PressThink: Brady, Hamsher, Reynolds, Jarvis, Rosen at the Post site. Plus: Elite Newspaper Divergence (END)

Brady, Hamsher, Reynolds, Jarvis, Rosen at the Post site. Plus: Elite Newspaper Divergence (END)

Our live Q and A begins 1:00 pm Wednesday... Brady says he's working on adding comments to news articles... Times columnist David Carr’s take on the “whirlwind” around Deborah Howell includes some extraordinary instructions for how to e-mail him: don’t... "Wow," says Dan Gillmor.

Word has arrived on the blogger’s roundtable you may have read about with Jim Brady, executive editor of the Washingtonpost.com. It was to be done in person, around a table in Arlington, VA, headquarters for the Post site. That proved impractical. Instead it will be a version of the Post’s online Q and A’s. Here are the essentials:

What: Ethics & Interactivity online roundtable

Where: at washingtonpost.com

When: Wednesday, January 25, 2006; 1:00 PM

Who:

Jim Brady, Washingtonpost.com.
Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit
Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine
Jay Rosen, PressThink

How do I suggest questions? You can’t, too late. But you can go to this page and read.

Or you can post in comments here. I told readers of my last entry, Transparency at the Post, a Q & A with Jim Brady, that if this roundtable at Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) happened, I would open a new thread about what ought to be discussed if we’re going to get somewhere. After 388 comment posts, it’s time to start the meter over anyway. (A record for PressThink.)

There’s a small bit of news from Brady, further evidence for my Elite Newspaper Divergence (END) theory. It states that the Washington Post and New York Times are going to grow more apart as they take different paths on the Web. (For more, go here and here, and here.) Brady told me that within two weeks washingtonpost.com will introduce by-lines for Post writers that are “hot linked,” as we used to say when the Web was a marvel. The difference between

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer

and

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer

may seem slight. But it’s not, because that simple link can go a lot of places. (Reporter’s blog, for example.) I asked Brady what writers’ names would be linked to, initially. “The bylines will be — for now — hyperlinked to e-mail forms so that reporters are all accessible via email,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll probably include recent stories, maybe a bio and photo. But, for now, it’s a communications device.”

Which makes sense, but also makes a point coming after New York Times columnist David Carr’s take on the “whirlwind” around Deborah Howell. Carr gave some extraordinary instructions for how to e-mail him: don’t. Causing Dan Gillmor to say: wow. What startled Gillmor was Carr’s closer.

“Personally, I’m all for a robust interaction with the reading public. My address is David Carr, New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. And don’t forget that the price of stamps just went up.”

Which I read as defiance projected at these people. For robust interaction with me write a letter, put it in an envelope, and mail it, Web hordes. What theory of modern newspapering is that?

Of course, Times watchers know that Carr is pioneering a Times blog, called Carpetbagger— which is about Hollywood and the Oscars. It has comments, which seem to work just fine, and there’s an easy way to e-mail the author. So it’s not clear what the defiance in Monday’s column means. Is Carr clowning? (Steve Lovelady in comments: “Of course Carr is clowning.” Jeff Jarvis said Carr confirmed it: clowning.) Or will he soon be telling Len Apcar, the editor-in-chief of NYTimes.com, to disable the e-mail link and comment function at Carpetbaggers? (Obviously he won’t, because he was clowning. Right.)

Jim Brady told Dan Gillmor that more changes are coming at the Post site, once the Post fixes the problems it had last week. He also explained what the problem was: the site wasn’t requiring a valid e-mail address from people leaving comments

because we were working through Movable Type, and we had not synched up our registration system with it. But we are hoping to add comments to articles reasonably soon, and when we do that, we’ll have that layer of security. But, after the events of the past week, we now know we need that layer on our MT blogs as well. Lesson learned, I guess.

Brady said comments at post.blog will be back soon and I have no reason to doubt him. He also said that he’s adding comments “reasonably soon” to Washington Post articles online. This is bigger news— if it happens. It will increase substantially the two-way-ness of the Post site. (See Brady’s clarification in “After Matter” below.)

There’s no telling how the ability instantly to comment on breaking news will affect the Post’s journalism. (Yesterday Jack Shafer of Slate, a Washington Post property, used his column to explain how their moderated system, The Fray, works. Slate pays somebody to oversee, and give order to it, including awarding stars for people who contribute greatly. Who publishes Slate? WPNI.)

Meanwhile, the New York Times is breaking new ground with blogs you have to pay to read. It’s not clear which theory of the blogosphere such blogs could operate within. Does linking to subscriber’s only content make sense when the point is to participate in public discussion?

Now if you are in Select company, you can “send a comment,” which is not the same as posting one. “TimesSelect aims to offer subscribers unique opportunities to communicate with Op-Ed columnists,” the site tells you. “Please use this form to submit your questions and comments for any of the Iraqi bloggers.” I understand what they’re doing. They are adding value to being a Times select subscriber, but not by “taking away” what had been available freely— instead, you add bloggers, a new class of vendor, and a subscription should be worth more. Except that a blog that can’t be linked to is automatically worth less on the Web, so who’s worth counts?

Elite Newspaper Divergence (END), the result of different strategic choices by the Graham and Sulzberger regimes. Track it because it could be consequential.

Right and Wrong in Making the Post More Interactive. (My title would have been: Howl!.) Jim Brady, Jeff Jarvis, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Reynolds and me are online tomorrow, 1:00 pm. War game it in comments now, review it after.

But first let Will Femia at MSNBC’s Clicked guide you through recent events: “The dots I’m clicking show a change in mood and tactic by online liberal activists.” Could be consequential.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links.

Well, the results are in. (Jan. 25)

Jane Hamsher isn’t satisfied, not by a long shot. She tells us she had a lot of people “conferenced in” and assisting:

Peter Daou, Atrios, John Amato, Digby and jukeboxgrad from DailyKos (who would not let Jim Brady slide on his nebulous explanations, much to Brady’s irritation) — not to mention Markos and Brad DeLong who offered their input yesterday, Matt Stoller who was patrolling comments over at the Open Letter to the Washington Post blog (as well as Taylor who has been moderating), and Redd who was holding down the fort here. All I can say is that the answers that were given were the result of lots of people thinking together, including all the emails and commenters, and I can’t tell you all how much I appreciated the collaborative effort.

