| Today is Dan Froomkin's last day at the Washington Post.
You have to question the paper's decision to drop Froomkin: he was a voice of clarity during the Bush years, always ready to criticize the press -- especially the WH correspondents -- for not reporting the news, perhaps the real scandal of the last decade. And he hadn't gone easy on the Obama administration, either.
True to form, Froomkin pulls no punches in his last column:
How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.
Your guess is as good as mine why the Post would want to drop Froomkin. Was it an economic decision? Was the blog seen primarily as an "anti-Bush" site rendered obsolete by the Obama presidency? Or did Froomkin's unflinching reportage of American presidents cut too close to the quick for a newspaper that in large part went along with the madness?
James Fallows:
We all have heard the reasons that the press is under pressure by forces not of its making. This is an example of a self-inflicted wound. Are papers like the Post under suspicion for being too insidery and old-media-y? How does it make sense get rid of an independent minded, new media, presumably not-that-expensive, non-Washington-cliquey voice on politics and the media and leave... well, the full opinion and media lineup the Post is sticking with? Some people tell me that it's a mistake to say that the Post's editorial page (and the weight of its op-ed lineup) has "become" neo-con and establishment-minded under its current editor, Fred Hiatt; the argument is that this is the Post's long tradition, which its anti-Nixon crusade concealed. I don't know. But I would have liked to have heard the argument about why Froomkin was the necessary next person to cut.
I'm sorry to see Froomkin leave the paper. Here's to hoping he sets up shop somewhere else, and soon. |
