Why Did the Washington Post Sack Dan Froomkin?
Late last week came the news that editors at the Washington Post had discontinued Dan Froomkin's popular White House Watch Web-only column after a five-and-a-half-year run.
This wasn't just another media-personnel story for the trade publications. The act of a powerful news organization cutting off the head of a Bush-bashing media figure gave the Internet free license to indulge in Idiot Time.
Leading the charge was Atlantic.com's Andrew Sullivan, who connected the move to---what else?---politics and ideology:
Dan's work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should...
Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald saw something scandalous here as well:
Why was Froomkin deemed "liberal," inappropriate and biased? Because he pointed out that the Bush administration's claims were false and their policies radical -- i.e., he wrote what was factually true. But that -- writing what is factually true and pointing out false statements from those in political power -- is the number one sin in establishment journalism.
And here's a commenter on washingtonpost.com:
You publish Dana Milbank's pap column, you publish 14 part articles on Chadra Levy, and you can't put one honest voice in?
I am appalled.
At this point your paper has become simply a tool of the Washington establishment. Yet another place to read the same garbage I can get anywhere else.
There are obvious problems with these theories. To address Sullivan's point: Why would the Post bag Froomkin over torture when its own editorials have opposed the practice? And to address Greenwald's point: If the Post were really canning this guy over his Bush-related rantings, wouldn't Froomkin have been pushed out sometime during Bush's terms in office?
All the conjecture amounts to fantasy. It would be wonderful, that is, if the Post's move had really been motivated by partisan politics. Or, better yet, by a fear that this iconoclast was just too dangerous for the paper. What a Washington story that'd be.
Too bad that Froomkin's firing is a far less spectacular story, one that hinges on money and resources, with a side of standard newsroom conflict. Everything, in other words, except for ideology.
Froomkin started his online White House coverage for washingtonpost.com in January 2004, just as public skepticism of the Bush administration was starting to surface. His column's launch coincided with the publication of Ron Suskind's book The Price of Loyalty, which took a dim view of the reigning administration. "As it happened, that day was essentially the beginning of the Bush critique," says Froomkin.
Is it a touch arrogant for Froomkin to position himself as the catalyst of a political movement? Perhaps, but it's accurate, too. Other commentators, to be sure, bashed the Bush administration with great regularity. Froomkin, though, established a new standard for regularity. Each morning, he'd start his work at 6 a.m., as any good Web journalist must. He'd grind through just about everything that'd been written about the White House over the past news cycle. "From six in the morning on, I am reading voraciously and analyzing and synthesizing and writing. I finish filing by about one most days and start the next cycle fairly soon after that," he says.
Froomkin's synthesis rarely ended favorably for the Bushies. Here's a snippet from a February 2007 column:
President Bush has all but vanished from the national and international radar. But Vice President Cheney is everywhere and in the thick of it all.
His credibility may be shot, he and his boss may be lame ducks, his signal achievement -- the war in Iraq -- may now be almost universally disparaged, his former chief of staff may soon be found guilty of multiple felonies, but it would appear that rumors of the vice president's demise as a political force have been greatly exaggerated.
Consider the following:
* Cheney's latest stops on a highly-publicized world tour have been in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he is said to be belatedly but forcefully pressing government leaders to be more aggressive in hunting down Al Qaeda operatives.
* Since the British announcement of a troop withdrawal from Iraq last week, Cheney has been the administration's point man in a fervid but inevitably fruitless attempt to spin that as a sign of success.
* Cheney has also become the foremost defender of the administration's Iraqi policy in general -- though in doing so he has further fueled criticisms that his assertions are often unsupported and sometimes misleading.
* In an interview on Friday, Cheney defended his assertion in 1991 that invading Iraq would result in a quagmire -- reopening speculation about what Cheney and Bush knew before they went to war in Iraq, what they told the American people, and the gulf between the two.
* Last week, Cheney suddenly spoke in highly critical terms about China, scolding it for behaviour he called "not consistent" with its stated aim of a peaceful rise as a global power.
* Even as I write, Cheney's former chief of staff if awaiting his fate at Washington's federal courthouse, and the verdict -- whichever way it goes -- will inevitably remind the public of Cheney's important and unseemly role in the leaking of a CIA operative's identity. (One juror was dismissed from the jury today, after being exposed to some sort of outside information about the case.)
* And then there's Iran. The reports that Bush is gearing up for strikes against that country may be ambiguous and speculative -- but there appears to be little doubt that Cheney is the lead hawk pushing for a more aggressive posture.
Equivocation, hedging, shading, tiptoeing---none of those turn up in Froomkin's toolkit. While the White House press corps was busy minding their editors' standards, Froomkin was smashing mouths, and he had the traffic numbers to show for it. At the end of 2007, the Post published a list of its top ten most "popular opinions" of the year; Froomkin occupied three of the spots.
During that W. heyday, the column was pulling in a good 50,000 to 70,000 hits on a decent day. When it was really rocking, it would move to the 100,000 range, a phenomenal total.
