Free Republic

Technically it’s a dollar plus an agreement to assume their huge financial liabilities, but if you throw me an opportunity for a headline that sweet, I’m going to take it every time. Hopefully, in a few years and with a few trillion more tacked onto the national debt, the U.S. can get a deal like this from China. According to several people who have been briefed on the process, Mr. Harman’s bid appealed to Mr. Graham and the Post Company because Mr. Harman has said he would retain a significant number of the magazine’s 325 employees. The financial details of...

Although it's not clear if Sidney Harman made the best offer of the suitors vying to purchase Newsweek magazine, there is one reason that was made clear by Donald E. Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co. (NYSE:WPO). According to Mike Allen at Politico, Harman's bid was accepted by Graham partly because he felt comfortable with Harman's politics. "Graham felt comfortable with Harman's centrist politics, and was comforted by the idea of selling to a stalwart of the Washington establishment," Allen wrote. "Harman is expected to preserve the serious-minded, essentially New-Democratic tone [outgoing Newsweek editor Jon] Meacham set for the...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's official: Sidney Harman, the businessman who made his fortune selling stereo equipment, has secured a deal to buy Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. and will announce the deal later Monday afternoon. The New York Times and others have previously reported that Mr. Harman was the front-runner to come away with the news weekly, but have cautioned that no deal was certain. Politico's Playbook e-mail newsletter this morning said a deal with Mr. Harman was imminent, but also cautioned that "no deal like this is done until it's done." The deal is now done, according...

Once upon a time you could count on the Washington Post to be accurate, even if everyone knew they were biased.   Greg Sargent of the Washington Post proves today that is no longer true.  For his latest piece has both bias and inaccuracy.  Mr. Sargent’s lack of accuracy demonstrates why the Post doesn’t have a rosy future – bias and inaccuracy is the death knell of dead-trees journalism.  The cost structure doesn’t have enough of a market that enjoys both bias and inaccuracy in their product. For starters, he reports that no states have applied for waivers from military voting...

A deal to sell Newsweek to a 91-year-old stereo equipment magnate could be announced as early as today, a move that would signal the end of a half-century of ownership by The Washington Post Company.

The Washington Post ombudsman on Sunday chided his newspaper for ignoring the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, saying The Post remained "virtually silent" as the story developed in recent weeks. The newspaper carried a full-length news article about the case on Thursday. But ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote that readers have been contacting him "for months" wondering what was taking so long for The Post to show interest in the controversy. "The Post didn't cover it. Indeed, until Thursday's story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year," Alexander wrote. "That's prompted many...

FIRST ON FBDC: FishbowlDC has confirmed that WaPo conservative-beat blogger Dave Weigel has resigned after a slew of his anti-conservative comments and emails surfaced on FishbowlDC and Daily Caller over the past two days. A spokesperson for the Post said the paper will not offer additional comments but confirmed that the writer's resignation was accepted.

The national media are outraged this week by an announcement from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to observe April as Confederate History Month. Several news outlets have jumped on the story, but the most energetic complaints came from the Washington Post, which published more than half a dozen pieces in the same day. At this point it’s safe to say the Post suffers from McDonnell Derangement Syndrome. During last year’s campaign, the Post enthusiastically endorsed his Democrat challenger, went into overdrive to push a faux-scandal that backfired rather epically, and then, upon McDonnell winning, immediately set to work undermining him with...

It's hardly news that black conservatives are reviled among much of the left. There seems to be a sense among much of the liberal media that they have betrayed their own interests through their conservative principles. Few, however, would have the (dare I say it) audacity to lump prominent and accomplished African American political figures in with oppressive genocidal dictators and serial killers. But TheRoot.com, a blog owned by the Washington Post, seems to have no qualms about doing so, as evidenced in its list of 21 "Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History". Among the names are...

The Washington Post had an article by Howard Schneider yesterday about the dispute over property in in Sheikh Jarrah, a small Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem. I have no problem with an article that presents both the Israeli and Palestinian side of a story like this. I have a huge problem with asserting facts which simply are not in evidence and skewing the picture in favor of one side, in this case the Palestinians.The article plays fast and loose with the facts. For example, it states that "Israel asserts its jurisdiction over the entire city -- including Arab areas it...

