There will be no objectivity in this diary. No disinterested analysis. I am going to speak from my heart, about people I know.
My thesis: We are far better of with The Washington Post than we would ever be without it.
I say this despite the organization's significant flaws, which have been on full public display of late and have been the subject of an avalanche of criticism and gleeful piling on around here and elsewhere in Blogistan. I say this because, unlike most of the commenters, I know some of the journalists there personally. And even the ones I never met, I believe I understand.
There are Post reporters who were my classmates in college. There are others I worked with at other newspapers before they made their way to the Post. A Post reporter's brother sits next to me at my job in Kansas City.
I know these people. I know them in the way you can only know someone you have worked long hours with, not for money or fame, but because you believe the work was something that mattered. You did it because you believed you were playing an essential role in democracy, and protecting the public interest. And after the next day's paper was put to bed, you would go out together and drink cheap beer in a low-rent watering hole, and bitch and moan about the lousy pay and the lack of resources and the bosses who often acted more like they were part of the power structure than like watchdogs providing a check on that power.
And then we went home and crawled into bed and got up the next day and went back and did it all over again. Not because we were blind to the flaws of modern journalism; we saw them closer and more vividly than anyone. We kept at it because we knew that, on balance, we did far more good than harm, and that part of our job every day was to have our hands on the steering wheel too, and to try as best we could to keep that rolling vehicle going in the right direction.
There is no denying that the salons-for-sale fiasco gave the paper a black eye. Thomas C's diary is a scathing indictment of the flawed thinking and poor judgment that created the mess.
But I also know that the Post is an organization in a desperate situation, fighting to stay alive and floundering for solutions to its fiscal crisis. I agree with doc2's comment in that diary:
They fucked up. They apologized. You can parse away as much as you'd like, but my point is simply this: they are human, have fucked up before and will fuck up again, and this whole episode is merely one episode in an organization that boasts a pretty long and important history.
Oh yeah, history. That's one reason I feel compelled to stand up for the Post.
I still remember 1968. I was pretty young, but those dark and awful days are still seared into my memory. The rise of Richard Nixon was a scary thing. He marshalled all the awesome power of the federal government -- from the military to the CIA to the IRS -- to cement his hold on power and to initiate a campaign of destruction against the people on his vaunted "enemies list."
One institution in this country had the courage to take him on and bring him down. The Washington Post. The newspaper that saved the Republic.
"Ancient history," you say. "What have they done for us lately?"
Well, there was the Walter Reed expose for one; I could cite plenty of other examples, but the point is that the Post is still doing a hell of a lot of meaningful, important, worthwhile journalism on a daily basis.
I'm not saying Dana Milbank isn't a complete dick for calling Nico Pitney a dick, or for otherwise going completely unhinged over Pitney getting called on at the Obama press conference. Not every journalist I ever worked with was a selfless public servant; some were jerks. And Millbank was in full jerk mode in that Reliable Sources segment.
By the way, any jerks in your workplace? Do they single-handedly invalidate the entire organization?
Also, let's not forget that this has been a two-way pissing match for some time. The blogosphere loves to take its shots at the Post, at The New York Times, and any other member of the traditional media that makes a misstep, real or imagined.
I want to see the Post survive, and eventually thrive again. Not for the sake of Milbank or Howie Kurtz or George Will, but for the hundreds of dedicated journalists there that you never see preening away on TV, but who do the grunt work of daily journalism with professionalism and dedication.
For them, and for the people who depend on them.