The Obama administration has offered a less juicy target, in part because it hasn't had quite as much time to screw things up. In the past six months, accordingly, hits on White House Watch have dropped to the point that Post officials cite traffic as a reason for bagging the column.
"His traffic had gone way down," says Fred Hiatt, the paper's editorial page editor. Froomkin himself uses the same talking point: "Traffic definitely did go down."
And right there, the discussion hits something of a brick wall: Though washingtonpost.com's overall Web-hit numbers are public information, the paper places breakout stats for columns and blogs in a secret cache, which complicates any effort to piece together Froomkin's traffic trends.
A few snapshots from recent months, however, appear to corroborate the smaller Obama-era audience. Over three days in late March and early April, for example, White House Watch bounced from No. 3 to No. 7 to No. 11 on the list of top washingtonpost.com blogs. The hits for the column were 49,000, 29,000, and 15,000 on those days.
And over a three-day period in late May, Froomkin's rankings came in at No. 6, No. 6, and No. 7. Hits for each of those days were right around 20,000. A Post source says that White House Watch's traffic has suffered a two-thirds drop over time.
The traffic slump is apparently dire enough that Post brass could no longer justify paying Froomkin about $100,000 in contract money to crank out daily commentary---a sum that falls short of what the Post pays many national political reporters. "We have had to make a lot of hard decisions about resources," says Hiatt.
The Froomkin axing is a red-letter event in Post history because it's the first time that a major personnel decision has hinged so squarely on Web hits. For years, the orthodoxy from Post leaders is that the paper produces journalism that it believes in---mass popularity be damned. Perhaps that's no longer the case. Questions on this matter were sent to newspaper spokesperson Kris Coratti but went unanswered.
One of the tricky aspects of judging people on Web hits is that the digital playing field is a tough surface to level. Some bloggers, for instance, plug their work on TV appearances; others don't. Then there's the issue of link visibility. "A chronic problem had been promotion of the column on the homepage. My readers complained that it was harder and harder to find all the time," says Froomkin. Zero: The amount of sympathy Froomkin will get from other Posties on how visible and navigable his stories have been on washingtonpost.com---that's a common affliction at the paper.
Yet Froomkin was no stranger to prominent exposure on washingtonpost.com. Says former washingtonpost.com opinions editor Michael Newman: "If [White House Watch] weren’t on the homepage within a few minutes of publication, you would hear from Dan. I don't want to overstate it---sometimes it was good-natured, but sometimes it wasn't."
Special consideration was appropriate for White House Watch, argued Froomkin, because the column and the site benefited greatly from prime visibility for White House Watch. Equipped with this certitude, Froomkin wouldn't let up on homepage play: "If he was unsatisfied with the response, he would keep at it till he got the response he wanted," says Newman.
Froomkin and his editors clicked from the homepage onto other portals of conflict. Media criticism was a good one: The columnist considered commenting on how the media were portraying the White House a significant part of his job; his editors felt otherwise. "They told me they didn’t want me to do media criticism. I could never quite figure out how I could avoid it," says Froomkin. The friction produced a series of spiked Froomkin columns, which generally got published on the Nieman Watchdog blog, including the columnist's takedown of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.
Marisa Katz, the paper's Web opinions editor, says the dinner story "read more like a Howie Kurtz media column, or one of Dan’s Nieman Watchdog items, than a post focused on the Obama White House."
Whatever the merits of banning Froomkin from the Romenesko beat, the move sure did anger the writer. "No journalist likes to have their work spiked," says Froomkin.
There were also battles over the column's direction, format, timing and length of its items, and chatting with followers. Says Katz: "The hope was for a feature that would be differentiated by Dan’s opinion and analysis and perspective and personality, and that would allow for greater timeliness, the incorporation of multimedia, and more opportunities for reader engagement, among other advantages."
And speaking of reinvention, once Post editors decided that White House Watch was no longer viable, they gave Froomkin a chance to come forward with "ideas for potential features that would take him in a new and different direction and that might resonate more with readers. Unfortunately, he wasn't interested in doing anything else for The Post," says Katz.
On that point, Froomkin says, "I felt what I was doing was absolutely the best thing I could do for the Washington Post."
Katz emphasizes that "artistic differences" didn't drive a wedge between the Post and White House Watch. "It was about the need to make budget cuts in a bad business climate and a feature that wasn't resonating like it used to," she says. The columnist heard an honest accounting when he met with Hiatt and Managing Editor Raju Narisetti. "They didn’t think the column was working anymore and I tried to make the case that it was," says Froomkin.
Yet just because the Post's decision wasn't tainted by neocon ideology and the cowardly calculations of an "establishment media" operation doesn't mean it wasn't dumb, short-sighted, and self-destructive. It was all of those things.
The key number in this whole saga is not the $100,000 that Froomkin was making. Nor is it the 20,000 hits to which his daily traffic sometimes sinks.