She thanked the post.com for the opportunity, then added. “Brady gave himself the last word many times, goaded me for a response and then closing it before I could answer, despite the fact that I was asking in the accompanying ‘chat’ box for a chance to do so. Neither would he give substandial, meaningful answers to questions I posed to him.” And she challenged Brady to a one-on-one.

Furthermore, Hamsher and Digby agree that Jarvis and Rosen were just “filler” and the real debate—the only debate—was between Jane Hamsher and Jim Brady.

Hamsher and Brady have an exchange in comments here. Jane:

Structuring the debate like they did allowed Brady to continually evade answering some serious questions about some very sketchy excuses. Were he not using those excuses — which he refuses to backup — for repeated flame throwing at about largely civil comments left on the post.blog, I would not be hammering him.

Jim Brady:

Jane, Not giving you the answers you want is not the same as evading questions. If you’re waiting for me to break down and confess that we shut down the blog to stifle dissent, and that there were really no profane comments and that we did all this because we don’t care what our readers say, then you have a long wait ahead of you.

Bob Somerby at the (aptly named) Daily Howler: “Today, Jane Hamsher is leading the liberal brigade.” Others have passed on that opportunity, he says, because they wanted jobs at Newsweek and the Post! “To our ear, career liberal writers are still unable to describe the press as it actually is—- as it has strangely (but plainly) been over a long stretch of years.”

National Review Online’s Stephen Spruiell thinks we’re seeing The Left’s Revolution Against the Media.

Brutally sarcastic, extremely funny and well worth a read: Poor Man Institute, Let’s stage an all-star panel on blogger ethics in my pants.

Vapor Trails. Daniel Glover at National Journal’s Blogometer reviews the Post Q and A and reactions to it.

Katie Couric pulls a Deborah Howell on the air; Liz Cox Barrett of CJR Daily lets her know.

Highlights from the discussion at washingtonpost.com.

Glenn Reynolds:

The barriers to entry in blogging are very low. You want to get your ideas out? You can start a blog in 15 minutes. So why do you feel entitled — and that’s not too strong a word for what I hear sometimes — to put your comments on someone else’s site?

Jeff Jarvis:

If Deborah had appeared in the comments immediately asking people to treat her as a person, not a silent oracle, then I’ll bet the tone of the exchange would have changed. That’s not to say that some would not still be angry and rude but what were they really asking for but answerability? So if you answer, you defuse that demand.

Jim Brady:

I’ve used the word “civility,” but it’s true that it’s a tough word to define. Among the things we’ve learned here is that we need to have clear rules and examples to help people understand the limits of what we’ll accept. So I’ll retire “civility” at this point.

Jane Hamsher:

The post.com should be thrilled by the passion and intelligence and civility exhibited by the vast, vast majority of commenters. Over at Kos, someone compared an archived version of the original comments on the “Maryland Moment” blog with the ones that were restored and found only ten that were deemed so “offensive” that they had to be deleted. That’s a 99% civility rate.

For my highlight, click.

Dan Froomkin is back, big time. (His wife just had a baby.) Here’s what he said in his Post chat today:

I think washingtonpost.com’s comment cutoff was a mistake. It’s a big paradigm shift for people used to controlling every word that appears in their newspapers — but online, a little loss of control pays off big time.
We should glory in the passion of our readers. We should listen to what they have to say, respond to their concerns, and if necessary correct their misimpressions. In short, we should empower the reader, not shut the reader up — even temporarily.

Rem Reider, the boss at American Journalism Review, writes an insight-free column about the Howell episode. “Much has been made of the Web’s great contribution to instant and freewheeling political discourse. But this wasn’t discourse, this was target practice.”

“The shift to trying to prove Brady a liar was a mistake, in my opinion.” Me, in the comments.

Stephen Spruiell at National Review’s Media Blog: As Reynolds Explains Decision not to Host Comments, Reuters Provides Case In Point.

Jim Brady e-mails (Jan. 24). The comments-for-articles feature isn’t quite ready for prime time, he says:

“Just to clarify the post on the comments on articles project. It is something we’ve been working on for months, but based on the events of the past week, we’re re-evaluating the technology behind that feature. Obviously, we want to make sure it works the way we need it to. I don’t want folks walking away with the impression that this is an imminent launch. It’s not. But we have indeed been working on it.”

Brady did the PBS Newshour (Jan. 24): Online Feedback Goes Offline.

At Buzzmachine, (Jan. 24) Jeff Jarvis gets warmed up for the big match the next day:

Q: Are media required to play host to the opinions and criticism of others?
A: No. But they will be judged by their interactivity.

That’s the real issue here: One-way media are trying to figure out the two-way world and it’s hard, but necessary.

Steve Outing at Poynter, Taming the Comment Monster. Relevant. Also see the reactions. They’re relevant too.

Atrios gets acerbic about the Q and A:

Nothing like convening a panel to discuss how to deal with internet comments which consists of someone who doesn’t allow them, someone who doesn’t get any because nobody gives a shit what he writes, and someone who deletes them and clearly exaggerates the reasons why.
Oh, and Jane, who we of course love.

The first someone is Reynolds, the second Jarvis, and the third Brady.

Posted by Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 6:28 PM Print

From Tom Edsall's chat today:

Louisville, Ky.: Tom,
I hate to harp on it, but I think it is important. I don't understand how the ombudsman of your newspaper, the person MOST concerned with transparency and accuracy, could have gotten a major point about a major story so wrong.

Irrespective of some of the embarrassing criticism, I don't think The Post has sufficiently taken its lumps of the issue. The general attitude I get from Post reporters through these chats and Howell through her column is that the Abramoff story is too nuanced to lay out the actual facts of the matter. It's frustrating, and I think your readership is being done a disservice.

Tom Edsall: It is difficult to understand how people can become so critical of the newspaper that broke the Abramoff scandal, has detailed the scope of the misuse of money, has run charts listing the actual recipients of Abramoff's contributions and the contributions of his clients -- stories that have left every other newspaper, magazine, TV station, etc in the dust -- can be accused of a conspiratorial attempt to hide Abramoff's overwhelmingly Republican connections based on a one line mistake, soon corrected, in an ombudsman column. There is something wacky here.

Ami, the WaPo continue to lie, exaggerate its role in the Abramoff story? these reporters still don't get it?

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 6:47 PM | Permalink

McClellan: echoing Howell echoing McClellan echoing Brady echoing McClellan echoing Kurtz echoing McClellan:

"I know that there's some Democrats that want to try to make this -- try to engage in partisan attacks. But what we do know from media reports is that Mr. Abramoff gave directly or indirectly to Democrats and Republicans."

