Why America needs Gene Weingarten

by Dave Weigel

It's just a happy coincidence, I guess, that he publishes this as I get ready to polish off a week of blog posts.

[T]here are no real deadlines anymore, because stories are constantly being updated for the Web. All stories are due now, and most of the constipated people are gone, replaced by multiplatform idea triage specialists. In this hectic environment, mistakes are more likely to be made, meaning that a story might identify Uzbekistan as "a subspecies of goat."

Fortunately, this new system enjoys the services of tens of thousands of fact-checking "citizen journalists" who write "comments." They will read the Uzbekistan story and instantly alert everyone that BARACK OBAMA IS A LIEING PIECE OF CRAP.

I basically like "comments," though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots.

Buy his new anthology when it comes out in September.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan