Will-ing the decline of newspapers

Matt Yglesias and others (notable Brad DeLong) have gone to town on the Washington Post for a recent article by George Will where he painted a very false picture about the scientific community and the climate change debate in the 1970s.  Worse, the paper has stood by its columnist and refuses to acknowledge the danger of publishing blatant, intentional distortions.

I’m not going to go into the details about why Will is wrong.  Instead, I think this really shows that the Washington Post has lost its way.  Being young, I don’t have much to compare the current WaPo to the old one, but everything I’ve read makes it sound like it’s gone way downhill.  Moreover, it’s bread and butter – political reporting and analysis – is getting taken over by the Politico and sophisticated pundits like Nate Silver.  In other words, the Washington Post is losing the skill that made it stand out in the marketplace.  And when it publishes, thereby sponsoring, junk like Will’s piece, it harms its claim to be a paper of record.  Now one piece does not destroy a paper, but the WaPo has a pretty shrill opinion page and a consistent record of tolerating rather outrageous op-eds.  When you are losing the game of political reporting, one would hope you can at least produce excellent journalism.  For D.C.’s biggest paper, that is becoming less and less the case.

Of course, the WaPo does not represent the only paper with declining quality.  In fact, it is on the leading edge of a braoder trend, the dumbification of media.  This theme is one that I plan on talking about a lot in the future.