It's $500,000-plus. That's what the Post invested over the years in White House Watch. That's what it took to pay someone with the doggedness to mine every last detail about presidential coverage on the Web and turn it into something digestible. And that's what it took to actuate thousands upon thousands of fans to bookmark Froomkin for as long as he stayed at it. And what a wise investment it was, to judge by the outrage that has spilled onto comments boards around the Web.
To fire the guy six months into a new administration reflects a jittery approach to building a Web site, not to mention a betrayal of the Post's venerable MO of patient, long-haul planning. As President Obama faces more and more difficult decisions in reforming Washington, he's bound to alienate the lefty constituency that has formed a crowded party on Froomkin's platform for more than five years. Three to six months more---that's all it would have taken for Froomkin to get back to his old traffic neighborhood.
And Froomkin, 46, should have seen this coming. He's just the latest in a series of departures from the Web side of the Post. His first job with the organization was back in 1997, not long after the Post located its online operations in Arlington. Part of the motivation for placing Froomkin and other web people on the other side of the river was to keep their operation from getting swallowed whole by the retrograde print cluster. For more than a decade, washingtonpost.com's producers, bloggers, and executives managed the site on their own, a separate power center.
Over the past year, top Post officials have decided to merge the print and Web operations. But "merge," at this point, appears far too mutual a term to describe how the operations are conjoining: lopsidedly, that is. Over the past year or so, the site's top talent has either fled or been elbowed aside, including online Publisher Caroline Little, washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady, Managing Editor Ju-Don Roberts, multimedia editor Tom Kennedy, and political editor Russ Walker. Their collective departure clarifies that the geographical separation merely delayed print's annexation of washingtonpost.com.
What does all this institutional babble mean for Froomkin? It means that once his contract came up for review, he essentially had to rely on the print team to back him up. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
In fairness to print-centric Posties, Froomkin is a new-media animal that just about any traditional newsroom would have trouble appreciating. He calls himself an accountability guy, yet he doesn't bang the phones all day and attend briefings. He does his work by reading and synthesizing what other journalists do. And he does it all from his Tenleytown home! How could a second-hand journalist like this guy become such a force on the Internet?
Via constancy. Day in and day out, Froomkin nailed the same themes and the same players---and delivered his package at the same hour, not unlike the evening newspapers of yore. His franchise fused the basic principles of Internet success: define your beat narrowly, post consistently, be passionate. It's a great formula, and the Post should be proud of having nurtured it. Pretty soon now, it'll be the asset of whatever organization hires Froomkin to replicate it. The columnist expects to reach a deal with a new employer "within a week or two."
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1:09 pm
'And to address Greenwald’s point: If the Post were really canning this guy over his Bush-related rantings, wouldn’t Froomkin have been pushed out sometime during Bush’s terms in office?"
He answers this. You shoulda kept reading.
1:34 pm
I think you really missed the mark on Froomkin. He did not get the exposure that the site deserved and that has been proved with screenshots of the front page and politics page in the past couple months.
Dan used the word TORTURE, something the Post refuses to do still when it is done by the US.
The problem people have is with what the post DOES put resources into. How much does Michael Gerson make, Krauthammer, Milbank make? Those people get far more help from the post frontpage then Froomkin. The animosity toward Froomkin in the Post newsroom has been shown lately in articles.
The post op-ed is heading down a heavy Neo-con lane and they are fighting to protect Bush's legacy.
My biggest problem is the Post is putting resouces into this:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/mouthpiece-theater/mouthpiece-theater-lord-of-the.html?wprss=thefix
The smugness of Milbank and others show how lost they are in the DC political cycle and Froomkin was a welcome change of pace to that.
1:38 pm
And to comment on Marisa Katz, the paper’s Web opinions editor, says the dinner story “read more like a Howie Kurtz media column, or one of Dan’s Nieman Watchdog items, than a post focused on the Obama White House.”
Dan was a fan of ACCOUNTABILITY. That is a word that Howard Kurtz does not use. He gossips about the news, Froomkin showed how the press werent doing there job e.i. ALL 8 BUSH YEARS.
The quote from Katz is a classic example of distorting what Froomkin was about.
1:44 pm
To hold Kurtz up as a model of accountability is such a joke....I can't believe that the Post would fire a guy in part on web traffic.
If that's the case, why not just start running porn?
When is the Post going to just go there? Go for that lowest common denominator.
The Post should have given Froomkin a year to figure out his blog in the Obama era.
1:59 pm
Froomkin was a Bush basher and a Bush basher only. He wrote 10-15 pages of Bush hatred daily. When the embarrassed WaPo tried to hire a conservative blogger, the wingnuts went after the conservative. When Obama took office, it became clear "White House Watch" was no longer needed and blowhard Froomkin did not know how to "watch" the liberal messiah. What the WaPo and NY Times needs are more conservatives. Younger ones, not neocons like Kristol or paleos like Will.
2:02 pm
If the Post published Froomkin in print rather than one of the neo-cons -- say Bill Kristol -- I bet they'd see his web numbers go up.
