The Dinosaur Media tucks its tail and runs:
The Washington Post shut one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper’s ombudsman. The closing was the second by a major newspaper in recent months. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site.
The Post’s blog, open to the public since Nov. 21, was shut indefinitely yesterday afternoon with a notice from Jim Brady, executive editor of www.washingtonpost.com.Mr. Brady wrote that he had expected criticism of The Post on the site, but that the public had violated rules against personal attacks and profanity.
Since it’s demonstrably easy to weed out the unprintable, the truth is likely that the precious, sensitive journalists at the Post simply couldn’t handle knowing exactly what parts of the public actually thinks of them. Being acquainted with more than my fair share of journalists, I can tell you that a more spineless set of people are hard to imagine… they will roll over for anyone and will kiss anyone’s posterior without even being asked.
This photo of Christine Amanpour wearing a headscarf and laughing at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s press conference tells you all you need to know about the backbone of journalists as well as the intermediate-term future of feminism.