At least it worked in Philly, where the Inquirer turned to disgraced Torture Memo Man John Yoo to write a monthly column. Why would the newspaper want someone like Yoo to pontificate in its pages? According to today's report in the NYTimes, it's because the Inquirer was trying to counter claims that the paper has a liberal bias.

Score one for Newsbusters!

From the Times:

“There was a conscious effort on our part to counter some of the criticism of The Inquirer as being a knee-jerk liberal publication,” [Inquirer editorial page editor Harold] Jackson said. “We made a conscious effort to add some conservative voices to our mix.”

Guess that's why the Inquirer also tapped former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum to pen a column (at five times the normal pay rate), because the paper was trying to counter criticism from the right-wing. Nothing wrong with diversity on the Op-ed pages, although as Media Matters has noted, if U.S. newspaper lack an opinion voice there, it's a liberal one.

But also keep in mind that the Inquirer serves an hugely Democratic city in a state that, according to voting patterns, is galloping away from the GOP. But under pressure from the right, the Inquirer scrambles to hire a discredited voice like Yoo's, and a politician like Santorum, who PA. voters overwhelmingly rejected at the polls.

Meanwhile, our fave part of the Times article was this passage:

“What I liked about John Yoo is he's a Philadelphian,” [publisher Brian] Tierney said. “He went to Episcopal Academy, where I went to school.”

Yoo is perfect for the job because he went to the same exclusive, private high school as the publisher!

Amateur hour.

UPDATE: Philly's Will Bunch makes some important points.