I can't wait to see where Froomkin lands and what kind of bump he provides.
2:05 pm
@Yawn
The conservative that the Post hired turned out to be a plagiarizer. That's what cost him the job.
Froomkin was one of the few to attack Obama from the left.
2:22 pm
Question. Where is this Froomkin quote cited above from?
"“As it happened, that day was essentially the beginning of the Bush critique,” says Froomkin."
Because he wrote something like that in his last White House Watch today, but not quite that:
""As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. "
2:27 pm
"Whatever the merits of banning Froomkin from the Romenesko beat, the move sure did anger the writer. “No journalist likes to have their work spiked,” says Froomkin."
P.S. Yeah, listen to that RAGE:
“No journalist likes to have their work spiked,”
Off the charts!!!!!
Froomkin may well have shown great anger, but this quote / piece doesn't make the case. Journalism 101.
2:28 pm
Great article, Erik. Reading Froomkin kept a lot of us sane during Bush's second term. No where else on these internets could you find his brand of exacting media criticism.
2:33 pm
@Jeff -- The kook left would have gone after him anyway.
Froomkin never broke news IMHO. He ruminated like a liberal cow on the liberal plantation, day after day trying to catch Bush in corruption by reading and ruminating about other people's Web articles. It was popular because liberals were in a state of hysteria and needed to go to an amen corner every day.
The "multiple felonies" is a typical laugher. Didn't turn out that way, did it? And even the one charge that stuck had nothing to do with "outting" Plame.
The WH watch was initially titled WH Briefing, if I recall. Which set the tone for the ccoverage for the Post's WH beat. Eventually, they realized the blog was hurting their credibility.
2:34 pm
@ Told ya so
"Great article, Erik. Reading Froomkin kept a lot of us sane during Bush’s second term."
Which was the only thing Froomkin's pabulum was about. The only raison d'etre for the column.
2:50 pm
I can tell you haven't been watching thsi closely. The washpost neocon skullhamper crowd has been burying froomkin's column for months. lo and behold his web hits drop . . .
Wouldn't it have made more sense for them to have hightlighted their star?
Yawn, you're really Karl Rove, aren't you?
2:58 pm
Froomkin got whacked by the neocon nuts at the Post. The Post has been a neocon mouthpiece for a decade or more, ever since Fred Hiatt got his reptilian claws on the editorial page. Accomplice roles were played by establishment types like Broder, who hasn't written a column worth reading since the 1970s. The Post prefers to run pieces by scattered brained ninnies like Ruth Marcus or right wing nut jobs like Michael Gerson.
Froomkin will be fine, & will be doing good journalism in 30 years. In ten years the Post will be out of business. The Kaplan side has been the Post's main source of revenue for a decade now, & soon it will be the only part of the Post that's alive.
3:03 pm
@yawn
Ha! Unintentional comedy.
You bitch about a rightwinger being fired, you're told he was fired for blatant plagiarizing, but you still find a way of playing the victim.
Now THAT is kooky. And whiny.
3:12 pm
@ W. Danz
I recall the firing and it was justified. And after that, the Post didn't replace him. Explain that.
Wemple's takedown of the lefty kooks who whine about the "neocon" WaPo editors was devastating in its simplicity. Andrew Sullivan especially.
Their arguments are so bad they don't stand up to simple logic.
Froomkin was fired because the WaPo realized that his partisan vitriol had no market anymore. Pure and simple.
If anything, it's proof that WaPo/Newsweek continue to be a solid bedrock of liberal media bias.
3:15 pm
@ Angry AL
"will be doing good journalism in 30 years"
You mean ruminating about other people's Web work or someone else's reports? (Even more so that Maureen Dowd.)
Where can I get $100K annually for that?
Must be nice to never have to wear out the shoe leather.......
3:20 pm
Well, thx for this roundup, Erik! Despite a rough start, and even though its quite critical about Froomkin (in some points unfairly so, imho) all in all it is a good account, providing interesting new details. I just want to address some points:
- WaPo's editors opposed torture in their editorials, but tolerated Krauthammer defending the practice, and even published other torture supporters. Excuse me pls, but torture is illegal, so this behaviour is false tolerance and appeasement. WaPo certainly wouldn't publish Mafia gangsters defending murder, or Somali warlords defending genocide, so why is torture treated differently? It's wrong, and there can't be two sides to this, so the stance of WaPo's editors amounts to supporting the criminals. Froomkins determined and unyielding stance must at least have been unaggravating for Hiatt & Co, so Sullivan has a point.
- Your one line dismisal of Greenwolds lengthy and comprehensive story really leaves the impression you haven't read it in total.
- Then, the firing only "would be wonderful ... if the Post’s move had really been motivated by partisan politics", if there would be evidence of this. Since nobody can prove what's going on in Hiatt's head, your point is moot, and this will probably never become a major scoop in the media.
- As for the traffic numbers, you sure post some interesting numbers, but don't tell us anything about your source for those "snapshots", which is important, since you yourself say that they're not public information ("a secret cache"). Is your informant reliable, or may he have reasons for giving you misleading, or even false data?
