A big welcome, everyone, to Susan Glasser, the WaPo's new head honcho over national news. In 1998, Glasser "helped to direct The Post's coverage of the Monica Lewinsky investigation and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton," and she's more recently been editor of the Post's Outlook section, which is its Sunday expanded op-ed section.
I honestly don't know that much about Glasser, but we know what the WaPo's coverage of Clinton/Lewinsky was like. And just as an example of her work on the Outlook section, consider the Sunday, November 12 edition.
This was the Sunday after a rather important midterm election. Glasser wasted none of her eight pages to discussion of what the midterm results meant. Instead, she devoted a huge chunk of the section to...the 2008 Presidential race. Yes, indeedy, we can't waste any time on analysis: we gotta jump right into the next horse race.
The headline story, which ran for most of two pages all by itself, was "Is America too Racist for Barack? Too Sexist for Hillary?" and under the banner, "The Election Is Over. Let the Election Begin," Joe Trippi and Ed Rogers were given another page to comment on the horse-race prospects of the assorted Dem and GOP candidates for 2008.
But in all fairness, to make sure that week's Outlook section wasn't entirely about the next Presidential election, she balanced it with...a puff piece about Don Rumsfeld written by Doug Feith, "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," according to Gen. Tommy Franks.
So to say I'm less than sanguine about Glasser being in charge of national news at the WaPo is an understatement. The tone of the WaPo's political coverage has already had too much to do with the Gang of 500 and too little attempt on the paper's part to think for itself; there's no reason to expect that's going to get anything but worse.
That's all I have to say about it, but just for the record, here are some quotes from the WaPo story on Glasser's new assignment:
Susan B. Glasser, a Washington Post editor, political reporter and foreign correspondent, has been named assistant managing editor for national news, the paper announced yesterday.
Glasser, 37, who has been editor of The Post's Outlook section since January, will direct coverage of American politics, Congress and the executive branch, national security, science and the environment, as well as the paper's seven news bureaus throughout the United States.
In their memo, Downie and Bennett praised Glasser's "transforming journalistic vision" in leading Outlook for the past 11 months. "We expect her to be similarly innovative in leading the National staff at a time of great opportunity and challenge," they said.
Glasser joined The Post in 1998 as deputy national editor for investigations after serving as editor of Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress. She helped to direct The Post's coverage of the Monica Lewinsky investigation and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
That's what we WaPo readers have to look forward to.