I doubt if any serious person here would disagree with you about McClatchy (formerly Knight-Ridder).

In fact, I have been known to rant at representatives trying to sell "new" subscriptions to a local paper (Philly area) that did not have the good editorial sense to run the Strobel/Landay stories when it was still a K-R paper. Completely unforgivable.

Johnson Opens the Door to Post-Acquittal Detentions (see sig)

http://washingtonindependent.com/49886/johnson-opens-the-door-to-post-acquittal-detentions

I am in total agreement that journalism is not being practiced by those who act as stenographers not only for "the establishment" but also for any "side" of an issue. However, I feel that passion in journalism often betrays fairness. I say use the passion for the career and the betterment of the trade and not passion for one side or the other. I believe that objectivity is still the best tool any reporter can have and we should leave passionate opinions to commentators.

Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, Johnson said that “as a matter of legal authority,” the administration’s powers to detain someone under the law of war don’t expire for a detainee after he’s acquitted in court. “If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone” under the Supreme Court’s Hamdi ruling, “that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.”

...

There is one news outfit doing its job. I wonder if my local "dead-tree" paper will choose to cover this story.

Surely you jest, Bystander. You're citing "Gawker"?! That's like citing the GLOBE when you want to criticize The Enquirer.

...does anyone care to guess where Fred Hiatt will be 5 years from now? -- Trakker

I would hope that the Huffington Post readership would appreciate, rather than object to, Froomkin's bipartisan approach to policy critique.

I'm just glad Dan didn't sign on with that trash heap Politico.

I am so, so tired of hearing newspapers complain that all of their troubles are because of the Internets. 'Tisn't true.

-- Anonymust

The real problem newspapers started with the internet, but it was not internet news which presented newspapers with their first set of problems. Newspapers depended on advertising revenue, and the use of their 'copy rights' to sells stories. First they lost much of the classified income when sites like craigs list, jobs listing site. They still maintain big retail cleint's. advertising. Then newspapers got bought out by corporations, whose share holders wanted profits, so profits became more important than retaining good local news reporters.

Then the violations of legal copyright in regard to stories art contributed. Newspaper pay tehr reporters and thier benefits, so when their stories are just taken and put online without regard to legal copy rights or payment, that hurts the original source's income. income.

I think eventually it will all sort out, when internet sites agree to pay for stories and art: hire professional journalists: online site uses journalistic standards, such as confirming sources and fact of stories before they put them up; and stop co-mingling of what is NEWS reporting with opinion.

HuffPo should be judged by what it is trying to accomplish for the audience they seek and not because it isn't the site for you.

One reason it isn't "the site for me" is because of the (apparent) "audience that they seek" (one interested in the Palin/Michael Jackson sagas, if the organization of their front page is an indicator).

As for what they are "trying to accomplish", only Huffington and her editors know her business model so how are we to know if they are accomplishing it?

I am only stating my own personal preferences here, as I thought I made clear. If, indeed, that is "judging", then it is judging that I think I am entitled to make (for myself) as "the audience they seek" really does not matter to me so much as the quality and significance of the information they have to share. It's a wheat/chaff thing heavily related to the amount of time I have to spend.

What I love most about UT and why it is my primary blog in addition to Glenn's great and most valuable work, are the quality of the commenters.

Agreed.

What has bothered me lately are the number of commenters and the frequency of their comments who have no interest in learning anything from someone else because they are too enamored of their own thinking and impressing instead of learning.

I don't think that applies to myself or bystander, but YMMV.

No. Pointing to Gawker.

rrheard:

I'm still envisioning GG and Dan with a shared staff kicking ass and taking names on a daily basis here at Salon. There's enough hypocrisy, scams and outright lies being disseminated by the government via the "old media" that I'm sure GG and Dan could have found a way not to "overlap". Would have been a beautiful thing--might've led to an uninterrupted string of tag team Izzy's stretching for decades.

That, in a nutshell, is my not-so-secret desire as well.

Given WaPo's "defense" that "we're not selling access. We're just offering underwriting opportunities that grant access. What's wrong with you people? Can't you see the distinction?!"

and

the Atlantic publisher (link at sig) denying any knowledge of "marketing materials," well, we can see how pure, puritanical and altogether Puritan-like these bright lights of elitism are, God bless their unctuous souls.

All I want (like bernbart) is the opportunity to read a cyber-paper with my coffee (okay, she's never spoken of cyber-paper, but I don't want ink on my fingers, even if she thinks that's an indicator of validity/seriousness/truthiness/authenticity/reliability, and so on and so on).

And someone mentioned earlier that HuffPost isn't the easiest site to navigate. Truly, it's one of the most cluttered sites I've ever seen, and a significant reason why I don't bother.