Froomkin:

"But McClellan's continued attempt to portray the Abramoff scandal as bipartisan doesn't exactly help his credibility on the question of White House meetings. His assertion flies in the face of the facts and is a Republican talking point espoused only by the most partisan or most credulous."

Posted by: AlanDownunder at January 24, 2006 6:47 PM | Permalink

Of course Carr is clowning.
He has an email, and he has a blog, and he can be easily reached by either.
Carr's mistake --"send me a letter with a stamp on it" --is his attempt to try to introduce a sense of humor into an ethos that does not have one.
Loosen up, people.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 24, 2006 6:58 PM | Permalink

You think this makes it clear he's joking, Steve?

Feedback, as any rock guitarist can tell you, is not always a pleasant-sounding thing. The trouble with a community built of one-way e-mail messages posing as two-way communication is that when people can say anything, they frequently do - a fact of digital life that goes back to The Well, the pioneering online community that presaged the potential and the potential pitfalls of digital social discourse beginning in 1985.
If the first e-mail message did not flame the recipient, the response probably did. There is a kind of permission that hangs over the keyboard along with anonymity that often leads to more over-the-top argument than reasoned exposition...

ending with:

It was not that long ago when readers enraged by something they had seen in the newspaper would have to find a pen, a piece of paper, an envelope and a stamp to make their feelings heard. Now, mainstream media outlets find themselves under attack for not providing bandwidth and visibility to people who wish them dead.
Personally, I'm all for a robust interaction with the reading public. My address is David Carr, New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. And don't forget that the price of stamps just went up.

You're saying it's obvious he's clowning around from the text? Or from what else might be known about David Carr?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 7:06 PM | Permalink

Looks like there is some light at the end of the tunnel, finally. The roundtable in which Jay, Hamsher and others will participate is the first positive indication that the Post recognizes that the PR approach failed.

Someone finally awoke and realized that tarring a significant chunk of their readers as part of "fever swamp", as nihilistic Bin Ladens bent upon destroying the Post was disasterous.

This is a good move on Brady's part, and the Post generally, and it hopefully presages a form of "glasnost" which will help major newspapers move towards understanding how the Internet requires greater responsibility and accountability. Maybe the 'Net is gaining such traction against the dinosaurs on the print side.

It is hard to see how people like Howell, Harris and Schmidt are going to accomodate themselves to it without some help. Kurtz, by contrast, seems pretty skilled at navigating these waters, even when he gets it wrong.

Edsall, apparently, irked at having these questions spill over to his chat, went on autopilot, and spit out the company line, taking it as an opportunity to chastise us for failing to genuflect and publicly shout how incredibly lucky, how incredibly fortunate we are, to be able allowed to read a newspaper as wonderful as the Post.

Thanks, Tom. Think the last time I read one of your columns was back in 1997.

Posted by: Richard Estes at January 24, 2006 7:16 PM | Permalink

Will Femia at MSNBC’s Clicked is pretty perceptive about the left's new tactic. I think it has been notable for some time:

The left's largely disingenuous claim of conservative media bias is their attempt to fight fire with fire: "You say left, I'll say right and cancel you out."

It's just hard to believe that very many will seriously consider the counter-intuitive proposition that the left isn't fairly treated by our dominant media.

Posted by: Trained Auditor at January 24, 2006 7:54 PM | Permalink

Does every online Washington Post column (both guest and house) have a link to the columnist's Commitment to Readers?
(Ideally one like Loren Steffy's)

Posted by: Anna Haynes at January 24, 2006 8:25 PM | Permalink

(ok, that q. wasn't exactly on topic)

To allow readers to see for themselves whether you're exercising responsible judgement in deleting comments, why not maintain a secondary page of "obscenity-free but deleted" comments, with an online "lifespan" of a week or so?
(Rather than leaving this job to Daily Kos and others, which puts the Post in a less than flattering light)

Posted by: Anna Haynes at January 24, 2006 8:49 PM | Permalink

“The bylines will be — for now — hyperlinked to e-mail forms so that reporters are all accessible via email,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll probably include recent stories, maybe a bio and photo. But, for now, it’s a communications device.”

This is the same system they use at their trade journals, Government Computer News and Washington Technology. Very sensible.

Posted by: Alice Marshall at January 24, 2006 8:54 PM | Permalink

[Richard E.,
is the anger at Howell solely for Abramoff? or is she paying for Woodward's and Harris' sins?

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 07:52 PM | Permalink]

actually, Howell has made it clear that she represents just about everyone other than readers at the Post: Woodward, Harris and now, Schmidt, who originally wrote that Abramoff gave money to Democrats

and, as another wrinkle, in the Froomkin episode, so not only aligned herself quite openly with the national politics journalists at the Post, such as Harris, but also, with the print side of the operation against the web side

and, it is this sometimes subterranean struggle that Jay has appropriately emphasized, as it is frequently ignored or downplayed by people with a partisan political perspective

but, ultimately, Howell is a pawn, selected by Post management to do exactly what she is doing, just as, in her own way (and I disagree with Jay on this), Judith Miller was similarly a pawn, empowered by a NYT management that has great sympathy for neo-conservative foreign policy views

Howell makes it appears as if the Post wanted an old school type journalist, one, like Edsall, for example, that believes that the readers, such as us, should be passive, awestruck recipients of the purportedly brilliant insights served up by its staff

if so, it was a gross miscalculation, to say the least, given the blogs and the connectivity that so many of us possess, sort of like expecting Brett Easton Ellis to write like Virginia Wolff

so there is volatile mixture that is combustible at any time, the arrogance of some of the journalists who have grown up with the insularity of the old, print media world, combined with communications technology that exposes their mistakes and hard headedness, a technology that they are ill-suited to utilize themselves, with Howell being a classic case as she demonstrated with the "clarification" that she posted in her sole outing on the Web

even if some of the critics of the Post's coverage of the Abramoff scandal were politically motivated, one has to admit that they choose their terrain well, they had Howell and the Post dead to rights on the facts, and, instead of acknowledging the problem, and having it disappear within the next newscycle, a blip that would have quickly disappeared, they did the opposite, stood by their erroneous story and smeared their critics, which naturally caused many people to believe that the Post valued its ability to maintain close relationships with high ranking Republicans through the manipulation of spin than it did its compact with its readers

Posted by: Richard Estes at January 24, 2006 9:10 PM | Permalink

Why not talk directly with the people actually building social/constructive media software? Existing commenting systems simply don't scale. Can the assembled panelists actually speak about software tools that doesn't start with the letters BLO and end with the letter G?

Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at January 24, 2006 9:12 PM | Permalink

The biggest Leftist bias to me seems what is undercovered: the Darfur slo-motion genocide (as the US follows the Dem Party advice on a Global Test. The options seem to be war or genocide, and the anti-war folk are winning); the terrible problems in Zimbabwe (30 years after Ian Smith was booted); the continued Gulag in North Korea; the Oil-for-Food scandal at the UN, and the new peacekeeper mis-management at the UN.

Since the Dems seem to think the UN handles the world much better than the US, the policies and results should be more compared. There are no secrets, or shouldn't be, at the UN -- only corruption coverups.

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at January 24, 2006 9:14 PM | Permalink

Richard: instead of acknowledging the problem, and having it disappear within the next newscycle, a blip that would have quickly disappeared, they did the opposite, stood by their erroneous story and smeared their critics...

I'm sure that, since you are so concerned with smears, you'll be happy to explain what you posted over at firedoglake:

... what's O'Reilly's problem? why did he [fail] to nail Jay and Pressthink as one of the recipients of Lewis and Soros largesse? my contacts tell me he gets the biggest check every month... Link.

Go ahead, Richard. We're listening. 'Splain.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 9:17 PM | Permalink

Jay --

I'll stick with the "of course."
From the moment I saw the line, it was obvious to me that it was an attempt by Carr to end his column with levity. For me, it worked. As soon as I read the sentence, I burst out laughing.
But obviously it fell upon a lot of tin ears. I mean, come on -- who in this day and age is going to say,
"Ahem ... if you wish to contact me, do so by snail mail" ?
It's Carr winking at the reader, crossing his fingers, raising his eyes to heaven, and broadcasting to the faithful,
"God help me if I get the deluge that Debbie Howell got."
For the record, I have never met David Carr -- but I know an ironic close when I see one.
I thought the line was worthy of Jon Stewart.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 24, 2006 9:18 PM | Permalink

Richard E.,
of all the things to go postal about with the press, it seems that Abramoff/Dems connection is a red herring. the Right is just watching this with amusement. who wins with a weakened MSM? who controls Washington right now?

anyway, i may not agree with you, but i dig the Ellis reference. WaPo's credibility is Less Than Zero?

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 9:22 PM | Permalink

We've had hotlinked bylines for our reporters for about a year, the link goes directly to their email address. Reporters are also allowed to respond to reader comments directly, though not all of them do. I'm excited to see WP think seriously about adding comments to each article; we've had great success with it and its made a better newsroom. But as i'll post directly to the Q and A and Ill say it here, its only effective IF you keep an active, light hand in - and that means moderation, or at least continuous dedicated monitoring. The key is in being engaged and sensitive to the public's momentum and parlaying that into effective journalism.

Posted by: Stefan Dill at January 24, 2006 9:33 PM | Permalink

Alright, Jay, come clean about all that Lewis and Soros money.
;-)
And later, we can listen to Richard Estes recount his trip to outer space, where he discovered that you are a Martian.

Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 24, 2006 9:45 PM | Permalink

Jay, you're getting Peter Lewis money? where do i send my resume?
that explains all the legalize marijuana columns. (i'm kidding, i'm kidding.)
Richard Mellon Scaife is behind the scenes on the Right, therefore Lewis and Soros must be backing the Left. more steroid analysis/jumping to conclusions.

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 9:51 PM | Permalink

You know Jay (and all), the more I think about this entire episode, the more I think of it in terms of a failure of "Customer Service" by WaPo.

Has anyone else here had to deal with aggrieved customers on a regular basis? I have, in IT. And believe me, the level of aggravation (not to mention bad language etc) in the comments at WaPo are not even a drop in the bucket compared to the bucket-load I had to deal with daily!! Honestly... I really believed that the understandably aggrieved *CUSTOMERS* (ignoring the obvious trolls and laud-mouths) were trying to keep control be reasonable. WaPo don't seem to know a thing about customer service! Which, I have to admit, astounds me! So, perhaps the issue here is a breakdown in customer service. The WaPo customers expectations were not met. The customers believe that have a legitimate complaint, and the complaint has not adequately been addressed. First, the customers were ignored (always a very bad thing to do to a customer!) then, they were essentially told to go away! If I was a WaPo customer, I'd be doing a lot more than posting a few peeved comments!

The fact is, it is *NOT* WaPo who is the damaged party here. And WaPo so far have done nothing except to make things worse.

I too can understand and sympathize with Jim Brady's position, but that does not excuse the mess that WaPo created and continue to make worse.

The customers want honest answers to (what they see as) legitimate complaints, and they want the problem fixed. WaPo is a long-standing corporation. Hand wringing and crocodile tears is hardly suitable or acceptable. Either they are a professional corporation (who treats their customers in a professional manner), or they are not. If not, then perhaps they deserve to join the graveyard of corporations who failed in customer service.

I apologize if that seems harsh, but I too am simply fed up with all the finger pointing, and all the commentary about everything and anything except the issue, which simply is: customer service. This has been kicked around for two weeks now, and it's not getting any better. That's ridiculous.

I hope that in the upcoming *discussion*, this issue is addressed. It really doesn't matter now if WaPo actually did anything *wrong* in the first place, they certainly are wrong in the way they handled their customers after.

Posted by: Kryten42 at January 24, 2006 10:06 PM | Permalink

Here's the Media Matters bulletin on the Bill O'Reilly segment that Richard refers to in his smear. I'm curious about Richard's "contacts," who told him about the big fat checks I'm getting from billionaires. Contacts, not sources....could that be an oblique reference to the jumper cables?

