Free Republic

Washington Post closing all US bureaus outside DC The Washington Post is closing its last US bureaus outside the nation's capital as the money-losing newspaper retrenches to focus on politics and local news. Published: 12:48AM GMT 25 Nov 2009 "At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," the newspaper's editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters. The Post will...

Yesterday, the White House announced that it was removing Alma Thomas’ plagiaristic piece “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from its walls. The White House announced that the painting was moved “because it didn’t fit the space right.” The Washington Post pointed out that posters at FreeRepublic.com had examined the similarity between “Watusi (Hard Edge)” and Henri Matisse’s “The Snail” (1953), ignoring the fact that Big Hollywood actually broke the story. The Washington Post covered for the White House, explaining, “Stephens’s explanation makes sense because it is inconceivable that the White House’s art experts would imagine Thomas’s painting was fraudulent or a copy...

Bob McDonnell won big tonight in the Virginia gubernatorial race, as did the entire Virginia Republican party. The implications of the race will be sorted out soon enough. But one big loser is the Washington Post which may unwittingly have helped the Republican, despite their best efforts to put his opponent over the top. On the last weekend in August the Post ran the first of dozens of stories about McDonnell's 1989 masters' thesis, in which he wrote, among other things, that working women were detrimental to families and that government should favor traditional marriage over gay unions. While they...

The NYT is calling Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of the Washington Post, a liar. The NYT has reported this morning -- in a brief, buried "postscript" in the corrections column -- that it now has evidence that Brauchli lied last July when he told the NYT that he didn't know the paper's controversial corporate-sponsored dinner parties would be off-the-record. The NYT doesn't state flatly that Brauchli lied. But the juxtaposition of the two Brauchli statements in the postscript make clear the NYT's position that he misrepresented the truth in interviews with the NYT. [UPDATE: In an email to The...

When Hell freezes over five times in succession and rhinoceri write sonnets on Pluto, the Washington Post's Robin Givhan will stop writing love letters to Michelle Obama. Here the Obamas broke precedent and put the prestige of the presidency on the line, as well as ignoring much more pressing problems at home, all for a spectacularly unsuccessful and remarkably narcissistic effort to secure the Olympics for the Chicago Way, and all Givhan can do is gush about how wonderfully Michelle Obama had performed anyway. Givhan wrote that the First Lady "was her team's most valuable player." And, quoting others, ""She...

The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post are breaking up their news service after 47 years, making it the latest casualty of the media upheaval driven by the array of alternative information and entertainment sources on the Internet.

Veteran Washington Post reporter Daryl Fears, part of a two-person writer team, unmistakably wrote that filmmaker John O'Keefe had “said” he “targeted” ACORN, the advocacy group, for his candid-camera expose, because it registered voters to defeat Republicans. O'Keefe said no such thing. It was a non-quote made out of whole cloth by reporter Fears, and published as fact on Sept. 17. Making the falsehood exponentially worse, the Post story then was retailed worldwide by the Associated Press.

A few weeks ago Washington Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti rued in this tweet via his Twitter account: “We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.” Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander cited the tweet in a Friday night blog post about how the newspaper has issued new guidelines, on the use of social network sites, which state “nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment.” That forced Narisetti to close his Twitter account. Alexander recounted:...

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum serves up a sickening rationale to excuse film director Roman Polanski fleeing justice for his rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in the 1970s: the Holocaust.Polanski was arrested today in Switzerland on an arrest warrant based on his fleeing justice in 1977.Wrote Applebaum in a web posting at "Post Partisan":He can be blamed, it is true, for his original, panicky decision to flee. But for this decision I see mitigating circumstances, not least an understandable fear of irrational punishment. Polanski's mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later...

Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig being the Washington reporters who did their level best to make their story about James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles racial: Though O’Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans. “Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” he said. “No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and...

To Bob Woodward, it was the modern-day equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. But to Obama administration officials, the classified assessment of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan represented, if published by The Washington Post, a potential threat to the safety of U.S. troops. The result was that The Post agreed to a one-day delay in publishing the report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, and that the paper's top editor engaged in a lengthy discussion Sunday with three top Defense Department officials in a meeting at the Pentagon... Woodward said in an interview Tuesday...

