Weigel, who had been tasked with writing about conservatives, was revealed to have disparaged some of his subjects in an off-the-record listserv called "Journolist."
Weigel then spent four years at Slate before joining Bloomberg last September as part of the launch of the Bloomberg Politics vertical helmed by "Game Change" authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. But the New York-based project has struggled to gain traction since launching last year, suffering from internal clashes with the Washington bureau and enduring several embarrassing headlines.
July 8, 2015
Dave Weigel's exile from The Washington Post is over.
"The move is a homecoming of sorts for Weigel, who spent three months at the Post in 2010 before resigning amid scandal."
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Weigel said in an interview. "I'm hoping to add a focus on that to what they have already.
Pretty sure the "we hate conservatives" focus is already covered.
Different owners and management.
Is he being hard as a "journalist" or a commentator? Is there a shortage of Democrat party lickspittles at the Post?
If the Post acts fast maybe they can hire Brian Williams, too.
Howard Kurtz is reporting that "unlimited juice boxes" and a "one hour nap time" were part of the deal. Pampers are extra.
It's good to know that the WaPo STILL doesn't think my clicks/purchases are worth anything.
Journolist was 5 years ago. Wow.
He's a commentator with a left-leaning bias--I figured the Post already has plenty of those. What is he adding that they need?
I wonder if Weigal still considers conservatives to be "rat fuckers"?
Seriously, WaPo, you're hiring a guy who has slurred about 50% of the country with things that aren't fit to print. And he did it shamelessly while colluding with other like minded people to lie about and distort the news.
Hiring him back is basically saying that your standards have dropped to the point where nasty, shrill, partisan hacks are openly acceptable.
"The move is a homecoming of sorts for Weigel, who spent three months at the Post in 2010 before resigning amid scandal."
Weigel, who had been tasked with writing about conservatives, was revealed to have disparaged some of his subjects in an off-the-record listserv called "Journolist.""
The triumphant return of the whore to the whorehouse.
For Progs, such "exile" is a badge of honor.
Matthew Sablan said...
Hiring him back is basically saying that your standards have dropped to the point where nasty, shrill, partisan hacks are openly acceptable.
Isn't the horse out of the barn on this? After all this is why Ezra Klein is so loved by the left. He showed the left media they could be more aggressively partisan and/or openly political without suffering a loss of readership or risking employment. Weigel is a result not an indicator.
Klein at least hides his hate better. We don't have reams of pages where he calls people ratfuckers and wonders why anyone bothers talking about the 50% of America he's convinced are racists.
Klein has a veneer of respectability. Sure, he's dumb. But, we can't prove he hates half his intended audience. Actually, we might be able to, I forget if we have his Journolist emails.
On the off chance that anyone here would care about facts, Dave Weigel is a registered Republican and generally supports libertarian positions.
BBKingFish: The facts are perfectly sourced in his Journolist emails. Whatever he is registered as doesn't matter, and any claims that he "generally supports libertarian positions" either tells me you don't know what he claims to support from his Journolist emails, don't know what libertarian positions are, or are just uninformed in general.
Weigal self-identified as a hateful man who shouldn't be taken seriously. There's no need to care about WHAT his political positions are, because he's a hate-filled bigot with anger issues who imparts dark motives on anyone who disagrees with him.
Wasn't it Weigel who blew the lid off the Journolist in a fit of pique with another conspirator? As I recall, he was the great irony--the only member of the journolist to be punished in any way for betraying their country, their employers, and their profession was the very guy who exposed them. (He was punished by being demoted to a less prominent outlet, the only consequence to befall any of the traitors.)
Mickey Kaus revealed JournoList to the world, I think.
bbkingfish said...On the off chance that anyone here would care about facts, Dave Weigel is a registered Republican and generally supports libertarian positions.
Many of us care about facts, we also care about relevance. So you're going to have to say a bit more about why we should care about your facts. (I suspect Matthew is right in his observation that you either don't know Weigel's positions or you don't know what libertarianism is.)
Recycling the news. Recycling JournoListers. He couldn't be areal conservative because rehabilitation only works if you're the in crowd.
bbkingfish said...
On the off chance that anyone here would care about facts, Dave Weigel is a registered Republican and generally supports libertarian positions.
He used to write for reason.com, which generally has an unfortunate PC/SJW tilt, but he was more worser than the others.
What? He couldn't get a job in the Obama administration?
Weigel is hard to pigeonhole. He's a good writer and a reasonably good journalist. Anything he did in his mid-20s is pretty forgivable. I don't think he will put himself in another situation like he did with Journolist, where he was co-opted by propagandist Ezra Klein. Cut Weigel some slack, I think at worst he's going to be another Jake Tapper, who is partisan but plays it straight.
As for the Washington Post, I got savaged by some snot-bag in another comment thread when I wrote that the paper was the best in the country. Maybe that's not saying a lot for the rest of this country's news outlets, but I stand by that assessment. And under Jeff Bezos, it's going to get even better.
If the journalism profession had any sort of integrity, anyone who was a part of Journolist would not be working in professional journalism.
Does anyone think that he would have been hired at the Washington Post if he had disparaged liberals as ratfuckers?
Scott said...
I don't think he will put himself in another situation like he did with Journolist, where he was co-opted by propagandist Ezra Klein.
