The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel Resigns Following Strange Semi-Scandal

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Vanity Fair

Dave Weigel, The Washington Post’s embed in conservative grassroots movements, has resigned this afternoon following an incident earlier this week involving Matt Drudge, the blog Fishbowl D.C., and a private e-mail listserv. Let’s back up. Yesterday, Fishbowl D.C.’s Betsy Rothstein published some missives from Weigel that he had originally sent to JournoList, a large private listserv of pundits, journalists, and political staffers founded by fellow Post colleague Ezra Klein. Eric Alterman’s a member, and so is Jeffrey Toobin! This Rothstein gal had obtained the e-mails through means unknown and decided to publish them, for perhaps she thought this would be some sort of hot scoop. Instead, she was widely castigated for posting the personal messages—it is understood among JournoList subscribers that all correspondence is off-the-record. “I’m leaking that Betsy Rothstein is America’s worst journalist. Hopefully she’ll pick it up for a Fishbowl story,” wrote FireDogLake’s David Dayen on Twitter.

The most salacious of the leaked Weigel e-mails included a harshly worded criticism of Matt Drudge, the famous copy-and-paste auteur behind the Drudge Report. "This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire,” wrote Weigel. In another e-mail, he used the word “Paultard” to describe fanatical Ron Paul supporters. Later, Tucker Carlson’s Huffington Post, the Daily Caller, published more e-mails from Weigel in which he made incendiary statements about Newt Gingrich, the Republican Party, and Pat Buchanan, among others. Matt Drudge linked to the story, driving so many readers to the maybe: Daily Caller’s Web site that it eventually crashed.





Read more: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/the-washington-posts-dave-weigel-resigns-following-strange-semi-scandal.html#ixzz0rtXMCOz8

[MgtPA]

1. "This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional...

..."problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire”

LOL!

[Jazzgirl]

2. LOL! I pretty much agree!

n/t

[wordpix]

5. gave me my laugh for the day, too. This gem alone puts Weigel up in my book

Great writer! :rofl:

[SILVER__FOX52]

3. Only in America.....

Fired for telling the truth.

[struggle4progress]

4. Washington Post Accepts Dave Weigel’s Resignation Because He’s Not Crazy

,,, Weigel’s initial offense, if one can call it that, is that he wrote something negative about Matt Drudge on a private e-mail list, and some jerk violated the rules and published it to discredit Weigel. Weigel then apologized. It doesn’t matter that Drudge deserved it; it only mattered that someone the Post hired to cover the right would write something bad about one of the right’s wurlitzer propagandists.

Whatever you think of his political perspective, Weigel seemed to me a guy from a forgotten era, someone who, having made a mistake, would try to do the honorable thing, expecting that a world that respects honor will reciprocate. But the Washington Post is not an honorable newspaper, and the people who run it aren’t very bright.

Ben Smith argues they hired Dave because they mistakenly believed he was a conservative (or wanted to represent him as such), but his bosses came to believe that because he thought some on the right have become insane, he must be a liberal — so they couldn’t keep up the pretense.

This tells you much more about the Washington Post than Weigel ...

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/56667

[wordpix]

6. or---could it be---Wiegel was actually reporting on the wacky right as a journalist should?

i.e., just the facts?

For that, he's fired. Go figure.

[depakid]

11. "This tells you much more about the Washington Post than Weigel"

It surely does.

The Post became an utter laughingstock after Katharine Graham passed away. I'd sooner click on a fox "news" link than read what anyone at that sorry publication has to say.

[struggle4progress]

7. On Journolist, and Dave Weigel

I began Journolist in February of 2007. It was an idea born from disagreement. Weeks, or maybe months, earlier, I had criticized Time's Joe Klein over some comments he made about the Iraq War. He e-mailed a long and searching reply, and the subsequent conversation was educational for us both. Taking the conversation out of the public eye made us less defensive, less interested in scoring points. I learned about his position, and why he held it, in ways that I wouldn't have if our argument had remained in front of an audience.

The experience crystallized an idea I'd been kicking around for some time. I was on all sorts of e-mail lists, but none that quite got at the daily work of my job: Following policy and political trends in both the expert community and the media. But I always knew how much I was missing. There were only so many phone calls I could make in a day. There were only so many times when I knew the right question to ask. By not thinking of the right person to interview, or not asking the right question when I got them on the phone, or not intuiting that an economist would have a terrific take on the election, I was leaving insights on the table ....

At the beginning, I set two rules for the membership. The first was the easy one: No one who worked for the government in any capacity could join. The second was the hard one: The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left. I didn't like that rule, but I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other. A bipartisan list would be a more formal debating society. Plus, as Liz Mair notes, there were plenty of conservative list servs, and I knew of military list servs, and health-care policy list servs, and feminist list servs. Most of these projects limited membership to facilitate a particular sort of conversation. It didn't strike me as a big deal to follow their example.

But over the years, Journolist grew, and as it grew, its relative exclusivity became more infamous, and its conversations became porous. The leaks never bothered me, though. What I didn't expect was that a member of the list, or someone given access by a member of the list, would trawl through the archives to assemble a dossier of quotes from one particular member and then release them to an interested media outlet to embarrass him. But that's what happened to David Weigel. Private e-mails were twisted into a public story ...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/on_journolist_and_dave_weigel.html

[boppers]

14. ...and so it ends.

"In any case, Journolist is done now. I'll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That's not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion."

I'm on a couple of listserv's like this: Private membership, have to get a vote to be on it, and the list discussions, content, and archives are extremely private. What Journalist *didn't* do, and *should have* done, is require posters to be anonymous, and use pseudonyms.

I wouldn't be surprised if Journolist's successor list has already started.... with just such a rule.

[struggle4progress]

8. Dave Weigel's Firing: The Backstory And Meaning

When he arrived at a party on the Huffington Post's D.C. office roof-deck on Thursday evening, Washington Post reporter/blogger David Weigel felt secure in his job. Earlier in the day, the media-focused site FishbowlDC had published a series of off-the-record emails written by Weigel in which he had disparaged members of the conservative movement that he covers.

But after checking with the powers that be at the Washington Post, it was relayed to him that they found the material not consequential enough to be a firing offense. Weigel, a well-regarded chronicler of all things Tea Party, had been an immediate success at the paper, and his offer of resignation was seen as highly gratuitous.

By Friday morning, however, things had changed. Weigel made a call to the Huffington Post at roughly 10:15 a.m. to privately relay that he was, in fact, leaving the Post. A new set of off-record Weigel emails had been disclosed to The Daily Caller disclosing even more snide quips about major conservative players (as well as comments expressing hope that health care reform would pass Congress).

The conservative-leaning website was ostensibly making the argument that Weigel was no longer objective enough to cover his beat. The Post editors agreed. The resignation he offered the night before was now viewed as the best path forward. And by noon the final deal had been struck to end Weigel's three-month run at the paper ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/25/dave-weigels-firing-the-b_n_625836.html

[genna]

12. Did anyone else see Howard Kurtz response on the very end of Reliable Sources?

Did you think that was over the top or what? It was like a one, maybe two, sentence reply to the kind outcry on this thread.

Something like: He was biased and had to go.

This doesn't describe why they keep some of their other writers.

[Champion Jack]

9. Anybody else notice that Dave Weigel looks like he could be

Charlie Sheens brother?

[MaineDem]

10. One less reason to read the Post now

I'm sorry to see him go. The Post should have been smart enough to not let him go. But he'll bounce back.

[GlennWRECK]

13. The truth hurts!