Bristol editor gives one-fingered salute to Washington Post

He probably decided a long time ago that he no longer aspired to work there.

Who could blame him, if he's happy where he is now?

 

I know. You don't fuck with happy. Still, it's not hard to imagine him considering whether to apply for some future opening and then thinking, "Oh. Column. Never mind."

 

As most parents have told their children, if you don't have anything good to say, then don't say anything. So I won't say anything about Mr. Foster, but will congratulate Daniel Gilbert.

 

He didn't need to write that column. To heck with what the Washington Post thinks. What matters is what is happening in your newsroom and on your beats. If you're giving your very best to your readers - regardless of the paper's size - that's what matters.

I work at a paper that publishes three times a week in a major metro area. There are two big-city dailies in our county, just out of our coverage area. We respect them and read them. They respect us, read us and often write second-day stories after they see our Web site or print product (including one of their front-page stories today).

I can look around our newsroom and say we're giving our readers our very best, and we're giving them a very good product. That's what matters - not what another paper might or might not think of us.

 

Good post.

To me, the most interesting thing in the story was the implication that the Post came in to write a certain story -- scrappy, dying smalltown paper wins Pulitzer -- and came away with that story, facts be damned.

That's bad journalism and better focus for a column.

 

Nice post. Congrats to the Bristol paper and all that, but I didn't care for the column. I really don't give a shit if some editor was turned down by the Post a decade ago. Seems like he's in a good place now, though. Focus on that.

 

Look at it from the perspective of the person who reads the Bristol paper every day. It's an editor's column, and part of the experience of community journalism is getting to know the people working at the paper. There's a voice, a name there that you come to relate to because the guy helps you understand the ins and outs of where you exist.

 

I don't know the guy, but I liked it.
I didn't get that he was blasting the Post for not hiring him, but blasting them for writing a condescending story after they were waxed.
Good for him. Any time you can knock some smug jerk off their perch, bravo.

 

Foster has a massive inferiority complex. This column is just further proof of the childish tendencies of Mr. Foster, who likes to track down and threaten people who post anything negative about job openings in Bristol. And before anyone asks, I wasn't the one who was threatened. But perhaps that person will choose to weigh in here

 

Well put.

 

If the WP editor to whom he refers is who I think it is, I also thought she was needlessly snooty when I got the brushoff a decade before the Bristol editor did. But he ought to be over it by now, or at least pretend to be. I thought his column was horseshit.

 

Normally I would think this kind of thing is whiny, but I get the feeling the Post needed to hear it.

The ole system of plucking the reporter from the vaunted intern program works out in so many cases... but so does rolling the dice on an 38-year-old (or even say, a 50-year-old) with an unconventional background.

I think it's really important for newsrooms not to become ageist. Hopefully the Post and its "sharp" reporter can learn from this.