Rails, Froomkin, and the NYT

Some notes today:

• Because it’s been a crazy week, we forgot to blog earlier about the New York Observer’s excellent article on the drama inside the New York Times Washington bureau. Highlights: #1 Phil Taubman asked #2 Kate Phillips to leave on his own; Jeff Gerth and David Rosenbaum have both applied for NYT buyout package; investigative reporter Don Van Natta might be the new #2, hoping to pull the NYT out of the Washington news gutter.

• A reader writes in about next week’s ill-concieved Metro section redesign: “Few things I hate more in life than ‘rails.’ Smacks of lowbrow, budget-ass Gannett McPaperness. Why do they insist upon dumbing their product down? Just so desperate, I guess.”

  Another way of helping to turn the paper around might be to start tossing some bones to the Metro reporting team and giving readers local news other than the latest Butterstick update. Twice this week the lead story in the Washington Times and the DC Examiner has been a metro story (cop shooting & stadium news) that didn’t make the front of the Post.

• TAP’s Garance Franke-Ruta adds to the NPR right/left numbers yesterday by digging up that the Center for American Progress actually had 46 people on the news network in 2005. That makes the tally 187 left and 239 right.

• Speaking of the vast right wing conspiracy, Media Matters comes to the aid of Dan Froomkin, arguing that it’s evident from cryptic comments by Post editors that the only people who complain about the White House Briefing are Republican operatives. We maintain the only people who do so are merely stupid.

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