- "The traffic slump is apparently dire enough that Post brass could no longer justify paying Froomkin about $100,000" Hmm, you criticize others for making assumptions, but here you write this is "apparent"? That's an assumption about the reasons behind the firing, too, an "apparent" double standard. But thx for giving a figure for the possible cost reduction for the Post, even though it is totally unsourced.
- The promotion of the column has really been underwhelming. And while some other blogs may have reason to complain, too (it sure looks like Hiatt has no ideas for the online publication), it's a fact that for instance "The Fix" was placed prominently on top of the page for the political blogs (Milbank even has two blogs there!), while you had to scroll down to find WHW at the lower end, under a section simply named "more blogs"! The fix = "political", WHW = "more blog"? That's ridiculous, and makes Froomkin look like the Cinderella of WaPo blogs!
- "Marisa Katz, the paper’s Web opinions editor, says the dinner story “read more like a Howie Kurtz media column, or one of Dan’s Nieman Watchdog items, than a post focused on the Obama White House.”". But since it was posted at the Niemann blog, NOT at the Post, this isn't her business at all, and Froomkin didn't do anyting wrong at all!
- And finally, her point about Froomkin refusing to participate in reinvention is surprising. Firstly, is there any substantial reinvention at the Post site at all? I must have missed evidence for this in the last years. And then, Froomkin has shown at the Niemann blog to have lots of ideas about reinvention himself. It could be that he simply had no faith in the value of her ideas. Regarding that Froomkin was an internet pioneer at the Post, and may have professional objections against Katz' proposals, is there any tension between them?
Regarding all those points, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask Froomkin for some statements? Looks like the guy has some time to spare right now, so he may jump at a chance to tell his side of the story. Sure would be good to read more about this at the City Paper!
3:35 pm
"Yawn", the Post lost large parts of its credibility because of its dumb, uncritical cheerleading for the Iraq war. And the rebranding of Froomkin's column was just another caving in to the Bush administration. Hell, John Harris, former Post editor and now "Politico", even apologized for the way he handled this in an email to Glenn Greenwald!
But thx for supporting the call for fresher voices at WaPo's opinion pages! Even though we sure have different views on the best mix for that section...
5:17 pm
Froomkin became just another Leftist media member bowing before Obama's skirts. Boring. That can be had anywhere these days.
5:25 pm
a very thorough account. i agree the uproar is a bit emotional and i guess that's your only point because otherwise, what you write seems right. I like dan and dislike the wapo, everything about it, except they did dan a favor: gave him a life boat to get away from a sinking ship.
5:28 pm
Wemple is trying to write something novel about the firing, but falters all over the place. WaPo may not pay 100K to some of its political writers, but that may be because "some" (actually many) are pretty junior. the paper has lost Balz, VanDerHei, et al. and replaced them with far less seasoned people. I suspect that one reason that the print sie keeps its waxworks of predictable pap is because of syndication revenue. When that starts to decline (if hasn't already with the decline of print), i wonder what will happen to Will, Broder, et al. Froomkin may be "not shy" about getting exposure for his column, but it pales in comparison to the exposure the Post give Cillizza & Milbank, both of whom are lazy and often ureadable.
My own guess is that Froomkin pissed off the print guys and a predictable decline in his numbers given the new administration provided a rationale for this. OTOH, Wemple doesn't tell us where he got these "secret" numbers, what periods they cover and howmuch gravtas we should give them. In recent weeks, Froomkin has had no trouble going after the fact-free Krauthammer (an MD who hasn't had a license in 25 years to practice but periodically insists on acting like he does) and noting Will's problems with cherry-picking his "facts". I suspect that set-up the context for a firing and the concern that he is overlapping with the utterly useless and ethically compromised Howard Kurtz. Still, given that there is overalp in many areas of the post (2 tv people, multiple right wing op-ed columnists), that isn't much of a rationale either.
In the end, after Wemple plays Jimmy Olson, conceded the firing is what it is--short sighted and a bad business decision. Given thate Wemple works for a bunch of hapless idiots in Atlanta, he probably knows from bad business decisions.
5:40 pm
Your theory would be bolstered if you could show how many "hits" other columnists reveived online in the post-Bush era. That would be an interesting point of comparison, wouldn't you say and possiblt quite instructive. Let's say, hypothetically,that other columnists' numbers dived lower than Dan's, then your theory, respectfully, would be taost. All you are doing is quoting individuals who have vested interest in steering away from than more sinister motives that others have suggested. Not good enough, mate. You need to do a little more digging before you're categorical. But I suspect that now that you've bashed others for being trigger happy, you're similarly wedded to your "hypothesis" and my entreaty to you will likely go unheeded.
5:47 pm
@Gray
Just because something's illegal doesn't make it appeasement to advocate for its legality. Drugs are illegal. Liquor was unconstitutional at one point. While torture's clearly distinct from these, the fact that a criminal is put into a state of discomfort or physical pain is certainly no bar on the use of prison sentences, tazers, or handguns.
anyways...
