over a few times, and the surrounding paragraphs too, and see what you think.
Update 6/24: FAIR: Inventing a Nation of Deficit Hawks; WaPo, NYT misread polls on public and spending
Update 6/28: My follow-up, Post Softens Language on Deficit; Meanwhile, AP Serves up a Whopper of its Own

WaPo Alternate Universe: Obama "Held Firm to His Initial Bottom Line" in Debt Ceiling Talks

The Washington Post -- faster than ever! -- has a front pager Saturday about congressional Democrats being upset with President Obama for his negotiating tactics over the debt ceiling ("Obama's friends unsettled by debt talks; Some Democrats fault willingness to compromise with GOP"). Toward the end, writer Peter Wallsten throws in this stunner:

By the final weekend of talks, as an agreement came into view, Obama held firm to his initial bottom line. No default, no second debt-limit vote.

Back in the real world, the President's initial bottom line was something rather different.

The White House had long called for a clean debt ceiling raise. As late as April 11 Jay Carney said: "we do not need to play chicken with our economy by linking the raising of the debt ceiling to anything. We should do that right away." And the following day: "we don’t believe, going back to questions I had yesterday, that there should be a link between efforts to address our long-term deficit problem and debt problem and the imperative of raising the debt ceiling." It was on April 15 that the President changed the line on including spending cuts at all, saying "I think it's absolutely right that it's not going to happen without some spending cuts." White House officials immediately insisted the administration still wanted a clean bill, though it was too late.

With that bottom line dropped, the White House moved to another big one: that if a bill was not "clean" it should include new revenues. The Administration pushed multiple plans to this effect, with substantial new revenues. The Washington Post, and pretty much every outlet, covered this rather extensively. On July 21, the White House was still insisting it wanted new revenue: "Anyone reporting a $3 trillion deal without revenues is incorrect. POTUS believes we need a balanced approach that includes revenue" tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, WH Communications Director. I think I even remember Obama giving a decent prime-time address on July 25th: "How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don’t need and didn’t ask for? That’s not right. It’s not fair."

But it was becoming clear the White House was losing yet again, and it eventually agreed to a deal with no new revenues.

Only in the Post's alternate universe was the President's initial bottom line "No default, no second debt-limit vote."

BREAKING AT WAPO: Facebook Loses Comment Button, Just Hit Enter

So I get this daily afternoon update email from the good folks at the Post. It's called "Afternoon Buzz" (really) and sometimes it's useful. But, today! There was this:

But wait, didn't this news happen, like, two weeks ago? Is the Post really first catching this now?

No. The Post reported it at the time (March 16), as I found out when I clicked through the link.

It's just that for whatever reason, the news was being promoted in today's afternoon email. I'm not sure which is worse: that they're that desperate for clicks or that someone messed up so badly to link to news from two weeks ago.

DC Police Chief Lanier Slams Officer; MPD Dramatically Changes Tune In Face of 3rd Day of Media

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier has issued a statement saying in no uncertain terms that Detective Michael Baylor's actions at the snowball fight were inappropriate:

Let me be very clear in stating that I believe the actions of the officer were totally inappropriate! In no way, should he have handled the situation in this manner. We have taken swift action by placing him on non-contact status until all the facts are gathered and discipline is handed down.

See AP, WashPost, and WashPost has posted Lanier's statement itself. Lanier's statement was first posted on the 3rd district listserve, shortly after 11am this morning. Even Fenty is quoted in the stories this afternoon.

MPD would have done itself good PR-wise if it had figured out this plan a day earlier. Instead, it has let the story go on a day further.

Previously:

• "City Paper Identifies Detective at Snowball Fight"
  
• "WaPo Goes A1 with Gun Story -- And An Editor Boasts of the Coverage"
  
• "CNN Now Not Quite Sure Plainclothes Officer Drew His Gun -- Despite Photos"
• "WashPost Relents on Plainclothes Officer Holding Gun. Turns Out a Post Staffer Had Seen it With Own Eyes."
• "WashPost Bit DC Police Claims That Plain-Clothes Officer Never Brandished Gun at Snowfight -- Despite Photos And Admission to Contrary"

WaPo now giving away Sunday paper for 50 cents

From the October 18th LivingSocial email in the DC area:



Many papers do discount deals to woo customers, who then stick with the subscription after the price goes up to the normal amount. But giving away a full year of Sunday papers for 50 cents each? That sounds extreme to me. And remember, the Post doesn't get that full amount -- usually these discount services, the Groupons and such, keep about 50%. So the Post is not getting 50 cents, but probably just somewhat more than half of that.

At some point I think the print advertisers would start getting unhappy about this. How do you know the people are looking at the Sunday paper if they're only paying 50 cents for it?

WaPo asks: Did Obama maybe actually win this battle?

The Post has an article up a couple hours now trying to come up with a case that maybe Obama did alright ("Did Obama capitulate — or is this a cagey move?")

Not exactly the most impressive work from Peter Wallsten and David Nakamura. They even go for this:

And Obama, branded a socialist by many Republicans for his big-spending stimulus program and his health-care overhaul, can declare himself a deficit hawk as he courts the political middle.

He could indeed do that! Turns out, though, there aren't all that many independents who care that much about the deficit. Yes, over the last year, polls show people care somewhat more about the deficit (not surprising considering the power and money going into the issue, and constant barrage from the columnists). But it's still mostly folks on the right. The independents who are actually in play, there's not much evidence you'd win many of them over by being a deficit hawk. And there is evidence that you lose a lot of them by threatening social security.

The White House presumably does indeed really think they can win over some independents this way. And they can tell that to the Washington Post. But the Post should give us some basic reporting on what the evidence is that the White House's strategy has a chance for success.

WaPo Uses Anonymous WH Briefer to Get Crucial Info: Personnel Shuffle will Provide "Strongest Possible Team" (!!!)

Just how entrenched is the culture of using anonymous sources willy-nilly at the Washington Post?

Check out the lead story in today's print edition, about the shuffle of Panetta, Petraeus and other top officials. From paragraphs 4 and 5:

It is “the strongest possible team to exercise our strategies and policies,” said an official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, adding: “I stress the word ‘team.’”

Obama, the official said, “has laid out [the changes] in a way that we believe will provide for a seamless transition in each of these positions.”

I mean, really. Talk about super-secret information that can only be provided to readers via anonymity!

And this wasn't by some newby writer, either; the article is by Karen DeYoung, a top Post veteran who carries an Associate Editor title. And it wasn't some story buried deep inside; it was the lead story (which is to say, screened by top editors).

Did many other top outlets print this dreck? A search for "strongest possible team" shows a few outlets that did: AFP, The Hill - twice, UPI and the New York Post. That's it. All of the top US papers other than the Washington Post had the dignity not to print it.

Andy Alexander, the Post's past Ombudsman, summed up the situation in 2009 like this: "The Post's sourcing rules are fine. The problem is compliance."

The Post's policies say that "we must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence." The policies also say granting anonymity "should not be done casually or automatically" and "merely asking should not be sufficient to become anonymous in our stories." They say that if sources won't go on the record, "the reporter should consider seeking the information elsewhere."

What's it going to take for the Post to change its ways? This isn't about a few bad apples; this is about a mindset that goes to the top, where editors let a story like this through. Will that ever change?