Thirteen

About a month ago, I was sitting in a lecture hall as former Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander reminisced about his life a few decades ago as editor in chief of Ohio University's student newspaper, The Post. It was an excellent speech, a nice mix of self-deprecating humor and insight you would hope to hear from a man who has been quite successful in a field that can be especially demanding.

But one fact he mentioned is that much of Washington's political reporting boils down to writing about press releases. He noted this kind of reporting is not necessarily covering a metro beat as is often associated with journalism, but attending hearings and sifting through bureaucracy. As incredibly important as it is to the civic process, I can't imagine finding the same fulfillment in covering national politics than a city or state's, say, budgetary and crime concerns.

Numerous media outlets have complained the Obama Administration is not as transparent as then-Senator Obama promised it would be in 2008, which is highly discouraging. And considering the three 24-hour news networks compete all day and night with numerous political blogs trying to drive the news cycle (Talking Points Memo, Politico, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, etc.), there is a strong tendency to play up political stories that are of consequence for 10 minutes, if at all.

That leaves us with a blog post from Politico today, "Obama says his 12-year-old is 13." In it, MJ Lee writes that in today's news conference, Obama mistakenly cited his daughter's age when making a point about how Republicans can learn from their responsibility to complete their work in a timely manner.

Obviously, this was just a blog post and Politico led higher on its site with actual news from one of the president's rather rare news conferences, but the point remains. His daughter turns 13 in five days. While there does seem to be a more insatiable public interest in Obama's daily actions than even President Bush's, there is no justifiable reason to pretend this is news. Diluting a publication's name with content that is sub-standard, all the while justifying that it's on the blog only for those interested in such minutiae, is not the same as thoroughly covering an issue.


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Tell him what we said about "Paint It Black"