He wasn't co-opted, he was enthusiastic. This is quite easy to understand by reading his so-called mea culpas which boil down to "I shouldn't have written those things because hiding my beliefs gave me better opportunities to undermine those I hate".
I wrote that the paper was the best in the country.
WAPO shows a less complete adherence to the far left than most large papers (see Volokh) but this hardly translates to Weigel. Supposing he could be Tapper is a huge leap, much less "worst" case.
@sydney: I agree. But journalism in the United States is not recognized as a profession. Some people practice it at a professional level, but they are a slim percentage of all people who write stuff that shows up in journals.
I don't think journalism can be a profession in this country due to the First Amendment. Now, with the internet, there are no gatekeepers holding back anyone who wants to write for an audience.
Even so, there are places were professional journalism is practiced; and I think people like Ezra Klein are toxic to such institutions. I'm glad he's no longer at the Washington Post.
Peoples characters rarely change after their mid-20's.
Untrustworthy is always untrustworthy.
Neither do their hates or loves.
An enemy is always an enemy. At some point there may be a truce, or even an alliance of convenience, but there will never be sympathy.
Age just adds depth of rationalization and cynicism.
The only exceptions are when someone has a genuine religious or similar moral revelation, which are usually traumatic. These are pretty rare.
When you're in your 20s, you're seeking your identity as an adult, and tend to be attracted to groups of people doing the same things that you are. Journolist was a mechanism specifically for co-opting people like Weigel into accepting the progressive agenda. Weigel is lucky Journolist fell apart when it did; otherwise he would have entered his 30s as just another progressive hack. But at the moment he's not. Let him develop. As for Ezra Klein, the majordomo of Journolist, he was born a hack, and it is a fate he will never escape.
bbkingfish said...
On the off chance that anyone here would care about facts, Dave Weigel is a registered Republican and generally supports libertarian positions.
In case bbk is interested in a deeper understanding rather than superficial and ultimately irrelevant snark:
Since early 2007, Weigel has been a registered Republican in the Washington, D.C. area,[18][19][20] in order to vote for Ron Paul at the Republican primary stage of the 2008 presidential election.[21] In 2008, Weigel voted for Barack Obama,
So nothing anyone wrote is contradicted by this "fact" despite his implications.
I don't mind the blatant reminder: the Media hates you, non-Leftist.
Don't forget.
He's still untrustworthy.
Weigel has a wry sense of humor, and amuses me.
He'll do a better job if he isn't presented as a conservative journalist, as he used to be.
Hiring him back is basically saying that your standards have dropped to the point where nasty, shrill, partisan hacks are openly acceptable.
Facts not supported by evidence.
I question that their standards have even dropped. They've always been this bad. People just notice it now.
Does anyone think that he would have been hired at the Washington Post if he had disparaged liberals as ratfuckers?
That's kinda funny.
Even so, there are places were professional journalism is practiced; and I think people like Ezra Klein are toxic to such institutions. I'm glad he's no longer at the Washington Post.
They just CITE Vox a lot. Improvements I guess.
"What? He couldn't get a job in the Obama administration?"
What makes you think this isn't his job in the Obama Administration?
Weigel's a R just like the John Doe prosecutor is.
Weigel is a far-left partisan hack masquerading as a journalist, and the WaPo has proven that they, like the rest of the Lickspittle Media (TM), don't have a problem with that.
So which of the Republican debates is Weigel going to moderate?
Roy Jacobsen said...
Weigel is a far-left partisan hack masquerading as a journalist
The fact that he hates conservatives doesn't make him far-left. This is actually a fairly common political position, especially among libertarian-ish moderates (many of whom hate both conservatives and leftists).
Who said journolist is dead ?
I suspect something similar but more exclusive or better secured is still operational.
There is obvious media coordination going on. Somewhere there is an active coordinating mechanism in action.
As for left vs right, in the present situation that isn't quite the case.
It really is class vs class, but in the sense of its the nomenklatura, of which the Washington Post is a tool, against the broad middle class, using the lower class as a moral rationalization for their arrogant aggression.
Weigel's a talented objectivist, which ironically might be just the sort of thing that makes the WaPo bland. People who have no problem looking at both sides of their bias are in woefully short supply outside of the MSM. The problem with the MSM is the way they water it all down.
Klein has a veneer of respectability. Sure, he's dumb.
The two things are interchangeable in America.
The fact that he hates conservatives doesn't make him far-left. This is actually a fairly common political position, especially among libertarian-ish moderates (many of whom hate both conservatives and leftists).
You're right. Journalist was a real hotbed of libertarianism.
Damn autocorrect.
"Ratfuckers" is a term I learned in the mid 1970s from reports of Donald Segretti's work for Nixon's campaign, for which he was convicted of 3 misdemeanor counts of forging campaign documents and sentenced to 6 months in prison.
"Ratfucking" was defined as sabotaging an opponent through active measures such as disabling of sound equipment at a rally, trashing campaign posters, damaging campaign vehicles, or (in Segretti's example) creating false documents on the letterheads of the opposition and releasing them to the press.
Describing Repubs as Ratfuckers thus has a long pedigree, honorable in the details.
Being a member of Journolist is essentially participation in a campaign of Democrat Ratfucking of Republicans, and all participants in Journolist should be treated like Segretti was treated.
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