I think I had lunch with a program office from Soros once; and I believe he paid the check. In fact, I'm sure of it because if I had paid the lunch would have been at Cozy Soup 'n Burger on Broadway. That is the extent of their support for me: one rack of lamb. Peter Lewis, I've read... wow, must be five, six news stories about him. That's the extent of my involvement with Mr. Lewis. Media Matters-- well, there you have me, Richard. I'm on their mailing list.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 10:23 PM | Permalink

I'm not sure the Posties in the newsroom see online users as really truly "customers," Kryten. The real customers are the folks who pay to have the paper delivered. Brady doesn't think that way because he knows the economics better. Many traditionalists (not all) think the online users aren't paying for their news, and the print subscriber is. What they don't know or don't want to know is that the cost of printing and trucking the paper is greater than subscriber revenue. The print subscriber is paying for the delivery platform, not the newsroom. But the newsroom thinks otherwise.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 10:40 PM | Permalink

advertising plays major role in the print revenue as well as online revenue?
according to Brady, 8 to 9 million unique visitors a month, one million visitors a day.
a few thousand comments or even hundred thousand comments are minute in this equation. are the cost of changing your interactive platform worth the price right this minute?
a few commenters were proud to say they haven't read the papers in years.

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 10:51 PM | Permalink

2) If not, why is there still no correction on the original Howell column's false statement regarding Abramoff giving money to "both parties"? (and no, Howell was NOT referring to client contributions directed to "both parties" -- the previous sentence was a reference to money that Abramoff had collected (in fees) from his clients.)

we read the paper with different lenses. this is in Howell's Jan. 22 column:

That column praised The Post for breaking the story on lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings, for which he has pleaded guilty to several felony counts. The column clearly pointed out that Abramoff is a Republican and dealt mainly with Republicans, most prominently former House majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas.
I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress. He didn't. I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

is that not a correction? did you want one of those A2 box jobs?

Posted by: bush's jaw at January 24, 2006 11:10 PM | Permalink

Thanks for the reply Jay,

They are the ones I meant. :) If you go through the WaPo comments, you will see that many said they were canceling their subscriptions. Several subscribers said they had emailed WaPo or phoned and had no adequate response, so had turned to the open comments blog to vent their frustration/anger etc.

In any case, anyone who reads WaPo and WaPo online, whether a paying subscriber or not, is a reader and WaPo has the potential for increased advertising revenue due to a larger audience. If the readership decreases, so must (eventually) the advertising revenue. And that is where most news/media companies revenues come from.

I am not a journalist, but I did write reviews and editorials for a major technical publication for a few years, some years ago. Increasing advertising revenues was always the goal.

Regards,
K42. :)

Posted by: Kryten42 at January 24, 2006 11:31 PM | Permalink

One thing's for sure we know that Richard's contacts are "unidentified" but after reading Steve Lovelady's retort I'm wondering if they were also "flying."

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at January 24, 2006 11:43 PM | Permalink

I'm watching to see if this represents a turning point for the blog-o-Left.

In the past, they have expended time and energy defending egregious media errors that served their ideological agenda (including but not limited to memogate, Eason, and Newsweek).

Should blog-o-Left go on the offense and abandon the defense of media, this could get very interesting ...

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 24, 2006 11:53 PM | Permalink

I think what matters is that the Post corrected it in various ways. Less so the issuing of a correction. I care about what is reported by the Post as fact. So when Paul Farhi writes...

"The deluge, which overwhelmed the Web site’s screening efforts, began after Howell wrote in a column published Sunday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff 'had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.' That is incorrect. As Howell noted on Thursday morning in a short piece on Post.blog, Abramoff did not make direct contributions to Democrats but directed his lobbying clients to do so."

That's a correction in the narrative, and there are more here but not here, I think. Along with the correctives come many other attitudes, opinions and "these people..." statements, which can be criticized on their own terms, apart from whether Correction has happened, in the heavenly sense.

My advice for correction-seekers is take the W on Jack's contributions, and move forward to other priorities you have with Brady, the Post, and its journalism. One of them might well be how do you know Abramoff directed additional monies to Democrats and where are those charts?

Paul Farhi refuted Powell on the mistaken points, and that's good enough for me. (Then Howell said flat out she had been incorrect.) But that's because I respect the Post's reporting in a general, presumptive way, aside from Howl!, despite all the problems I see. If I didn't have that base line respect, why would Farhi's refutation matter? Or a correction? In fact, only a newspaper you respect as generally capable of telling the truth can be self-correcting in your eyes.

If you don't have that respect, and yet you call for a "correction," you should, in my opinion, be prepared for a hostile reception of the type Thomas Edsall seems to have had. If I wanted to dis-credit the newspaper--I don't--I would act in an entirely different way toward the matter of correction. I think I would continue to demand something more stringent, and formal.

I would never say something like: good enough.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 24, 2006 11:56 PM | Permalink

More interesting than snail mail:

Flaming and invective know no ideology, but there is a tendency toward seeing a growing conspiracy behind every ill-chosen word - something once thought to be the province mainly of conservatives.

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 24, 2006 11:58 PM | Permalink

Tim (Sisyphus): Will Femia in his Clicked column is suggesting that some kind of re-alignment like you suggest is taking place; it's a great example of argument-by-link.

Franklin Foer had his antennae out for it. He was picking it up.

But you may remember that Oliver Willis said this in a PressThink comment thread in June 2005, and I pulled it into the post. "Frankly, we can do all the hoping and pining for the long lost responsible media but it isn’t ever coming back. The press is useless and has to be played." He also wrote something similar at his blog but his archives are screwed up.

I thought it was significant because of the phrase, "it has to be played."

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 12:30 AM | Permalink

I think Brady has good ideas, but is hamstrung by the corporate divide.

Why can't bylines link to something like a Kos diary? When reporters appear on the cabloids to provide exegesis on their stories, it's taken as read that they have a paper-trail, a record. Yes, multiple bylines complicate things, but why can't the Post site provide a nice, comprehensive, categorised summary page for Pincus or Schmidt or Priest?

Why can't stories be linked up? Too much effort? Not enough time? Why do bloggers have to be the sole archivists and collators here?

Yes, there are ideological issues here: as Jane Hamsher mentioned, print media follows a template that today's report is the latest and best account of a particular story, regardless of past reporting. But the Web is flat, even if the earth isn't.

It's long been a joke that when the press mess up, it's time to convene a blogger ethics panel. And here we have one.

Perhaps in exchange for a comments policy, the Post can embrace a posting one, derived from the experience of bloggers who actually handle massive numbers of comments on a regular basis.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc at January 25, 2006 12:49 AM | Permalink

Well, I definitely think Jim Brady ought to ask Jane Hamsher that very question tomorrow.

Participants should feel free to make suggestions. This is how post.blog frames it:

Bloggers Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Jane Hamsher and Glenn Reynolds and washingtonpost.com editor Jim Brady will talk about interactivity, ethics and how best to manage reader-submitted comments in a Live Discussion at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 26...