Why could Froomkin have been fired? What amazes me is that no one, for all their willingness to believe any (and it sure seems like ANY) sort of conspiring on partisan political grounds, has raised the possiblity that the Washington Post wanted to kick out someone who might undermine Obama's base of support on the left. Froomkin did attack from the left, and his last column clearly indicates his willingness to stick it to Obama on his campaign promises (at least to SOME extent anyway. And of course if you undermine a candidate's base, you're necessarily portraying him as flawed, especially if you're going after a failure to live up to campaign promises. And that affects the votes of independents.
Can't have that, now can we?
5:50 pm
Part of the reason for Froomkin's "ratings decline" is the fact that his column wasn't getting front page treatment on the Washington Post blog this year.
During the Bush heyday Froomkin's pieces usually had a link in the editorial section of the site or "above" the fold" on the website on a daily basis. The piece would appear like clock work typically around noon to 1 PM and a link would appear in the same spot in the editorial section -- in some cases it would be highlighted next to a news story if the substance of the blog focused on a particular news item.
This past year Froomkin was only featured on the homepage semi-regularly. People who read Froomkin as a matter of habit had to dig through the washingtonpost.com website to find his blog. Froomkin also didn't have the benefit of being featured in the print version of the paper.
Of course, a writer will experience a decline in readership if readers are forced to search through the website to find the writer's pieces.
6:06 pm
In the last few months, finding Froomkin's column has far more often than not required going into the box labelled "Editorials, Opinions, Columns and Blogs," scrolling down to "blog directory," clicking that, then scrolling down to find "White House Watch" Meanwhile, blogs like Milbank's and Sally Quinn's musings on religion invariably appear on the home page. It is no wonder than this hits dropped.
Whoever made the bonehead decision to fire Froomkin also overlooked how many people hit other parts of the website after going there solely to check Froomkin. Froomkin's daily roundup was an attraction unique to the Post, and it therefore drew visitors to washingtonpost.com who otherwise would have no particular reason to check in daily on the District of Columbia's local paper.
So he fought to have his column get prominent placement on the website? Why is that so unusual? Unlike Krauthammer, Will, Gerson, and the print edition's regulars, his column could only be read on the website -- Bob Somerby, whose gleaning of the WaPo's "reporters" is apparently limited to the print edition, admitted that he was not very familiar with Froomkin's work.
Ironically, Froomkin's firing has probably increased the asking price for a similar column far beyond what the Post was paying.
6:12 pm
What a hatchet job. You're a real hack, Erik. You'll go far in the Village.
6:23 pm
Froomkin's readers were regular but not smart? They couldn't Google or bookmark? LMAO
More likely, even the loony left got tired of Johnny Same Note. Plus, do not underestimate the change in tone from the Left. Now the Lefties are the incumbents and they did not want WaPo or Froomkin dissecting Obamanomics.
So they stopped coming around. You can't keep anyone in print if the audience goes away.
Plus, this whole conspiratorial crap is nauseating. The WaPo is not conservative in any way. Froomkin also is not a great journalist in any way I ever noticed.
Left-wing verbosity can be had anywhere on the Net. For less than $100,000. The managers figured it out, tout de suite, as recession walloped.
The loss of Bush and the the recession? That will clear out a lot of overpaid hacks. Let's hope Maureen Dowd is next.
6:26 pm
I guess journalists, even those with high profile columns in big media outlets, need to include Web marketing as part of their jobs. If Froomkin had invested some of his time in figuring out how to promote his columns in social media and do basic search engine optimization, things may have ended differently. That said, I am guessing in his next venture he will be forced to figure that all out pretty quickly. Give me a call when you're ready Dan.
6:28 pm
And how much are Craphammer and Swill making?
6:34 pm
It's his face!!! No one wants to see that puss. Looks like an effet smurf.
And what the f*ck is a "froomkin"?
6:37 pm
The above article is a very long and convoluted justification for the firing of Dan Froomkin.
Bravo, but you miss the point that people are outraged because Froomkin was trying, day after day, to hold the government accountable for its lies and abuses during the Bush years. That is an important contribution to the discourse, especially at a newspaper that acts as a mouthpiece for the gossipy ramblings of Dana Milbank and the lying talking points of Bill Kristol, and at a newspaper that shamefully and uncritically beat the drums for the occupation of Iraq.
You just don't get it. Froomkin is a good journalist. For that reason alone any smart news organization should want to keep him.
Whatever the 'real' reasons for the firing of Froomkin the MSM has lots its credibility by never holding itself accountable for the amplifications of the Bush years. And so when something like this happens the trust is just gone.
6:45 pm
Does Emily Freifeld still have a job at washingtonpost.com? Maybe she could take over Mr. Froomkin's column. Now there's some good reporting...
