It Sucks To Be The Washington Post's Ombudsman

You write a nice little article that could be written anytime about how to get letters published in the Post. That doesn't have to run on this Sunday.

You completely ignore the biggest story in the blogosphere that week involving your pubication. This is how one of your Washington Post online bloggers compared the gentlemen who flew a plane into the IRS building in Texas to the Tea Party protesters. This set off a storm because the online manifesto left by the man included rants against big business, supportive words from Karl Marx and hatred of George Bush. Not exactly "right wing" or conservative values.

To make it worse it looks like the blogger, Jonathan Capehart, deliberately omitted the left wing parts to enhance his case. That is not good journalism practice and might be worth addressing by the Ombudsman.

Huntsville Times Bias

Flashpoint, a right leaning blog about local politics that I read, had an article about the Editor of the The Huntsville Times, Mr. Wendt, meeting with local Republicans. One of the questions addressed the liberal bias of the opinion columnists. I try not to read the Times, especially their editorial pages, but because Mr. Wendt admitted that "Prather and Person are issues" I had to look today. Mr. Prather didn't disappoint. Here is his column today on land use issues. Key graph is: "And I'm guessing lots of people are going to have to become personally affected by lack of planning and zoning before they understand that, to some extent, this land was made for you and me." Mr. Prather is arguing to allow the state greater say over how land may be used. He masks it as for people to do this, but really he would like the state to make these decisions. Unstated: Don't worry if they take your land or prevent you from developing it you will be compensated.