Ranking up there with the Space Jam website and the HBO corporate website is this Washington Post effort from 1997, an in-depth feature on cults. Why’s it still online? Here’s a note at the bottom of the piece: “None of the articles from The Post archives has been changed; nor has any material been updated. Some of the information published many years ago may no longer be valid today. The articles and photos in the illustrated chronology are meant to be representative, not inclusive, of trends.” Speaking of cults, know what else is still online despite the fact that nobody’s around to pay the hosting bills? That’s right, Heaven’s Gate.
The announcement that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is not seeking reelection will leave the Capitol a much less interesting place to fact check. As one of our colleagues put it, ‘The entire fact checking industry may have to hold a national day of mourning.’Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler • Offering a lament for Michele Bachmann’s retirement, which means that he’ll be able to pull out the “Four Pinocchios”—the Post’s version of a pants-on-fire lie—a little less often. “Bachmann is not just fast and loose with the facts; she is consistently and unapologetically so,” he continues.
In another, investigators seized the phone records of Fox News reporter James Rosen, searched his personal e-mails, tracked his visits to the State Department and traced the timing of his phone conversations with Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department security adviser. Kim was charged in 2010 as the suspected source of a Fox News report about North Korean nuclear weapon testing. Perhaps most disturbing, documents related to the secret search warrant for Rosen’s phone and e-mail records cited him as a co-conspirator in the espionage case.
This appeared to journalists to put Rosen in unprecedented jeopardy for doing his job. Although the president said in his speech Thursday that “journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” he was nevertheless adamant about pursuing government officials who he said “break the law,” presumably by discussing national security matters and other classified information with reporters, even if that scares off officials from becoming whistle-blowers or even having any contact with reporters.
Downie, who is the paper’s vice president at-large and also spent nearly two decades as the paper’s executive editor, also says that the administration “has disregarded the First Amendment and intimidated a growing number of government sources of information — most of which would not be classified — that is vital for journalists to hold leaders accountable.”
Watergate: The Video Game
Journalists: It’s the game you’ve always wanted to play. Forget finding Carmen Sandiego. In Watergate: The Video Game, you’re on the hunt to expose Richard Nixon’s corruption. Here, the real sleuthing happens through interviews, document acquisition and hard-hitting reporting. This is the best way to celebrate the Pulitzer Prize that the Washington Post received 40 years ago today for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.
FJP: I like the 8-bit glory of it all. — Michael
If we’re a little bleary-eyed tomorrow, it’s because we’ve spent all night investigating Watergate.
If you hit “no”, you’re resigned to listening to the police scanner for the rest of your life.
Unlike the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, The Post has traditionally been a local business, pulling in large amounts of local advertising from merchants eager to reach the print audience. By contrast, 90 percent of The Post’s online audience is outside the Washington area.Why The Washington Post is going to start charging frequent readers of its site. Meanwhile, their building’s still for sale.
As a former Post guy, this is so depressing. This is where Watergate became a thing. I mean, this building is two blocks away from the White House and moving it away from there means it’s not going to have that kind of significance anymore. The worst possible thing the Post could do right now is move to Arlington. It’s an old building and getting around it was like a maze, but it has its charms.
In case you haven’t been keeping a close eye on the Mali conflict, The Washington Post’s Max Fisher has an extremely useful guide to what’s going on. “Mali, after all, has long been an obscure country to most Americans, little-known or -discussed even after its crisis began last year,” he explains. “But now that crisis is becoming more important. Some very bad people have taken over the entire northern half of a very big country. This weekend, the French military sent in troops and made bombing runs to halt the rebels’ advance. More countries are talking about getting involved.”
It’s our 135th birthday. Here’s the first edition of The Washington Post from December 6, 1877.
That’s exactly what it looked like then, too, down to the photocopying.
As much as I have enjoyed my prestige among religious conservatives, I fear it will be short-lived. This is because I plan to use my newfound bona fides to criticize Perkins and the Family Research Council.Liberal-leaning Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank • Responding to surprisingly positive comments made about him by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. While noting that he stands behind a prior column where he criticized liberal organizations that called the FRC a “hate group,” he points out that Perkins missed part of his argument. “I also argued that Perkins should cease the false propaganda his group has put out about gay people,” he says. “Perkins hasn’t followed that advice.”
One year ago, journalist Jose Antonio Vargas revealed to the world that he was an undocumented immigrant — building his entire career, which included time at The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, on a lie. Vargas looks back at the past year in an interview with BuzzFeed, where he considers the weirdness of becoming an activist, his friends lost (many in the news industry), and his friends gained (Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Sorkin). Great piece.
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
”The reporter...
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
The Washington Post’s Jon Cohen notes that exit polls show the split between conservatives and liberals is roughly the same in Wisconsin between the 2010 election and tonight. (click for more)
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“Hello, this is Chen Guangcheng,” came a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful voice.
I introduced myself in halting Chinese, using my Chinese name and the Chinese name for The Washington Post. I asked how Chen was, and where. I asked him to speak slowly, to make sure I could understand.
“Washington Post?” Chen repeated, his voice sounding generally happy. Chen said he was fine and was in the car headed to the hospital, Chaoyang Hospital. He repeated the name slowly, three times.
And that was it. Chen handed the phone back to the ambassador, who said they were stuck in traffic, but promised a full briefing later.
The Post had a prior relationship with Chen Guangcheng, as they wrote an article on the dissident in 2005.
While not confirmed by the Post, which has no comment, The Next Web has multiple sources telling them about the news, with TechCrunch reporting from a source or two of its own. If this was the case, it’d likely dovetail nicely into the Post’s recent push into social readers. Whatever happens, it probably won’t be as exciting as the company’s 2008 near-acquisition by Google, which fell through during the due diligence process but had a rumored valuation as high as $200 million. The company, long-associated with its TV host founder Kevin Rose, had a high-profile failure in 2010 when many of the site’s users left for Reddit after scorning a major redesign. (Disclosure: I work for the Washington Post Company, but not at the Post proper; I’d have no idea if this was actually happening. — Ernie @ SFB)
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