The New Conservative WaPo Blogger

I've largely ignored the major flap over my city's newspaper, the Washington Post, hiring a conservative blogger, Ben Domenech, founder of RedState, for 'balance.' I've been busy lately and it fell through the cracks as other more important things, like my job, kept me busy.

First, let's be clear on one thing. There is no 'left leaning' blogger at the post, just real journalists that maintain blogs. Domenech is a ideologue, a party hack, a conservative shill, and completely uninterested in or qualified to do anything resembling journalism.

Oh, and he's a plagiariser. (It's a real word, I looked it up.)

The WaPo may not care that the guy is a completely inappropriate addition to their staff, but they will care that he's been copying other people's work for years.

You can find plenty of examples of his 'inspired' writing at Atrios and DailyKos, some from the Washington Post.

This will, of course have the beneficial short term effect of getting Ben off the Post's website. The long term effect, however, is that as a community, the blogosphere, left and right, has lost credibility. You can add blogs to one more thing that the touch of conservatives has sullied.

Read what the Washington Post has to say about the whole thing here.

UPDATE: 2:33 pm 3.24.2006
He resigned.

Ben Domenech Washington Post Plagiarism