Jeffrey Birnbaum - FishbowlDC

Coombs Takes On Birnbaum

Patrick — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:27:16 +0000

So, first new Washington Times hire Jeffrey Birnbaum had some critiques of the paper (before he came along, naturally), and then he had to explain his comments to a few staffers and now this, via US News: Former WaTimes heavy Fran Coombs has written this email to Birnbaum:

“I was troubled by your comments on C-SPAN late last month about the decline of The Washington Times and the paper’s lack of ‘real journalistic standards’ before the arrival of you and John Solomon. That’s exactly what I would expect an ex-Washington Post reporter to say. But as a top editor at The Washington Times for nearly 20 years before that, I must disagree. The men and women in that newsroom (most of whom you continue to count on today) consistently and purposely put out a newspaper that represented middle American values and taxpayer concerns, despite the criticism of the one-ideology-fits-all, self-designated ‘mainstream’ media. In recent years, whether we were first warning of a housing bubble about to burst, derailing Harriet Miers’s Supreme Court nomination, or highlighting Dick Durbin’s comparison of Guantanamo with Nazi concentration camps, the journalists at The Washington Times followed their own agenda and no one else’s.”

Read the rest here. Another former WaTimes’r, Stacy McCain, also takes on Birnbaum.

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Birnbaum: WaTimes’ “journalism had faded”

Patrick — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:16:40 +0000

If you worked at the Washington Times before John Solomon came on board, you might not like what new Washington Times employee Jeffrey Birnbaum has to say about your work then:

It’s a turnaround situation at the Washington Times. . … the paper was allowed to, in effect, decline and lapse and its journalism faded and that was a terrible situation. It was a lost asset. There are nearly 200 reporters and editors at the Washington Times. For it to survive and thrive what it needed was real journalistic standards to be applied.

Watch Birnbaum’s comments on this C-SPAN video (starts about nine minutes in).

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Birnbaum Leaves WaPo for WaTimes

Patrick — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:43:17 +0000

FishbowlDC has learned that the Washington Post’s Jeffrey Birnbaum is leaving the Washington Post for the Washington Times, where he will become its managing editor for digital operations. His last day at the Post is today.

>UPDATE: We have his full farewell memo, after the jump…

continued…

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In The Loop Page Continues To Evolve

Patrick — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:50:31 +0000

You may have noticed Peter Baker taking a stab at the Post’s “In the Loop” page Monday (which already features Jeffrey Birnbaum, Al Kamen and Lois Romano).

Since Kamen took the buyout, he’s now on contract and one of the
things he wanted to do was scale back from three columns a week to two. Therefore, in order to replace his Monday column, the Post has started a new White House “Loop” column (similar to the K Street “Loop” column about lobbying on Tuesdays by Birnbaum and the On the Hill “Loop” column about Congress on Thursdays by Romano). Michael Fletcher will primarily author the White House “Loop” column, but Baker and Michael Abramowitz will fill in on occasion.

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