Three-quarters of Americans say that they support openly gay people serving in the U.S. military, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a finding that could lend momentum to the Obama administration's effort to dismantle the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell." SNIP*** President Obama called for the policy's repeal last month in his State of the Union address, and the military's top civilian and military leadership has also expressed personal support for a repeal. SNIP*** The percentage of Americans who say they support gays openly serving is the same as a Post-ABC News poll found in July...

Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska, Republican mega-star and Fox News contributor, was quick to fire back at Washington Post blog, The Plum Line, for a report that Palin is at war with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Sarah Palin spokesperson Meg Stapleton told Fox, "The Washington Post is trying hard to take the pressure off the White House by creating a side controversy, but it is missing the point: as the Governor has said, it doesn't matter who says the "r" word: it should no longer be part of our lexicon." Limbaugh used the "r" word...

In Sunday’s column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, the increase in typos and other copy editing errors stood trial. Apparently, angry letters have started coming more frequently, wondering, for example, “If they don’t care about basics like grammar and spelling, how much do they care about factual accuracy?” Alexander served up the standard Old Media 2010 answer: our staffs have shrunk! But he also had a bizarre new scapegoat, namely, search engine optimization. Huh? “Through buyouts and voluntary departures, the number of full-time copy editors declined from about 75 to 43 between early 2005 and mid-2008,” he explained. “There...

Never one to run from a fist fight, I got into one at high school following the last class on a late Spring day of my sophomore year. My opponent, a short, flabby, mouthy kid, and I walked out to the athletic field. He’d been relentlessly provoking me to fight for several months and I’d finally had enough. So, out we went to do battle, climbing the perimeter chain-link fence so as not to be caught settling our differences on the school grounds. I was pretty confident I could give this kid the beating he’d been asking for. I had...

Former Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell, one of the first women to lead a major U.S. newspaper, died in an accident involving an automobile in New Zealand on Saturday, according to her family. She was 68. Howell was traveling in New Zealand on vacation with her husband, C. Peter Magrath, at the time of the accident. Her stepson Nick Coleman said Howell suffered fatal injuries when struck by a vehicle. She lived in Glen Echo.

Less than a year ago, during yet another public discussion about the future of traditional media, I said that it seemed extremely unlikely that, for instance, Newsweek would last another five years, provoking guffaws among blogger types and stout denials from the magazine (i.e. a minor kerfuffle). Newsweek and its parent, the Washington Post Co., announced yesterday a significant cut in its rate base, a further round of buyouts and layoffs, and a plan to make an already anorexic magazine even thinner. The Washington Post Co., for good measure, added its own bad news and bleak outlook. My prediction about...

Los Angeles (AP) - The Washington Post will close its remaining U.S. bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago at the end of the year to save money and will focus news efforts on covering the nation's capital. Six correspondents are being offered jobs in Washington, while three news aides will be let go Dec. 31. In a staff memo Tuesday, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told workers that the paper needed to concentrate its "journalistic firepower" on its central mission of covering Washington, D.C. In the last decade, the paper has closed bureaus in Miami, Denver and Austin, Texas....

According to an informed source, the Washington Post will soon announce that it will close its news bureaus in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as part of a cost-saving measure. It's unclear just when the closings will take place; however, the source says that the Post will not be laying off correspondents in those bureaus, but rather will be bringing them back to the mother ship, the better to focus on the Post's core mission of reporting on Washington. More to come. UPDATE, 5:03 P.M.: Memo from management---though correspondents are spared the ax, three news aides will lose their...

The Washington Post is closing its remaining U.S. news bureaus in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but will retain the six reporters from those bureaus and recall them to Washington. The paper's spokesperson, Kris Coratti, confirmed the closures Tuesday. Three news aides, one per each bureau, will be cut. "These changes are part of The Post's long-term strategy to focus our resources on covering Washington as a place to live and its impact on the nation and the world," Coratti wrote in an email to TheWrap. "The Post will continue to cover national news of interest to our core...

Washington Post closing all US bureaus outside DC The Washington Post is closing its last US bureaus outside the nation's capital as the money-losing newspaper retrenches to focus on politics and local news. Published: 12:48AM GMT 25 Nov 2009 "At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," the newspaper's editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters. The Post will...