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 12:52 AM | Permalink

I would like to know why WPNI doesn't have permanently and prominently linked a post and comment policy?

ILS Blog Posting and Comment Policy
Rhetorica Blogging and Comment Policy
Blog Ethics

Posted by: Sisyphus at January 25, 2006 1:21 AM | Permalink

My questions submitted to the Post for tomorrow's discussion:

I have three questions:

First, Mr. Brady - would you explain why no correction to Howell's original column (1/15/06) has been posted or linked on the same page with the original story? While we may all be aware of the controversy and later columns, most readers are not and would still take the original column as accurate.

Second, you have been appearing all over the media landscape for the past few days describing the reason for the comments shutdown in these terms: "We got about 1,000 posts and at least 150 to 200 were using either profanity, hate speech or personal attacks," Brady said about the responses to Howell's controversial column last Sunday ..." (Editor and Publisher, 1/19/2006). Yet in the introduction to this online chat, it says "The move came after several comments containing personal attacks, profanity and hate speech were posted ..." Will you now issue a correction to the media outlets you have been commenting to, offering this corrected description of "several" rather than "150-200"?

Finally, given the discrepancy in your depictions of recent events and your stated interest in transparency, will you provide us with both an accurate account of the number of messages received, the number which were permanently deleted and copies of those deleted messages?

Posted by: siun at January 25, 2006 1:22 AM | Permalink

'I'm curious about Richard's "contacts," who told him about the big fat checks I'm getting from billionaires.' - JR

It sure seems that the smear is in firedoglake's media DNA. So reflexive, casual, celebrated, ubiquitous. May just be the price of admission to get at the good stuff.

Same is true of a number of other progressive blogs. Which is what may keep them (happily, I guess) in the sideshow tent. Strutting that DNA for a few ad dollars.

Posted by: Ron Martinez at January 25, 2006 7:02 AM | Permalink

It's good that Brady has embarked on a wide-ranging PR blitz and is seeking input from Jay, Jane and others about managing comments on their site. I wish he would temper the story that has been written that allows the commenters to be depicted in such a poor light.

There is no recognition that the comments were in any way valued as feedback or were in any way valid. The way they intend to "manage" such outcry is to make it more complicated to do so. Good for them, but not helpful for their customers. A parallel situation would be if outraged customers had overloaded the voicemail because of something inflammatory and just plain wrong in a story, the solution to that would be to add a complicated menu of options to make it more difficult to leave a voice message.

My question would be why the Washington Post and Brady, after flatly stating that the "directing" was "beyond dispute" has offered no evidence whatsoever of that statement. I've got 50 that says he won't address it. He probably doesn't know. And the "political desk" doesn't *have* convincing evidence, so they continue to hide behind the wall, using their pulpit to rail at the unruly hordes.

Posted by: Phredd at January 25, 2006 7:39 AM | Permalink

Richard has been awfully scarce since his smear. I wonder why.

Jay, I read Richard's "smear" as an attempt at humor. Keep in mind that the topic of the thread was this...

O'Reilly says that "organized smear websites" funded by radical left-wing billionaires like Peter Lewis and his good pal George Soros are responsible for the "terrorist acts" perpetrated on Poor Deborah Howell.

Jane and Redd aren't getting a penny from Lewis or Soros (and they are the website that "organized" the "terrorist acts"). Asking why O'Reilly didn't tag you as a recipient of the same cash that Jane Hamsher isn't getting is supposed to be funny.... at least that is how I read it in its original incantation.

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 8:26 AM | Permalink

Jay,

When there are so many other women who blog regularly and know a great deal about blogging, what's with the Post choosing someone like Jane Hamsher? Is it her Hollywood connections? or the number of comments she gets to her blog--which she and company have started getting only recently?

This is a joke, Jay...and a major slap in the face to alot of women bloggers who take what they do very, very seriously.

Posted by: Tish Grier at January 25, 2006 9:56 AM | Permalink

I guess that's possible, ami. It was hard for me to tell that he was joking. But maybe I am losing my funny bone; that would be terrible if so.

Tish: Jane Hamsher is a participant in this controversy, in the sense that she suggested to her readers that the post.blog would be a good place to make their views known, and she has written extensively about it. She also has experience running a high volume site with lots of comments coming in a short period of time.

I think those are the reasons she was selected. It isn't a roundtable on "blogging," but comes in the aftermath of an incident in which she was involved. For that reason, I think it would be a mistake to take offense.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 10:19 AM | Permalink

Of course Carr was clowning. I sent him an e-mail and he actually answered it. But maybe it was only because I used the word "dystopian."

Posted by: notjonathon at January 25, 2006 10:24 AM | Permalink

"When there are so many other women who blog regularly and know a great deal about blogging, what's with the Post choosing someone like Jane Hamsher?" --Tish Grier

Doesn't the playground bully get lots of people to do what he or she wants by just the same tactics?

Fear.

But they do bullies ultimately win? That's the question... stay tuned.

Posted by: Kristen at January 25, 2006 10:38 AM | Permalink

On Carr:
I emailed him and asked. He said he and his editors believed it would scan as a joke, which is how I took it. That's David's voice: wry.

Posted by: Jeff Jarvis at January 25, 2006 12:28 PM | Permalink

If I wanted to dis-credit the newspaper--I don't--I would act in an entirely different way toward the matter of correction. I think I would continue to demand something more stringent, and formal.

jay, the Washington Post has put its archives behind a "pay for play" firewall. Without a formal correction on the original column, someone who was looking into the abramoff scandal, and went to Howell's column, would be able to say "Abramoff gave his own money to Democrats" with a great deal of confidence because of the assumption that the ombudsman has checked her facts, and her language, and isn't going to make the kind of mistake that Howell made.

it requires a formal correction --- not "clarification" elsewhere.

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 12:53 PM | Permalink

[I'm sure that, since you are so concerned with smears, you'll be happy to explain what you posted over at firedoglake:

... what's O'Reilly's problem? why did he [fail] to nail Jay and Pressthink as one of the recipients of Lewis and Soros largesse? my contacts tell me he gets the biggest check every month... Link.
Go ahead, Richard. We're listening. 'Splain.]

