The Austin American-Statesmen has apologized for its bizarre hit job on Netroots Nation.
But frankly, when I bought the Austin American-Statesman at the Hilton’s lobby coffee shop on Sunday morning, I was just looking to catch up on some national news and the baseball scores. Yet, staring me right in the face, just below the fold on the left side of the front page, was a report on the conference by one Patrick Beach, who was IDed as a “feature writer.” That label often means trouble on the front page, and it certainly did here.
Beach described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of these bloggers have ever read much of Chomsky, as he suggested?
When Beach, at the start referred to the crowd as "marauding liberals" I knew it was not to be taken literally. But then we got this:
-- The audience nearly staged a "faint-in" when Gore appeared (note use of '60s term).
-- Pelosi is so far left her title should include "(D-Beijing)." This would come as a surprise to many in the crowd who have criticized her timidity – and posed hostile questions in the Q & A..
-- The liberal blogosphere is "terribly self-confirming" -- not like the mainstream media! In a contradiction, he then noted that at the conference they "critiqued themselves."
-- Paul Krugman, as if to "galvanize stereotypes," wore Birkenstocks -- but Beach throughout the article clearly needed no help in having his own stereotypes galvanized.
-- It's shooting fish in a barrel "to paint liberals as overly intellectual types incapable of having fun unless reading Noam Chomsky counts, and its sure does for them." In fact, the convention was practically "party central," few attendees were "intellectuals," and only a tiny percentage, I would guess, are Chomsky lovers -- again, an outmoded stereotype.
-- Those who protested during the Pelosi/Gore "faint-in" were "shushed" as if they were at a Nanci Griffith concert. I certainly know who she is, but I can imagine most of these particular attendees reading this reference and asking, "Who???"
Um, yeah ... who?
In any case, Mitchell, who is editor of Editor & Publisher, wrote a diary about this piece. Really, had it been stuck in the op-ed section and clearly labeled "opinion" would've been stupid yet still appropriate. But on the front page, masquerading as news? It was patently ridiculous.
After Mitchell's diary unleashed I'm sure a torrent of letters to the editor directed at the newspaper, the story disappeared from the paper's website, scrubbed clean of any traces of its existence. People emailing the author, this aforementioned Patrick Beach, received responses that they just didn't get the hilarity of his humorous account. Now, the paper's editor has published an apology:
"Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.
"Our front-page story Sunday about the Netroots Nation convention included doses of irony and exaggeration. It made assertions (that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might find herself at home politically in Beijing, for example) and characterizations ("marauding liberals" was one) meant to amuse. For many readers, we failed.
"In trying for a humorous take on the Netroots phenomenon without labeling it something other than a straightforward news story, we compromised our standards."
Now wouldn't it be nice if Time followed suit with its own correction of its inaccurate netroots reporting? I'm guessing not. "Accountability" is apparently not a Time Magazine organizational value.
Update: Looky here -- Time has made a correction.
The original version of this story said that Hillary Clinton's appearance at a 2007 Netroots Q&A session was greeted by boos. The writer confused that event with accounts of another Clinton appearance that had taken place earlier. Clinton was not booed at the Netroots event.
Good thing the piece wasn't written by Joe Klein, otherwise there never would've been a correction.