The Washington Post today published on page A2 a correction to a September 18 article on James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the duo behind "The $1,300 Mission to Fell ACORN" (h/t NewsBusters tipster Sean O'Brien): A Sept. 18 Page One article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly becase its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention them. In other words: sorry we tagged you...

The liberal political organizing group ACORN faced internal chaos and allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud long before two young conservatives embarrassed the group with undercover videos made at field offices in Washington and across the country.

Fox Newsevangelist Glenn Beck might be the most prayed for man in America at the moment -- which could be good news for all of us. A few weeks ago, Beck urged his conservative Christian followers to pray for his protection. "There is (billionaire George) Soros money now being funneled to stop me. The biggest names, the most powerful people on the planet on the left -- I've told you before, they're not going to go away easy . . . Please, keep me in your prayers, keep my staff in your prayers, for safety, for wisdom, please." Meanwhile, over...

<p>A provocative full-page newspaper ad from Fox News drew heated reactions from its rivals today and one demand that The Washington Post apologize for running it.</p> <p>Over photos of protesters gathering for an "anti-tax" rally in Washington last Saturday, the ad asked: "How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN Miss This Story?"</p>

After a month without Lines -- on Friday or any other day -- Fixistas need their, um, Fix. And, of course, we aim to please. So this week we are doing two Lines -- one today looking at the ten most influential Republican leaders in the party and then one tomorrow ranking the ten Senate races most likely to switch parties in 2010. Republicans have seen something of a reversal of fortune since we last penned a Line looking at their relatively meager list of leaders. (snip) 10. John Cornyn 9. Sarah Palin 8. Mitch Daniels 7. Mike Huckabee 6....

Without ever having been reviewed by either the New York Times or the Washington Post, Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto has now sold one million copies, according to its publisher, Threshold Editions. Levin is a nationally syndicated radio host, president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and served as chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Ed Meese in the Reagan Justice Department. Liberty and Tyranny has been riding high on non-fiction bestseller lists ever since it was released in late March. It debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best seller list and has remained in...

On Sunday, the home page of the Washington Post website buried the 9-12 rally in tiny type, while the rotating photos at the top of the page were all local stories. On Monday, one of those rotating photos highlighted a Post story on the front of the Metro section on how people attending the Black Family Reunion think that tens of thousands of Americans came to Washington not because they love freedom, but because they hate black people. Metro reporter Yamiche Alcindor began: On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters thronged to the U.S. Capitol to angrily accuse President Obama...

When Democrat R. Creigh Deeds began attacking his rival on abortion and other social issues in the Virginia governor's race, Republican Robert F. McDonnell refused to respond beyond saying that the actions were those of a desperate, flailing campaign.

"Nobody's Standing up for us so we have to stand up for ourselves"

Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years. Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters. Analysts suggested that the new Newsweek is modeling its editorial strategy on England's Economist, and now it appears to be doing the same thing with its business strategy....

The Washington Post puts the large, emerging 9-12 protest rally at the top of the front page today, but insist on playing up the fringe elements, "right-wing nutballs" and "freaks" – something liberal journalists very rarely did when covering anti-war, anti-Bush events. They often fail to place those protesters on the left. But reporters Dan Eggen and Perry Bacon Jr identified ideology immediately. "With tens of thousands of conservative protesters expected in Washington on Saturday" are the first words. The story carries five conservative labels from the reporters. The fourth paragraph quotes "Republican" adviser Mark McKinnon – but fails to...

The marketing executive at the center of The Washington Post’s discredited plan to charge power-brokers for private dinners with the paper’s publisher and journalists has resigned from The Post, the paper disclosed on Friday. The Post had sent fliers to lobbyists and trade groups, inviting them to pay $25,000 or more to sponsor salons at the home of Katharine Weymouth, the publisher — off-the-record dinners with reporters, editors and government officials. The plan became public in July, drawing sharp criticism from journalists in and out of the paper, and The Post quickly dropped it.