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/channel-08/2008/05/obamas_detroit_speech.html
7:11 pm
'Froomkin became just another Leftist media member bowing before Obama’s skirts. Boring. '
If bowing before the President's skirt was a justified cause for firing at WaPo, how come all the neocon Bush asskissers are still there?
7:47 pm
eric, have you ever read some of Froomkin's Obama stories? Check this one, and then tell us is Freifeld would have done that better:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/torture/deconstructing-obamas-excuses.html
8:04 pm
"Just because something’s illegal doesn’t make it appeasement to advocate for its legality."
Well, mortalkonlaw, excuse me pls, but this makes me seriously question your moral compass. You think it's ok to advocate for the legality of torture? Do you advocate for the legality of murder, too?
And as for WaPo allegedly firing Froomkin because he was too critical of Obama, sure an interesting theory. However, Hiatt and executive editor Brauchli are conservatives, and WaPo regularly brought stories that were damaging for Obama (that were quoted in WHW, btw). Why should they single Froomkin out, and ignore the other reporters? No, imho the explanation that Froomkin much too often fought the "common wisdom" of the "serious people" in DC establishment, and dared to expose failures of the media companies themselves, seems more likely. Froomkin made columnists and editors look unprincipled and challenged their ehtics, and he sure didn't make much friends at WaPo that way. Just look at the almost total absence of solidarity statements.
8:14 pm
Eric's piece makes sense. The WP just hired Ezra Klein, half of Dan's age. It's demographics, baby--especially hits. WP is good for Ezra, but he won't save the Post.
8:21 pm
Wow, Wemple. You certainly pushed alot of buttons.
8:23 pm
Nobody uses 'hits' anymore, web traffic is measured by 'page views.' Makes me wonder what else you got wrong.
9:06 pm
Bye, Froomkin! Loser. You'll never have as high profile platform again.
9:37 pm
Probably most right regarding the print media's opinion. But the hits -- that was all Hiatt. Nearly everyone who reached Froomkin over the last few months did so from outside the WaPo site. Hardly a good way to promote someone that you're interested in keeping.
10:21 pm
If Froomkin is as popular as some of you folks believe he is, the Post did him a favor. Let him set up his own Web site, sell some advertising and start rolling in the dough. Of course, he'll discover that he's a boring, one-note Johnny who is as relevant to today's politics as Fawn Hall.
Personally I think it's hilarious that people worship this guy. He's an aggregator of the work of others and throws in his own comments, and he calls it "accountability." Just some lazy labeling. Accountability is when you go out and do some digging, not when you sponge off the work of others.
11:56 pm
An aggregator is what Drudge -- e.g. a guy with no journalistic training; who never worked a beat, and never paid his dues. Froomkin did more than simply collect articles, he provided a narrative, and tied together disparate sources to create a narrative. His work wasn't on par with the best investigative journalists, but it was a real improvement over the kind of commentary that exists in trad journalism where claims can be asserted without providing a trail of evidence to bolster claims.
As far as "worship" is concerned, I think this is an overstatement. Old school reporters might not have appreciated what Froomkin was doing, but those who got it, got it. He capitalized on the medium, and approached journalism in a way that was particularly well-suited to the medium.
The haters are hilarious. I'd wager most are a bunch of trust-fund p-ssies who probably don't know the difference between the Wall Street Journal diamond, the inverted pyramid, or a news lede. These are the same idiots who make up Rush's audience, and think that a dope-head, draft-dodging, college drop-out, who makes his dough licking the boots of the powerful is the true holder of the keys to the gates of wisdom.
12:12 am
Erik,
You write this: "Though washingtonpost.com’s overall Web-hit numbers are public information, the paper places breakout stats for columns and blogs in a secret cache, which complicates any effort to piece together Froomkin’s traffic trends."
But then, you quite confidently claim to have pieced together his traffic trends! Specifically, you boldly assert: "The Froomkin axing is a red-letter event in Post history because it’s the first time that a major personnel decision has hinged so squarely on Web hits."
How do you know what it hinged on? You seem to have no proof of that other than what Post editors, who have incentive to lie, told you. You mention stats from some specific recent days, but that's not nearly enough to prove this personnel decision really hinged on Web hits.
Your only statistics are from recent months, as you note. And you don't put them in context -- that is, his blog was #6 on one day, you say, but out of how many? And you don't seem to have checked his placement on those days -- that is, was his blog easy or difficult to find compared to the others? In any case, isolated days don't tell you anything -- what about is average monthly hits? Do you have access to those? If not, just come out and admit it.
Your only real evidence that his traffic dropped is this: "A Post source says that White House Watch’s traffic has suffered a two-thirds drop over time." Over how much time? And again, the crucial question: did his drop correlate to editor-driven changes in placement on the home page? I'm betting it did.
I don't think your reporting stands up to scrutiny.
12:13 am
The fact that they brought in Wolfowitz straight after getting rid of Froomkin undermines most of the "it was financial, not ideological" points.
