Comments, Anyone?

I call your attention to this column from the British newspaper The Guardian, in which the author (a Yank, no less) blisters The Washington Post and reporter Michael Dobbs link for using a new feature -- The Fact Checker -- to equate "the Red Army in the second world war with freedom fighters." (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics.)

I didn't have the same reaction to the Dobbs story, perhaps Groupblog readers won't either. Or perhaps you will. Whatever. Opinion articles are supposed to upset someone's breakfast.

Scroll down through the comments after the article and you'll quickly see just how Quinn Hillyer, link a senior editor at The American Spectator magazine, managed not only to get a lot of stomachs roiled, but many a mug of coffee spilled as well.

To call this exchange "ballistic" is probably to be at a loss for words. Some of the comments are downright thermonuclear. And meant to be.

And that's just more evidence of how the Internet is reshaping -- and many would say, degrading -- our political discourse. Since I'm an editor and supposed to be able to see both sides of a story, I'm of two minds on the subject.

One, I think that anything that gets the juices of voters flowing is a positive development. Our political chatter has always been at the level of dull roar or higher. Yet if e-mail had not become an integral part of the personal computer attraction, I doubt many politicians -- and those who monitor them, mainly journalists -- would be paying as close attention.

Now, with the magic of hitting the "send" button, you're free to call the target of your outrage a moron, a commie pinko, a fascist pig, or some crude reference to a body part, and it's out there in cyberspace for all to read. I suppose, in time, the point you were trying to make comes across.

But, two, I think you can always get a little too interactive. If we still had neighborhood bars in this country, you could go to one and pop off -- and if you popped off enough, you'd likely get popped in the nose.

Inviting Web site readers to comment on an article and posting those comments verbatim might save a lot of bloody noses, I'm just not so sure it adds much to the greater scheme of things. Honest criticism takes some work; calling people names is simply a reaction.

The Washington Post's Web site, washingtonpost.com, invites comments on news stories, columns, blogs and other features. But it does police for taste and puts up links with each comment posted to report abuse and to give details of the discussion policy. (The Guardian and many other newspaper Web sites do too.) Still, venom has a way of oozing out (see the comments for Charles Krauthammer's most recent column here).

A better way, it seems to me, is with a vehicle as old as American newspapers: letters to the editor. True, not every letter gets published. And the folks who edit letters impose some pretty exacting standards concerning veracity, as well as requiring writers to provide their names and contact information for verification. Yet while space for letters in the dead tree edition is often tight, the Web offers almost unlimited potential to publish as many letters as possible, and many papers already are taking advantage.

Encouraging more readers to get involved in the policy discussions of the day, as opposed to letting them vet over a single news story or opinion column, also could give politicians a finer appreciation of how the wind blows. In an era of blast e-mail campaigns from highly partisan interest groups, they certainly could use such a barometer.

The bonus would be a little civility on the Web. And that certainly wouldn't hurt either.

James Hill is managing editor of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Voodoo Numbers?

The Media Matters report on the play of syndicated columnists in American daily newspapers confirmed what everybody in the business already knows -- that, statistically, newspapers publish more syndicated conservatives than liberals.

And it confirmed yet again that the Writers Group has four or five of the top 10 best-selling columnists, depending on how it's all measured.

Everybody, of course, immediately said the numbers are too low. In our case, they range about 15 percent to 18 percent below our sales numbers. Examples: George F. Will, 429 (MM: 368, the highest number of all). Kathleen Parker, 378 (MM: 328). Ellen Goodman, 347 (MM: 285). David S. Broder, 295 (MM: 256). The survey didn't count weeklies, non-newspaper Web sites or Spanish-language publications, and relied heavily on the responses of editors, some of whom didn't answer repeated messages, leaving researchers to survey those publications by other means.

We at the Writers Group are most gratified that someone conducted such a study. It calls attention to a very important part of the news business -- syndicated op-ed columnists.

But one aspect we couldn't help notice was the cases where MM researchers found huge discrepancies from the client lists that certain writers or syndicates claim. It is a standing joke in the business that you never believe numbers given by a syndicate. If all were true, there would have to be 15,000 U.S. daily newspapers.

What has always mystified me is why substantial journalists from leading publications don't challenge these numbers. Or at least attribute them to the syndicate rather than report them as fact.

A few examples:

"(Robert) Novak, a veteran conservative whose column appears in more than 300 papers ... ." -- Washington Post, 9/29/2003. Media Matters: 88. (Did he lose that many in four years?)

"(Michelle) Malkin ... launched her blog in 2004. ... It's complemented by a syndicated column that appears in 150 papers." -- Washington Post, 2/16/2007. Media Matters: 91, with a footnote that says her blog claims "nearly 200." About Cal Thomas, the footnote says his bio on the Fox News Channel Web site claims "more than 600 national newspapers." MM found 346.

The Writers Group quotes actual numbers. When an AP writer called me to ask about the Media Matters report, I told him he could visit my office and review the books. I've made a similar offers to other prominent media writers. We have nothing to hide.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Surveying the Columnists

Bashing Broder

I write not to defend David Broder. He is quite capable of doing that himself. Since I've been his editor for nearly 17 years, such a defense would be justifiably ignored. Broder always has been regarded as a voice of reason with no political leanings who believes in the fundamental importance of the Constitution, the two-party system in place for more than 200 years and the Chicago Cubs.

The sharp, crude and personal criticism of certain of his columns, particularly in the last year or two, makes me wonder whether something has changed. My knowledge of his work is far from encyclopedic, but I can assert that his even-handed approach has never wavered. He'd make a good umpire.

I think what's changed is the world around us. Dave is neither left nor right, and can't even be called reliably centrist. He reports exhaustively and his conclusions are grounded in hard facts. He also writes occasionally what our business calls "goo-goo" columns -- meaning "good government." In other words, he will give credit where he thinks it's due, be it something enacted by Congress or a even a decision by President Bush. These days, Bush is kind of a third rail of politics. Any praise of the president brings monstrous opprobrium.

One recurring theme of the anti-Broder bloggers is that he is a shill for the Establishment. I don't know how they define "Establishment," but if it means our traditional political, economic and social systems, there are plenty of people in those systems who have felt the sting of Broder's judgments and might ask, "say what?" Ask the Bushies. Ask the Clintonites. The Reagan folks, Carter folks, Nixon folks. You get the idea.

Once upon a long-ago time, we campus long-hairs marched against the Establishment. This particular former long-hair (locks that even Russell Crowe might envy) believed for a time that money corrupted -- that society would be improved if all transactions were by barter. Then came graduation and he got in his car his father bought him, drove on roads the government built, looked for a job generating ideas that people wanted to read, and became serious about voting in elections. Eventually the feet were firmly planted and a new perspective on the campus years set in: It had been a time of unfettered philosophy, a period of free-thinking made possible by all those things he had once questioned. The importance of the founding principle of free speech has stayed with him ever since.

At the Writers Group, we enjoy getting e-mails, the vile with the sweet. But a lesson to all writers and bloggers: Your work would carry a lot more weight if it were grounded in facts. Do some reporting, get new information, tell us something we don't know. Once you do that, your work can make an impact because those who read you, though they may disagree vehemently, will learn something. This is what we at the Writers Group do for a living.

These days, everything written seems to live in electronic perpetuity. Ask yourself what you might think of your words when they're read back to you decades from now. I have revealed to you some words of mine from long ago. What if everything you write were etched in stone? Would you write it differently?

Keep reading, keep writing, and somehow we'll all reach a greater understanding.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.