Meow . . .
Like every field, journalism has its internal catfights, and there is one going on now about a story on page one of the Washington Post by Perry Bacon Jr. on right-wing rumors about Barack Obama and whether he has a secret Muslim past. First a Boston University journalism prof (and former Post free-lancer) named Chris Daly blogged about how awful a story it was and wondering why such a young reporter was writing about a national campaign.
Daly's comments hit Jim Romenesko's journalism news blog, Washington Post editor Len Downie sent a letter to Romenesko asking why he posted junk like that, and the Columbia Journalism Review campaign bloggers had their shot at Downie. Daly did a half-hearted mea culpa. The Post's ombudsman and Slate also threw in their two cents on the whole stinkfest.
My 25 cents (worth more because, of course, this is my blog):
— The Bacon story WAS lame in that it seemed to give credence to the smears rather than clearly debunking them. This, however, is the usual detritus of horse-race campaign coverage.
— Youth (or lack of it) has nothing to do with the quality of a person's journalism. If you've got what it takes, age doesn't enter into it. Rightly or wrongly, Daly's crack sounded like sour grapes because he wasn't hired on full-time by the Post when he was a youth — a tone which Daly recognized and apologized for.
— Daly's wondering whether Bacon was being "fast-tracked" by the Post seemed like its own smear, especially to those who know the details of the New York Tims/Jason Blair scandal. Like Blair, Bacon is black. Unlike Blair, nobody claims Bacon makes things up — and in fact, he received vocal support for his skills.
Jihad, anyone?