2:19 am
"I’d wager most are a bunch of trust-fund p-ssies who probably don’t know the difference between the Wall Street Journal diamond, the inverted pyramid, or a news lede. These are the same idiots who make up Rush’s audience, and think that a dope-head, draft-dodging, college drop-out, who makes his dough licking the boots of the powerful is the true holder of the keys to the gates of wisdom."
Ahhhh, the key Froomkin demographic -- the venom pukers of the Left. (Who apparently do not know how to bookmark.)
3:20 am
Sturunner, I don't think Ezra will replace Froomkin. Firstly, the focus of his blog is on healthcare and economics, different from WHW. Secondly, go to the "political blog" page at WaPo, pls, and show me the link to Ezra's blog! I haven't been able to find it anywere (I bookmarked it when he moved), and I don't think WaPo would totally ignore this new blogger if they wanted to promote him as the next big talent after Froomkin left. And thirdly, looks like Ezra's traffic has declined since moving. Several regulars accused him of selling out, and the comment numbers are lower now (on average), compared to his blog at American Prospect.
3:21 am
mortalkonlaw typed: "While torture’s clearly distinct from these, the fact that a criminal is put into a state of discomfort or physical pain is certainly no bar on the use of prison sentences, tazers [sic], or handguns."
That the people who were tortured or, at the very least, "put into a state of discomfort or physical pain" were not accused or convicted of anything sort of dumps this comment out the window.
Not to mention that tasers are killing people left and right; total isolation, used, at least, in supermax prison is torture; and what's the connection to handguns and prison sentences?
mortalkonlaw typed on: "Froomkin did attack from the left." Froomkin attacked from facts, as you support with "his last column clearly indicates his willingness to stick it to Obama on his campaign promises." I sounds like you're criticizing the liberal bias of reality that Colbert noted.
From reading the various commentaries on the firing and claims put forth by WaPo folks, it looks like his big crime was criticizing the WaPo reporters who weren't reality based. Probably also annoying Howie Kurtz, who long ago left real media criticism behind for the star turns on cable TV.
Yawn, on the other hand, should stop yawning so that his eyes aren't squeezed shut and unable to see what's happening in front of his face:
* Because Obama has been protecting Bush, et al, and there has been no investigation by the DOJ does not put the lie to "multiple felonies."
* Froomkin has been criticizing Obama regularly, so the idea that he was only going after Bush because Froomkin is liberal doesn't hold water.
* "Lefties ... did not want WaPo or Froomkin dissecting Obamanomics."
If this were true, why did the "loony left" go after the WaPo for firing Froomkin?
The problem with Yawn is that he follows the pattern of almost all neocons—Krauthammer, Will, Wolfowitz, Hiatt, etc.—he can't type without making stuff up. Nor can he form a coherent, fact-based sentence.
Unfortunately, like the rest of the neocons, it doesn't even slow him down.
9:05 am
This is the Web. People don't have time to read bloated posts like this. Put your point in the first paragraph. Your point was "The Froomkin axing is a red-letter event in Post history because it’s the first time that a major personnel decision has hinged so squarely on Web hits." Why not just say that in the beginning before getting into the background?
9:44 pm
Froomkin will land on his feat at Kos, HuffPo or TPM, I predict.
9:45 pm
feet :)
12:42 am
The overriding point is this: Froomkin sponges off the work of others, and the job of "providing a narrative" for the work he sponges, presumably for the benefit of the reading-challenged, can be done for a lot less than $100K. No wonder the guy is whining. His gravy train just left the tracks.
I'm sure he'll enjoy being part of the HuffPo's legions of the unpaid.
8:48 am
OK, even I can't take myself anymore. I'll admit it: I'm one of Karl Rove's secret gay lovers. He's MAKING me write this dreck. But I've seen a glimpse of the inner workings of the smug, self-hating, anti-human neocon machine and it scares me. Bad. They know they're losing traction, losing control of the American consciousness, and they're becoming increasingly desperate. Froomkin is just one tiny segment of an iceberg that most of us can't see. God, I hate myself and all I stand for, the talking points I spout without any connection to the truth. Even look at the name I use -- "YAWN" -- to signify how bored I am with myself. An empty life, and empty man, who has nothing better to do with my time than continually return to these comments, updating, challenging, fighting back. I have no life. I have no soul. I am nothing.
9:35 pm
Oh Jonah, it's so cute when you post as 'Yawn.' Now go back to blegging.
1:49 am
This "experiment" was doomed when the format was changed after the '08 elections. Click on " Continue reading this post »" for actual evidence.
I like Froomkin, but he had to be complicit with this change, so I think he wanted out. Let's see where he ends up working....
11:04 am
Seriously, they fired Froomkin AFTER they hired Kristol but BEFORE they hired Wolfowitz? And they claimed it was about money and web hits? You're joking me, right?
I can't say it enough times, in enough different forums - the management of the editorial side of the Post, moreso than any other factor, is going to be the cause of its financial demise. It's really a shame, because it WAS a great paper.
10:07 pm
Well, does the sainted Froomkin have another job yet?
7:28 am
Great article! I liked Froomkin.