The marketing executive at the center of a controversial series of Washington Post-sponsored dinner "salons" has resigned from the newspaper some 10 weeks after the events were canceled, The Post said Friday. Charles Pelton, who had helped organize and promote the monthly dinners as The Post's newly hired general manager of events and conferences, made no mention of the controversy in his resignation letter to Post President Stephen P. Hills. Instead, Pelton wrote, "Given the current circumstances with regard to the resources needed to launch [an events business], my family and I have decided not to relocate to Washington, D.C.,"...

In my previous blogposts on the Washington Post news pages’ campaign to “Macaca” Virginia Republican governor nominee Bob McDonnell by running story after story on McDonnell’s 1989 Regent University thesis—Republican Governors Association operative Nick Ayers has noted 34 such pieces, including articles, blogposts, cartoons, editorials and on-line chats—I have purposely refrained from citing opinion articles, since after all opinion writers can legitimately try to influence readers and readers are on notice that this is so. But I’ll make an exception here for Metro columnist Robert McCartney’s Sunday analysis in which he argues, persuasively, that the McDonnell thesis isn’t likely to...

Even when an Obama aide is forced to resign after it's revealed he's so radical he signed his name to 9/11 conspiracy theories and belonged to Marxist revolutionary groups, The Washington Post is still buttering him up as a "legendary" and "towering" figure of the environmental movement. This leaves the question: how radical then, is the environmental movement? (And yet, notice that's the Post's indirect way of suggesting someone's a left-wing warrior.) On page 3 of Saturday's newspaper, reporters Garance Franke-Ruta and Anne Kornblut used the L word, legendary: Jones, a legendary figure in the environmental movement, has worked for...

Politicos, pundits and armchair campaign managers around the country are keeping a close eye on this year’s gubernatorial contest in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The stakes couldn’t be higher. In fact, many analysts believe this race (among others) may forecast things to come in the 2010 and 2012 elections ± up to and including the battle for the White House. That’s why it’s of little surprise that a branch of the Democratic Party’s media propaganda machine — the unabashedly liberal Washington Post – would, per usual, abandon any semblance of journalistic integrity and rush to the aid of State Senator...

We now have definitive proof that the Washington Post is intentionally generating in-kind contributions to the Creigh Deeds campaign in Virginia. Having taken out George Allen over his macaca comment, the Washington Post intends to politically assassinate Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell for his college thesis written over 20 years ago. How do we know? Because of their coverage of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones. The Washington Post has written exactly zero stories on Van Jones despite the very real and serious story — Barack Obama has hired, without congressional oversight, a man designated to spend $80 billion in tax...

Politicos, pundits and armchair campaign managers around the country are keeping a close eye on this year’s gubernatorial contest in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The stakes couldn’t be higher. In fact, many analysts believe this race (among others) may forecast things to come in the 2010 and 2012 elections – up to and including the battle for the White House. That’s why it’s of little surprise that a branch of the Democratic Party’s propaganda machine – the unabashedly liberal Washington Post – would, per usual, abandon any semblance of journalistic integrity and rush to the aid of State Senator Creigh...

In an editorial today titled "Sorry Charlie," the Washington Post called on Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) to step down as House Ways and Means Chairman. The editorial comes in the wake of Rangel amending his financial disclosure forms for the years 2002 to 2007, showing that his net worth was roughly double what he previously claimed. The Post called Rangel’s revised filings “a treasure trove of outrage.” Rangel’s amendments were prompted by increased scrutiny of his finances after NLPC exposed his failure to disclose (or pay taxes on) rental income from his beachfront “villa” at the Punta Cana resort in...

Has the Washington Post found its new “macaca,” the journalistic storyline to steer Virginia voters away from a GOP candidate? In 2006, the District’s major paper printed a rash of stories recounting something then-Sen. George Allen said during a public event about an opponent‘s staffer. The paper used Allen’s use of the word “macaca” as a cudgel to bludgeon his re-election chances. And it worked. The stories blanketed the paper, from the historical derivations of the word “macaca” to Allen’s attempts to explain precisely what he meant. Here’s the Aug. 15, 2006 Washington Post article’s initial attempt to whip up...

The Washington Post on Wednesday increased its frenzied attack on Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, featuring two stories in the paper’s Metro section, an op-ed and a cartoon. Including opinion pieces, the Post has delivered six articles in four days on the Republican's 1989 master’s thesis about families and government policy. In an article with the loaded title "McDonnell Tries to Salvage Women’s Votes," Rosalind S. Helderman and Sandhya Somashekhar described how the candidate is trying to "help rebuild his relationship with the key voting bloc, damaged in recent days by the publication of his 1989 master's thesis." Helderman and...

