Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? Yes, It Is Yet Another Washington Post Edition
UPDATE: And Brad Plumer has added a credit to Mark Thomas...
This morning, November 3, Brad Plumer of the *Washington Post" has a nice story “How my taxes are raised matters” citing Richard Green and Susan Mettler.
I liked this story.
I liked it two days ago, when Mark Thoma wrote it:
Mark Thoma (November 1, 2011): "How My Taxes are Raised Matters"
As I said earlier today--watching the Los Angeles Times, Larry McShane of the New York Daily News, and Sean Michaels of the Guardian do this to Spencer Ackerman of Wired--this seems to me to go beyond sloppiness into approaching some kind of mental disorder.
And in my email inbox right now is a note about Politico, comparing Jake Sherman:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67538.html: Grover Norquist, influential? To House Speaker John Boehner, he’s just another “random” guy. At least that’s what the Ohio congressman told reporters Thursday, declining to weigh in on whether the anti-tax crusader was a positive - or negative - force within the House Republican Conference.
to David Weigel:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/11/03/boehner_on_norquist_the_random_person_.htmlThere was unexpected levity in Speaker of the House John Boehner's weekly presser, after NBC's Luke Russert mentioned that Grover Norquist, the paterfamilias of the GOP anti-tax pledges, was making rounds on the Hill. Did the Speaker think that Norquist was a positive influence on Republicans? Boehner twisted his mouth, wrestling with the premise of the question.
For Jake Sherman and Politico, it is pretty clear that not acknowledging Luke Russert is in their minds a feature and not a bug: they don't want to bring alternative news channels to the front of their readers' minds.
It is much less clear what the Los Angeles Times and Sean Michaels of the Guardian and Larry McShane of the New York Daily News by not acknowledging the existence of Wired--which is not a competitor of theirs--and thus pissing Wired off.
It makes least sense of all in the case of the Washington Post, which ought to regard Mark Thoma as an analyst-source to be cosseted rather than a competitor to be sent down the memory hole...