Jay, it really was a joke, which I thought was pretty evident from the context (responding to Hamsher's humorous rant about it), and frankly, I could care less who Soros and Peters give money

If you aren't getting any, maybe you should call them :)

Anyway, I guess I should have understood that the comment could have been misconstrued given the contentiousness of the subject (I almost included an obligatory :) at the end of it, but didn't), so it's just another cautionary example of the difference between seeing something in print, and seeing someone say it

But, please, Jay, tell me you aren't obsessively cruising Hamsher's site to read my remarks, now that really would be "terrible" (again, like Monty Python, here's where the guy comes out with the sign that says JOKE)

Posted by: Richard Estes at January 25, 2006 1:16 PM | Permalink

Many traditionalists (not all) think the online users aren't paying for their news, and the print subscriber is. What they don't know or don't want to know is that the cost of printing and trucking the paper is greater than subscriber revenue.

It has been a long time since I bought advertising, but I think the print advertising still generates the most revenues, in that sense the profit is coming from the print side. So far as I know (and I could be wrong) advertisers have yet to catch on to the significance of online readership. Currently online advertising is under priced. Obviously that is going to change.

Posted by: Alice Marshall at January 25, 2006 1:33 PM | Permalink

Alice,

The spending rate on online verses print advertising already leans in favor of online in small and medium corporate advertising budgets.

What the traditional print companies see is different from what is happening. They only see that portion spent with them.

They might be more alarmed if they saw the whole picture.

Posted by: John Lynch at January 25, 2006 2:15 PM | Permalink

well, the Post chat is done...

and there is a very serious flaw in the Post chat format --- here you had five people, four of which had something interesting to say, but there was almost no "conversation". Brady refused to respond to excellent points made by Jane and Jay, and didn't have to because Liz Kelly would just change the subject to protect Brady. (And Kelly should be taken out and smacked for allowing those questions attacking Jane....and not giving Jane a chance to respond.)

(Reynolds was a total waste -- Billmon, who shut off his comments would have been a better choice, but the Post needed political balance.)

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 2:20 PM | Permalink

When there are so many other women who blog regularly and know a great deal about blogging, what's with the Post choosing someone like Jane Hamsher?

What's with your blogwhoring, Tish?

Will Brady be inviting Reynolds to participate in the next live discussion on women's issues, I wonder? Since he's not a women, it'd make for a well-rounded panel.

Posted by: pseudonymous in nc at January 25, 2006 2:23 PM | Permalink

This "tish" person is obviously a troll.... and its obvious that the Post decided to subject Jane to a troll during their on-line chat.

"Tish" asked the same question here, and got a smart answer from jay -- one that made the answer obvious (as if it wasn't already obvious.)

And we know that this "tish" is a troll because why didn't she ask about Jay's or Jeff's or (especially) Glenn's qualifications?

I have a good mind to go over to Tish's blog, and write something nasty ---- but I suspect that is what this troll is looking for, so don't give it the pleasure.

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 2:34 PM | Permalink

I stand corrected.

As I say, it has been a long time since I bought advertising.

Posted by: Alice Marshall at January 25, 2006 2:44 PM | Permalink

Actually, Richard, someone e-mailed me about it. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. I accept your explanation.

Tish is not a troll. She tends to provoke, but not in a hit-and-run or especially trollish way.

ami: the experience of doing the chat is very fractured, and far from ideal. Liz Kelly, the chat producer, doesn't really shift the subject, as you put it. There are at any one time 10-12 and maybe more questions "open" or "locked" because someone else is answering them. The Q and A comes out as one question, then another. That is not how it's produced; and the panelists can easily overlook a question where they should, could, wanted to answer. She tries to let us know when she's about to publish one, in case we want to add something, but I was usually too busy answering someone else's Q to take notice.

Overall, I am happier with my own answers than I was after the last chat. I don't have a sense of the whole discussion, though.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 2:45 PM | Permalink

Richard,

I confess to being the spy in the house of Hamsher. I caught the humor in Carr but missed the humor in Estes. Sometimes I prefer to play Columbo :)

Posted by: Ron Brynaert at January 25, 2006 2:56 PM | Permalink

I thought it went really well overall. The fragmented quality that you mention is apparent to observers in the way questions get answered. There were some pointed questions to Jane that she didn't answer. And there were some pointed questions to Brady as well that he didn't get to. Is that intentional, or an oversight, or why didn't the recipients answer?

Also, one of you said that if Howell had appeared in comments to discuss them, rather than seeming like a distant oracle, the tone of comments might have changed. I agree entirely. You can't engage in interactivity without being interactive.

I thought you and Jarvis offered the most insight, and I also thought Brady "gets it" and is in general doing good things.

Posted by: JennyD at January 25, 2006 2:59 PM | Permalink

I enjoyed the chat, and I though Glenn Reynolds was useful -- not a "total waste" at all; now I'm actually inclined to go check out his blog, which I hadn't before. I especially liked his observation about the sense of entitlement many posters seem to have (perhaps because I've had a similar reaction). And I'm a bit less inclined to take Jane Hamsher seriously. Thanks to Jay et al. for participating.

Posted by: Brian B at January 25, 2006 3:15 PM | Permalink

There were some pointed questions to Jane that she didn't answer.

too bad none of them were on-topic, Jenny...

I think Jay made some great points, especially...

If all sides are trashing you for a poor job you could be doing something right. You could also be doing everything wrong. I mean it's possible.

and (long quote from Jay....but just about every word is essential; emphasis added)

The Post can say it "only" took four days for Howell to acknowledge something amiss, but it only takes four minutes to realize that she was wrong in what she stated as fact about Abramoff and the Democrats. Moreover, she was wrong in a way that "tracked" with Republican spin, which makes it different from a garden-variety miscue. And on top of that her first statement was begrudging in tone. This created the storm conditions that "stunned" Howell, and lit up the comment board.
From Sunday afternoon to Thursday, then, the Post and Howell were speaking loudly by doing nothing, sending the message "there's nothing amiss," or "we don't hear you," or "just the usual partisan griping." And since these signals from the Post were themselves wrong (there was something amiss, and Brady did hear...) they had the effect of compounding the original error, turning it into an insult felt by many thousands of people, who, as everyone knows, stand on the blue side of the red-blue divide in American politics. That is no disqualification for criticizing the Post.

I don't think you can understand the insults that flew at Howell--and she will never understand them--unless you start with the institutional insult I just described. There's news value for outraged readers in a big non-response. The news for them is: you don't count, even when you have a point. Not answering the criticisms of her Jack Ambramoff column was escalating behavior, and the Post began it immediately.

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 3:20 PM | Permalink

Jane at Firedoglake...