WASHINGTON -- Two Washington Post journalists are apologizing and their satirical online video series has been canceled following criticism of a joke they told about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the "Mouthpiece Theater" series Wednesday after pulling the latest episode from the paper's Web site Friday. In the video, columnist Dana Milbank and White House correspondent and blogger Chris Cillizza appeared in smoking jackets to discuss the kinds of beer politicians might drink. Milbank said he couldn't reveal to whom President Barack Obama would serve a drink called "Mad B---- Beer." That line...

I’ll give you the sample up front to save you time. Dems 33, Reps 22, Inds 41; Libs 20, Mods 39, Cons 38. That’s actually the smallest percentage of Democrats sampled in a WaPo poll in 18 months. The good news? She’ll have plenty of time and money now, thanks to SarahPAC, to turn the numbers around. The bad news: The last line, obviously, is the killer. This same poll finds the current GOP field shaking out this way: Huckabee 26, Romney 21, Palin 19, which may sound like a fluke but isn’t really. As noted the last time I...

Just six months into his presidency, President Barack Obama's administration is the target of a federal lawsuit, and that by a civil servant who alleges he was dismissed from his post in violation of the requirements of a law that Barack Obama himself once sponsored in the Senate. Yet despite all this, the July 21 Washington Post print edition failed to carry the story, directing readers with this 39-word teaser atop page A15 (The Fed Page) to a Post blog: Former Inspector General Files Suit: Gerald Walpin, an inspector general who was fired last month by the Obama administration, has...

Following The Washington Post’s public shaming for selling lobbyists access to administration officials, newspaper editors, and reporters for $25,000 and up, National Journal has created a private ‘pay-to-play’ web site for members of Congress. The whole amazing story is documented by The Washington Examiner and should be read in its entirety here. The website known as 3121 is described as “a new feature on NationalJournal.com that will become available exclusively to Capitol Hill staffers in September.” Only individuals possessing an email address that ends with Senate.gov or House.gov can gain access to 3121. For the modest one-time contribution of $295,000,...

Beleaguered Washington Post Publisher Katherine Weymouth received some support from a fellow publisher over her attempt to increase revenue by providing access to the Obama administration. From Fishbowl DC On her Facebook profile, Washingtonian President and Publisher Cathy Merrill Williams has posted a letter applauding WaPo's Weymouth for her attempt to find new revenue streams and for trying something new re: the "salon" scandals. Her post below or visit it on Facebook here. New Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth has been taking a lot of flak from journalists and press junkies. Weymouth and her team at the Washington Post proposed...

Suddenly, size matters. That’s the central conclusion of a lengthy Washington Post article Monday that sought to assess the national security implications of Iran’s 2007 move into leftist Sandinista President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. The newspaper’s badly belated first weigh-in on the Islamic Republic’s most northern presence in the Americas wound up fixating on a curious detail: the physical size of the Iranian embassy there. Was it a huge mega-embassy, as some U.S. officials have said? A smallish embassy? Something mid-range but perhaps aspiring to be architecturally grandiose? The Post’s writers, offering no basis for such a wacky thesis, seem to...

The Washington Post has published a glowing article about likely incoming AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka (photo), titled "Trumka Hopes to Mend the AFL-CIO." Writer Chris Cillizza asks in the very first sentence of his story, "Can Richard Trumka reunite the labor movement?" Cillizza portrays Trumka as genuinely puzzled over the reason for the big split in the labor movement: With Trumka's election virtually ensured, the central question is whether he can heal the rift that occurred four years ago when the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters (among others) left the AFL-CIO to form a new labor coalition known...

The Washington Post's ill-fated plan to sell sponsorships of off-the-record "salons" was an ethical lapse of monumental proportions. Publisher Katharine Weymouth and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli have now taken full responsibility for what was envisioned as a series of 11 intimate dinners to discuss public policy issues. For a fee of up to $25,000, underwriters were guaranteed a seat at the table with lawmakers, administration officials, think tank experts, business leaders and the heads of associations. Promotional materials said Weymouth, Brauchli and at least one Post reporter would serve as "Hosts and Discussion Leaders" for an evening of spirited but...

