Monday, January 26, 2009

You Know, I Don't Usually Long For The Death of a Major Newspaper ...

... but after the happy news I passed along this morning, this puts me 98% of the way there for the WaPo:

UPDATE: Kristol emails that he'll be an occasional contributor to the Washington Post's online feature,"Post Partisan," in addition to a monthly print column.

And this just makes me hurl:

... editorial page editor Fred Hiatt discussed why he's now bringing the Weekly Standard editor to the Washington Post.

"I think he’s a very smart, plugged-in guy," Hiatt told Politico …

Just to be clear, this has nothing to do with Kristol's political leanings. It has everything to do with how lame his columns are, how stale his sloganeering is, and how he so often gets things wrong.

As much as I like to stereotype the Right as being unanimously bereft of ideas, I actually do believe there are conservatives worth reading. Why not give Daniel Larison, Reihan Salam, or James Poulos a shot, just to name three?

Ah, the hell with it. As long as he's out of the Times, I'm happy. I almost never visit the WaPo's opinion section anymore, anyway. Too much chance of coming across the way-past-sell-by-date blatherings of David Broder, Richard Cohen, and Charles Krauthammer. Come to that, I guess Kristol will fit right in.

(h/t: Steve Benen and Attaturk)

2 comments:

Sornie said...

It should make you happy then that our Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) has been axing their partisan columnists. I like to think that it's due to the free availability of well-written opinion pieces online.

bjkeefe said...

Again, to be clear, it's not the partisanship I mind. In fact, I want people of strong opinion writing. I just want them to say something I haven't heard a thousand times before, and to say it well.

You are right that the free opinion online makes the paid-for op-ed seem obsolescent. However, at least for the time being, a major newspaper's opinion section is a powerful pulpit -- even those like me who get their news exclusively online tend to keep an eye on those pages. Therefore, we have to keep agitating for the best people to be given those slots.

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