Since I've shown my willingness to play by Brady's rules, I challenge him to engage in a dialogue in a neutral playing field. One-on-one, back and forth, no "background noise," no place to hide. We can do it in an email exchange, we can do it in a live chat, we do it over at the Huffington Post or any mutually agreeable place where the ground rules are equitable to both parties.

I think Jay would make a great moderator for this discussion.... :)

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 3:38 PM | Permalink

Uh, no. That would better one-on-one. Wait a minute: you were kidding, right? You left this part out from Jane:

But the fact remains that the real debate is between me and Brady; Rosen and Jarvis were filler and Reynolds was just there as a junkyard dog. And because of all the filler, Brady was able to avoid getting pressed on a story that he has had a great deal of success fobbing off to the media which has innumerable holes if anybody with any technical sophistication were to really press him.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 3:40 PM | Permalink

well, "someone else" used the same quotes from you that I used above to criticize Jane for that statement....

shall I go over and "ditto?" :)

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 3:52 PM | Permalink

I've certainly surfed over to FDL on occassion and I'm probably politically-aligned with Jane, but she coming off as someone who isn't going to trust Brady if he says the sun is shining. She's kind of asking the same questions over and over again and when Brady has given answers to some, but not all (because not everything she's asking is in his perview or because she's not willing to read the reality into what he says) she reminds me a little of something Stephen Colbert said in an interview.

He said a lot of the fake-interviews the thing is imitating is when a reporter has a "mission" to confront a subject "why did you steal that money?" and if the subject denies or, in Stephen's case, sometimes agrees, with this mission statement in the first 30 seconds...we'll he's still got a job to do. So Jane keeps asking "why did you delete comments when most weren't profane because I saw the cached version" and Brady answers, Jane has to keep going back to that over and over again. "Yeah but why did you delete the comments?"

Its frustrating to watching someone beat Brady over the head with what are essentially stupid questions he's answered.

I'm not Jane but I think I understand Brady's answers and I believe him when he says "your not seeing the most profand comments," and "its not intentional that some comments are restored and others aren't that we're promoting some views over others." Sometimes big internet projects are just idiosycratic. There may be multiple people working on the project of "restoring" the comments and maybe they're all using different criteria. Or maybe its just an honest bug. As for Brady's comments...I think he's show a remarkable quality of being willing to say "yeah I know I said this then...I think that's wrong. I was probably wrong to use that word."

The more I read about Brady the more I agree with Jay, he's on the right side of this discussion whereas I'm believing Jane isn't anymore.

Posted by: catrina at January 25, 2006 4:20 PM | Permalink

catrina, I saw Jane more like David Gregory, hammering Brady for questions that he wasn't answering like

1) estimates and descriptions of the number of obscene/profane comments have been all over the map. How many were there, really?

2) I can't find anything inappropriate on some of these comments -- please explain why they were deleted?

These questions were "on topic" --- Jane wasn't complaining about Sue Schmidt, or even Deborah Howell, but asking about what happened, and why it happened. They were substantive questions that Brady refuses to answer -- and Jane is right to keep asking the question rather than let Brady get away with his "non-answers".

*************

(ps to jay.... looks like there is no need for me to "ditto" over at Jane's place, lots of people agree with "someone else" that she was unfair to you!)

Posted by: ami at January 25, 2006 4:27 PM | Permalink

Ami I guess reasonable people can disagree, but my take on it is:

1) He may honestly not have a real calculation. I've done some board monitoring for Smirkingchimp.com and once we delete the comments (and occassionally the threads) they're just *gone.* I don't have the capacity to restore them even if I wanted to. It may honestly have just felt like there were one too many posts that called Howell a c-word but maybe that was 10 posts out of 1000. In any case...does it matter? Is anyone doubting that WashPost needs a better system for comments and *some* kind of monitoring system? Also I'm not certain if someone came to Brady and said "this looks bad...do something" or if he made that calculation on his own. It feels like any other situation when a board or a blog is suddenly flooded unexpectedly, especially the first time it happens. People tend to panic a little and maybe overreact.

2) I think the nature of the deleted comments is because there was more than one person doing the deleting. I think it might have been idosyncratic because each person was using a little of their own judgment because the rules weren't clearly defined and frankly, it seems obvious that Wash Post was a little over its head.

I feel like asking Brady "well why was this comment deleted, well why was this comment deleted, well why was *this* comment deleted" is nitpicking because Jane doesn't want to recognize that sometimes board monitoring is messy. And even when its being done by the Wash Post its still messy.

Brady isn't quite saying this to Jane "hey, look I can't defend every deleted comment because 3 peopel were doing this and it was a hectic time and I don't always know why they thought that" but I think he's sort of hinting at it when he says "do you see a conspiracy in the fact some comments were deleted and others weren't?" I guess the difference between Jane and me is I'm seeing Brady's actions in light of a how I think a normal human being might be acting in this situation and I feel like Jane is treating each devariation from her ideal as some kind of deliberate choice.

Posted by: catrina at January 25, 2006 5:07 PM | Permalink

The "filler" image spreads. Digby's got it too: "It appears to me that this chat today was structured as a combat between Jane Hamsher and Jim Brady, with Jarvis and Rosen there as filler.."

Digby's point, however, is not that. It's...

Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 25, 2006 5:21 PM | Permalink

Just engaged in a cursory reading of the transcript, and here are some thoughts:

As much as I like Hamsher, Jay was not "filler", and he actually gave the most focused presentation. At the risk of sounding obsequious, his comments surgically focused on the big issues, and, hence, had the most damning impact.

Anyway, ami, I believe, suggested that the Post should have included a commentator on the panel, someone who actually posted a comment on the Post blog, and this would have been a good idea, because there were several issues that a commentator could have highlighted that evaded the panelists

this would be es

(1) consistent with Jay's remarks that the Post has not considered how it's journalists can learn from this experience, learn from the Internet readers themselves, the Post persists in seeing the identity of the people who posted in response to Howell's column as part of a bipolar, political world, Republicans and Democrats, but this isn't true, and hasn't been true for a long time, as I said before, I'm registered as DECLINE TO STATE, and live in a state, California, where such voters may become a plurality of all registered voter in the near future;

so, sometimes I think what I read on firedoglake and DailyKos is important (and, of course, I read a lot of other blogs as well), but, frequently, and most often, I don't, and I also frequently disagree with what I read there, so the Post should give serious thought as to why so