Wash Post Internal Message Board Comments? Very Mysterious!

[kpete]

Washington Post internal message board comments?
by sphealey
Thu Nov 17, 2005 at 02:19:50 PM PDT

Via Atrios,Media Bistro is posting what purports to be a transcript of the Washington Post's internal message board discussion of the Woodward sitution:

(Kpete:link is busted - goes to network solutions under construction.
KOS and ATRIOS had this up for awhile and it has gone down. Lots of very interesting posts and comments! What's up.)

Some samples:

Charles Babington: I feel like we're ignoring the 800-pound elephant on our front page: Bob Woodward. Every day, scores of Post reporters press, cajole, badger, demand, implore people to tell us things they might not want to. When they demur, we try to convince them they should talk to the Washington Post even if they talk to no one else. Today we report that our assistant managing editor, and surely our most famous staffer, "declined to elaborate on the statement he released to The Post late yesterday afternoon and publicly last night. He would not answer any questions, including those not governed by his confidentiality agreement with sources." I admire the hell out of Bob, but this looks awful.

Robert E. Pierre: Chuck is right. It does look awful and it impacts on the credibility that each of us individually, and collectively, have as we make our case to people about why they should trust us. I certainly understand that national security and the presidency and the Supreme Court are murky topics that sometimes will require us to make deals with people to get information. But I think this whole affair of journalists and politicians using anonymity to trade information and then cast themselves as protectors of the common good stinks.

Jonathan Yardley: The comment of mine two paragraphs above has been leaked, presumably by someone in the newsroom, to the New York Times. Katharine Seelye called me an hour ago pressing for further comment. I declined, stressing that this is a confidential internal critique written solely for the news staff of TWP and refusing to authorize her to quote from it.

Under LEAKY at
http://atrios.blogspot.com/
and
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/17/161950/70

[LeftNYC]

1. So Pierre, whatcha gonna do 'bout it? nt

[marylanddem]

2. These WaPo reporters enjoy their celebrity status to the max -

and then whine about their lack of privacy? Fuck 'em.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Whoa -- I recommend reading the link from mediabistro via atrios. nt

[kpete]

5. How do I get to that link

mediabistro that is???

[DeepModem Mom]

7. When you click that link under "Leaky," you're at mediabistro. nt

[Tempest]

4. WA Post's ombudswoman receiving hundreds of calls - all bad

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001524052

Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell has received hundreds of calls and e-mails from readers since yesterday's revelations about Bob Woodward's involvement in the Valerie Plame case, and none of them are positive.

"I am getting a lot of reaction and, from readers, it is all bad," Howell told E&P today, referring to the fallout from Woodward's disclosure that he spoke to a confidential White House source about Plame in 2003. "We are being barraged with calls. They think it was wrong for him not to tell his editors and wrong for the Post not to tell readers."

[kpete]

6. Found it. Wow, I feel like a peeping tom...

A Leaky Post Newsroom
The Post's internal critiques are proving to be a real opportunity for internal discussion -- and the critiques in the wake of the Bob Woodward controversy of this week are no exception.
Now in the wake of more revelations and debates over leaked information, the internal message boards are humming with a debate over, well, leaks from the message boards.

Today they're debating the propriety of the critiques, given that the more interesting ones often end up leaking outside the newsroom--and being posted on blogs, running in Washingtonian magazine, and even--horror of horrors--being quoted by Howard Kurtz in the paper itself.
"I hardly see any point in having critiques and comments if they are to be publicized outside the paper. How can we write candidly when candor merely invites violations of confidentiality? Many readers say they distrust us. Well, now I find myself wondering if we can trust each other," the Post's Jonathan Yardley writes.


http://www.mediabistro.org/fishbowlDC/newspapers/a_leaky_post_newsroom_28379.asp#more