Dave Weigel Resigns

You know who would be a good replacement for him at the Right Now blog? David Petraeus.

Washington Post Communications Director Kris Coratti emails: “Dave offered his resignation and we accepted it,” reports Politico’s Ben SmithHuffPo and FishbowlDC are confirming.

Nothing on his WaPo blog, which hasn’t had an entry since 9:21 am, nor on his Twitter feed.  His most recent tweet, dated 10 minutes ago, “Getting an exceptionally good sense of who my friends are today.”

It’s a shame that Dave, who most agree is a rising star, had to pay such a high price for some indiscreet emails, especially since a fellow journalist violated his confidentiality.   One suspects, and I certainly hope, that he’ll land on his feet soon.  My guess is that Reason or the Washington Independent, both of which are much more openly ideological publications than WaPo, will happily take him back.

You know who would be a good replacement for him at the Right Now blog?  David Petraeus.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Wow–pretty surprising, to be honest (to me, anyway).

  2. James,

    Not McChrystal ?

  3. Dave says:

    I have to say, FishbowlDC didn’t handle this very well. They’re acting like Dave Weigel’s personal political views were a secret until their big “scoop” and that the entire concept of ideological reporting has yet to be born.

  4. James Joyner says:

    Well, McChrystal’s available! But how would it look replacing one guy who got embarrassed by being too candid with the media with another?

  5. Zelsdorf Ragshaft III says:

    Ann Althouse has the definitive writing on this incident. Some feel he may have (rightfully) ended his journalistic career. Seems if you hate the people your are supposed to be reporting on, it may tend to color your story. I guess there is no character fault a liberal can display which Joyner thinks is forgivable.

  6. steve says:

    “I guess there is no character fault a liberal can display which Joyner thinks is forgivable.”

    The guy did resign. Shows some character, and just for emails. Not like he got caught in a sex scandal and stayed in office.

    Just a thought. If we were to hire someone sympathetic to conservatives in Weigel’s position, do we risk getting a WAPO subsidiary of Fox? Why not just go straight to Fox news in that case? What ideological bent should a person in that position have?

    Steve

  7. TangoMan says:

    Why did he offer his resignation though? I didn’t care AT ALL about his personal e-mail remarks but frankly I was quite taken back by his participation on the JournoList where all the left-wing hacks get together to work out their narratives. This guys was supposed to be the conservative/libertarian voice for for the paper and report on events and positions and viewpoints from a conservative/libertarian perspective and from the half dozen times I read his pieces I sure didn’t get the impression that he had an authentic conservative viewpoint.

  8. The blog doesn’t need a replacement, it doesn’t need to exist period. What exactly is the need for a blog to document conservatives as some kind of foreign species?

  9. PD Shaw says:

    Tangoman, he was a liberal hired by the WaPo under the mistaken impression that he was a conservative.

    I didn’t read anything embarrassing Weigel had written. But when I read at Politico that WaPo believed Weigel, Krauthamer and Parker were their conserviatives, . . . now that’s embarrassing.

  10. Herb says:

    No, what’s embarrassing is that you think Krauthammer, Weigel, and Parker are liberals…..

  11. PD Shaw says:

    And my vote for replacement would be Michael Hastings, the journalist most recently showing how to execute an embed to perfection.

  12. TangoMan says:

    I admitted that I didn’t follow Weigel too closely so it slipped my mind that he was the one who wrote that Etheridge “hugged” the kid who questioned him on the street. When I read that I thought the blogger was a typical leftist and now the pieces come together.

  13. Dave says:

    When I read that I thought the blogger was a typical leftist and now the pieces come together.

    Did you actually read that post? Or just see it linked on Drudge or some other conservative blog? Because the context of the word “hug” was clearly describing a violent struggle.

  14. Linda says:

    Weigel’s video posting in his last blog may have been spoonfed to him by the Florida TEA party founder Doug Guetzloe. Local news reports in Central Florida are uncovering links between Guetzloe and Congressman Alan Grayson. It’s odd that Weigel would have access to this video “production” so quickly. Was he more of a liberal tool than everybody suspected? It would be interesting to find out the source of this video. Alan Grayson is funding this spoiler party. Guetzloe has notoriously operated in the bowels of central florida politics. He is a convicted criminal.

  15. James Joyner says:

    I guess there is no character fault a liberal can display which Joyner thinks is forgivable.

    I’m not sure what character fault Weigel displayed. He’s a left-leaning libertarian with a disdain for some factions of the social conservative and libertarian-conservative movements. WaPo hired him to move the blog he was writing at the left-leaning TWI to their own pages and are now shocked to learn that he harbors these thoughts?

    I’m a little torn about the JournoList thing but it’s been open news for quite some time and WaPo has hired and promoted its founder and still-leader, Ezra Klein. So, surely, that’s not a problem for WaPo.

  16. steve says:

    So James, what if someone gets hold of your old Emails? Should we have a hunting expedition and make all journalists Emails fair, or unfair, game? How about pundits?

    Steve

  17. G.A.Phillips says:

    I’m available, how much do it pay?

  18. James Joyner says:

    So James, what if someone gets hold of your old Emails?

    Response moved to post status: “Ethics of Publishing ‘Private’ Emails.”

  19. Trumwill says:

    Seems to me that Weigel was simply given the wrong job in the wrong forum. I generally like to consider myself a reasonable and fair-minded person, but there are certain subjects and people that I know I cannot write about fairly. They’re the kind of people that I can’t keep my mouth shut about in private and subjects where I can’t even pretend to offer an even-handed view because one of the two sides is just so obviously wrong!

    It would be a mistake for the Washington Post or any publication to hire me to write about these things without disclosing where I am coming from on the subject. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a subject where I am liberal (gay marriage), conservative (education), libertarian (police procedure), or anything else.

    If I am expected to fairly cover something on a regular basis (and not do so in an opinion capacity), then it shouldn’t be something on which it is an imposition not to go spouting off about how much disdain I have for one side or the other.

  20. wr says:

    What’s really amusing is that Weigel’s emails don’t concern, for the most part, “conservative” politicians, but self-serving slimeballs like Drudge and Rush. Still, I guess to be allowed to be considered a “conservative” these days, you have to kiss both asses. But really, Drudge did a hatchet job on Weigel and sent his army of morons crusading after him, and Weigel said something unkind. And for that he’s too impure for the Post.

  21. Trumwill says:

    The question isn’t whether Weigel is himself a conservative. Almost nobody is saying that he is. The question is whether or not he can fairly investigate the current conservative movement. Having such strong (and by most appearances one-sided) opinions about said movement suggests that unlikely.

    My opinions on the Tea Party are probably closer to Weigel’s than Beck’s. Kinda seems like a temper tantrum to me. But that’s somewhat beside the point and probably why the Washington Post should not hire me to give a fair analysis of the TP.