Jay Rosen says political reporters will never change, so we should just have fewer of them, and have more subject-matter reporters instead. I like the idea, but I think it's the editors who really need to go.
RECENTLY
Capitol Police officials who failed to mobilize on Jan. 6 say memo warning that ‘Congress itself is the target’ wasn’t specific enough
A still-secret inspector general report cites a "lack of consensus" among Capitol Police officials about whether there were "specific known threats" -- as if that was why they failed to protect the Capitol from a pro-Trump mob.
As voting issue gets white-hot, political reporters try to duck the moral implications
With Republicans making voter repression their top goal, political reporters are under pressure not to "take sides." But is the moral stench too much, even for them?
At Biden’s first news conference, it wasn’t the president who was out of touch
“Look, I don’t know where you guys come from,” Biden told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins as she became the second reporter at Thursday's press conference to ask about the 2024 election.
How to get Joe Biden to tell us something new (because there’s a lot we don’t know)
The press corps will soon have a chance to push Biden past the scripted talking points and get him to reveal more about what's really going on inside his head -- and his White House. (But they'll probably blow it.)
The biggest political story behind every big political story is our damaged democracy and how to fix it
For political journalists, democracy reform is far too earnest to be sexy. But they should be writing about H.R. 1 every day because the wounds it aims to heal are the underlying cause of the political dysfunction they report on every day.
Departing Washington Post editor’s comment on listening to staff is everything that’s wrong with the current generation of newsroom leaders
The Washington Post, like other elite news organizations, has long resisted constructive criticism from within as well as from without. And in his victory lap, Marty Baron unwittingly explained why: Because the leaders don’t listen.
THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY
OBJECTIVITY
Departing Washington Post editor’s comment on listening to staff is everything that’s wrong with...
The Washington Post, like other elite news organizations, has long resisted constructive criticism from within as well as from without. And in his victory lap, Marty Baron unwittingly explained why: Because the leaders don’t listen.
Namby-pamby political journalism isn’t going to reach the truth-deniers
More than 73 million people voted for Trump in the presidential election, suggesting that the strain of overt fact-rejection nurtured by the right wing is still very much with us -- and unlikely to succumb any time soon to more journalistic business-as-usual.
EXPLAINERS
That thing that just happened didn’t just happen in a vacuum
The ultimate antidote to what ails political journalism today is context. And that doesn't necessarily mean doing a lot of extra reporting. It may mean just remembering.
Too many political journalists are too damned timid
Great political journalism requires the courage to state the obvious. Sadly, our access-dependent, approval-seeking, risk-averse, group-thinking elite Washington press corps often doesn’t have the guts. You don't get to the top of the political-journalism universe by offending important sources and making your bosses nervous.
TIMIDITY
Limbaugh obituaries show the mainstream media still fawning over the people who poisoned politics
Our newsroom leaders still cannot bring themselves to declare that the hysteria and conspiracy theories that once inhabited only the lunatic fringes of our political discourse – until Rush Limbaugh, and then Donald Trump, came along – don’t merit respect, but banishment, rejection, and denial.
Washington Post editor Marty Baron grudgingly admits failure to be ‘forthright about Trump’s mendacity’
To those of us hoping for a journalistic reckoning in the post-Trump era, it's disheartening that the first admission of fault from a senior newsroom leader amounts to little more than a "whatever."
AP, NPR and others suddenly sounding all tough on Trump, but it’s too little and too late
A few weeks of somewhat less mincing coverage of Trump means nothing. It does not mean lessons have been learned. It is no cause for optimism.
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