The Washington Post's ill-fated plan to sell sponsorships of off-the-record "salons" was an ethical lapse of monumental proportions. Publisher Katharine Weymouth and Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli have now taken full responsibility for what was envisioned as a series of 11 intimate dinners to discuss public policy issues. For a fee of up to $25,000, underwriters were guaranteed a seat at the table with lawmakers, administration officials, think tank experts, business leaders and the heads of associations. Promotional materials said Weymouth, Brauchli and at least one Post reporter would serve as "Hosts and Discussion Leaders" for an evening of spirited but...

Some time last week the Washington Post issued a flier advertising a "salon" on the health-care issue. Over dinner at the home of the paper's publisher, Katharine Weymouth, participants were promised "a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds." The paper's executive editor and its "health-care reporters" would be there too, but not in a "confrontational" capacity, you could rest assured. Everything would be safely "off-the-record." And you could "bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table" for a mere $25,000. Even in Washington, it's unusual to see...

BEFORE Sarah Palin stepped on the story, the talk of the Belt way was Salongate at The Washington Post. The venerable newspaper hatched a scheme whereby it would hold a series of "salons" at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth in order to sell lobbyists and corporations access to Obama administration officials and the Post reporters and editors who cover them. "Bring your organization's CEO or executive director literally to the table," read a flier for the first event. "Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders . . . Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home...

The first reaction of every journalist to the story of the Washington Post's advertiser-cum-salon dinner proposal was probably one of disgust and moral superiority. The second reaction: we've all kinda been involved in situations where that line between what we do and how we are compensated for it blurs a bit -- or is at least visible. We bring attention to our brand by reporting and writing, but we do other things, occasionally, to further the interests of the commercial enterprises that pay us. There but for the grace of our marketing department go we....Reporters often give speeches to private...

A Letter to Our Readers By Katharine Weymouth Sunday, July 5, 2009 Dear Reader: I want to apologize for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity. A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind. But let me be clear: The flier was not the only...

I want to apologize for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity. A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind. But let me be clear: The flier was not the only problem. Our mistake was to suggest that we would hold and participate in an...

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said yesterday that a hasty time frame, haphazard planning and miscommunication led to the release of a promotional flier that inaccurately described the newspaper's plans for a series of sponsored "salons" with influential insiders. "We decided to throw this particular event very recently," Weymouth said in an interview. "We said, 'Let's not wait. Let's pick a date and let's go for it.' When you rush like that, you make mistakes." Weymouth said she takes responsibility for the controversy, and she took the rare step of writing a letter to readers, which appears today on the...

Post publisher apologizes for paid dinner plan Washington Post publisher apologizes for plan to hold paid dinners with officials, journalists On Sunday July 5, 2009, 6:59 am EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Washington Post's publisher apologized to readers Sunday for a plan to charge business leaders and lobbyists for intimate dinner discussions with government officials and the newspaper's journalists. A flier surfaced last week promoting a plan to charge $25,000 to sponsor one of a series of dinner parties that would include off-the-record conversations with Post journalists and access to Washington insiders. The series was canceled Thursday.

Katharine Weymouth, the relatively new publisher of The Washington Post, is a lawyer who worked for the company for 12 years and was educated at the Harvard School of Business, so she is hardly a naïf in running a business. But she has never worked in a newsroom, a gap in her résumé that may have contributed to her current problems. As first reported in Politico, The Washington Post had sent out a brochure offering sponsorships — a fee of $25,000 for one, or $250,000 for an entire series — for an exclusive “Washington Post salon” at Ms. Weymouth’s home...

The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA) regulates federal lobbyists and organizations that lobby. The law defines and specifies the following: Who is a Lobbyist? Any person who: Receives compensation of $5,000 or more per six-month period, or makes expenditures of $20,000 or more per six-month period, for lobbying; Makes more than one lobbying contact; and Spends 20 percent or more of his or her time over a six-month period on lobbying activities for an organization or a particular client. Unless each of these criteria is met, there is no registration requirement for that individual. An organization is required to...