A tweet from a fellow editor drove me into my latest of fructose-fueled blind rages on a popular topic of mine: Monday morning quarterbacking.
The article centers around two arguments — that the Post got the situation wrong in its coverage of the snowball incident, and that the Post didn’t give the Washington City Paper credit for breaking the story. Without going into the merits of the Post’s coverage, I can say this to the Washington City Paper: Nobody cares what you have to say on the subject, or, at least, they shouldn’t.
I got about a quarter of the way down the page and was partially in agreement until I realized something I hadn’t noticed while skimming. Besides the fact the writer was making an argument better made by a 5-year-old, he was also breaking a sacred covenant — he was writing about himself.
Any story written internally can be guaranteed to be biased, which is why legitimate news organizations generally avoid doing so. Sure, The New York Times has enough layers it can still produce a thorough and accurate report on an internal development, but I’m still going to trust someone else’s reporting more. A small organization, such as the Washington City Paper, has no such layers. The post amounts to nothing more than the paper sounding off on its rival.
After reading a few posts on the Washington City Paper’s Web site (and watching a video re-enactment), I can equate its “reporting” to the type of salacious “journalism” practiced by smaller, inexperienced news orgs or larger, but more universally recognized as shitty, tabloids. If newspapers start taking tips from the Washington City Paper, journalism would be dead in a day.
Sure, I’m getting up on my high horse here — lacing up my “real reporter” britches — but the thought of WaPo taking advice from the likes of the Washington City Paper makes me shiver. Not that there aren’t things to be learned by all of us, but it was the Post’s tireless reporting that brought down a president, not the Washington City Paper’s incessant whining. I can’t tell you how many times I want to complain publicly because The Campus wasn’t given credit for a scoop, but I work not for recognition but for results. The fact that another paper found it important or interesting enough to rip off just validates my work.
So to the Washington City Paper: Shut the hell up and just be glad you scooped a big dog, even if you did so without, you know, actually reporting.