WaPo ombud has sympathy for a blogger
* Patrick Pexton: The Washington Post fails a young blogger
* Earlier: Flock resigns after second editor’s note attached to her column
7 comments
* Patrick Pexton: The Washington Post fails a young blogger
* Earlier: Flock resigns after second editor’s note attached to her column
Pexton is right. It’s astonishing what newspapers are willing to do online that undermines all the care and effort they and their reporters and editors have invested in the product over generations. The slop that makes up the bulk of many papers’ Web products — a lot of it the form of reader comments — is the product not so much of young, overworked employees as it is of management’s inattention and flailing about inspired by corporate types who have stuck their damned noses way too far into the news operation. This is a disgrace and insult to readers but also to the many print journalists over the years who have worked hard to uphold a much higher standard.
I agree with Pexton. Something similar happened to me at a different large news organization. Early on, my boss took a disliking to me, for reasons unknown, and everything I did was wrong.
One time, a story was fine because the boss mistakenly thought someone else edited it. When it became clear I edited it, I was criticized for doing a bad editing job. Another time, a story idea of mine was berated by my boss. When the identical idea was floated a month later by someone else, my boss loved it.
The pressure, lack of support, lack of training and other such factors are a failure of the organization. To blame this one young reporter for a bigger institutionalized failing is reprehensible.
That is the most idiotic piece of slop I have ever read, and that includes Khristopher Brooks’ blog. There are plenty of young journalists who don’t fuck up even when handling even greater responsibility than a blog. If this douche thinks 5-9 blog posts during a day is a huge amount of work, he needs to work a cop shift at a small daily somewhere. That actually involves all original reporting, unlike this “aggregation” crap. This ombud got fed a line by these twerps, and swallowed it whole.
In the simplest possible terms, it goes like this:
First. Let’s look at the Washington Post. I’ve lived in D.C. If the Post was in any other town, no one would read it. It’s a small-town paper in a highly desirable market. But if you read it critically, it is a wholly ordinary paper. I’ve seen plenty of papers with plenty of people who were just as good, just as devoted.
Second. The bloggers are finally coming home to roost. After cutting away all the old talent, the papers now have mostly young people who, for the most part, are in over their heads. Some of them have all the right instincts, all the right brains, but it’s like having one person in a platoon who understands that there’s a minefield up ahead. None of the others have the “with it” to comprehend what’s coming.
Third. As a culture, we’ve embraced, wholecloth, the outright theft of effort that is cut-and-paste aggregating. The reason for a lack of attribution is that the aggregators don’t understand how hard it is to produce the 300 words they just cut the heart and soul out of.
Four. It will only get worse. Isn’t the New York Times due for another plagiarism scandal by now?
“cut-and-paste aggregating”
The person who runs this site is an expert on that.
The harshness of the corrections indicates the editors considered the Web aggregator an expendable, low-status employee, unlike the “real” print-based reporters, who get more gentle treatment when they err.
I’d say the harshness indicates the severity of the mistakes. But if you have an example of a print-based reporter getting gentle treatment, that would help your cause.