Posted on 03/29/2006 7:11:53 AM PST by abb
By now, you've probably heard way too much about the Red America blogging debacle at washingtonpost.com.
Well, most of you, anyway.
One major issue in the hiring (and subsequent ouster) of former Bush administration aide and RedState.com guy Ben Domenech was whether he was the right guy for the job. In light of the pattern of plagiarism that came to light, I think the answer is pretty clear.
A second major issue was whether hiring a conservative activist as a blogger was a reasonable stab at "balance" when there was no self-proclaimed liberal blogging away, as opposed to left-leaning journalists. I think that's a fair point, but I don't want to see washingtonpost.com or any other MSM outfit abandon efforts to include voices from the right.
And that brings me to the larger question: Do the hiring practices of big newspapers, magazines, networks and Web sites tilt toward people of the liberal persuasion, thereby requiring hand-wringing about intellectual diversity? At RealClear Politics, David Mastio chews on that one:
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I wonder what color the sky is in the world Kurtz lives.
Maybe the Washington Post should try something new. Like reporting the facts of who,what, where, when and how. And leave the editorials to op-ed page.
Umm ... Kurtz is pretty right, here. He's saying that part of the reason conservatives don't come into mainstream media like they do is because they don't apply for it ... they'd rather stay at the big conservative publications.
To a certain extent, he's right. Several conservatives (I'm thinking specifically of Ann Coulter) are trying to tell young conservative journalists to avoid working at National Review or the Weekly Standard and instead apply for jobs at the NY Times or Wash Post.
He misses the point that there's a clear absence of conservative voices in part because of the established liberal domination of the newsroom, but his idea that conservatives are purposefully staying away has some merit.
It's got to be pretty miserable for a conservative to work in a hostile atmosphere like the NYT or WP, can you blame them?
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