Just to add on to what Jamison wrote earlier today, it's sad/amusing to watch the WashPost chase its tail in the wake of David Weigel's resignation and the mini-media controversy it set off. Weigel, of course, was hired by the Post in the spring to cover the conservative movement, but then resigned when some old private emails revealed that he'd made disparaging comments about conservatives. So Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander engaged in some ritual hand-wringing about how, OMG, conservatives are angry at the Post and how can the Post make GOP partisans happy?

The irony is that the Post has never hired somebody full-time to write specifically about the “liberal movement” in America. And you don't see Post editors and ombudsmen fretting about what liberals think, do you?

Despite the right-wing outreach, there's still an awful lot of bellyaching among conservatives about the Post, which, of course, will always be the case. The right-wing will always harp on and hammer the D.C. daily. That's the whole point of right-wing press haters; to put journalists on the defensive about their alleged 'liberal bias.' Not that anyone inside the Post seems to understand that.

Instead, Alexander rushed to document just how unhappy partisan press-haters are.

Did I mention the Post has never hired anyone to cover the “liberal movement.” Yet, incredibly, Post ombudsman Alexander announced that the solution to the Weigel resignation, in order to make sure `wingers are content with the daily, is to hire two staffers to cover the conservative movement.

UPDATED: Greg Sergent at the washingtonpost.com writes an excellent news blog about politics from a liberal perspective. Some might suggest his site represents the liberal equivalent to the type of outreach the Post so publicly engaged in when hiring Weigel, and the type of outreach Alexander mentioned in his wirte-up. Either way, the Post's obsession with how conservatives view the newspaper remains a largely un-winnable battle.