Internet Scofflaw

This sounds bad:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’m sad to see this happen. The Washington Post has been the most respectable of the liberal daily papers.  I’m also surprised to see that the Post has learned nothing from all the news it covers:

In response to requests for comment, The Post issued a statement that stopped short of canceling the event.

Kris Coratti, communications director of Washington Post Media, a division of The Washington Post Company, said: “The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. . . As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this. We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that The Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate.”

If these people read their own paper they would know how this always goes. They are going to have to cancel the event eventually, and the sooner they do it, the better off they’ll be.

UPDATE: The Post’s publisher has read the writing on the wall and cancelled the event.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Media Failure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.