DeFroomkinated

Martyred by the fourth estate?This has been coming for a week or so now, but I was hoping it wouldn’t happen — that the right people would realize their mistake and reverse themselves, restoring balance and sanity to the universe.

Dan Froomkin, author of the Washington Post’s excellent online column White House Watch, has been dumped.

Glenn Greenwald broke the story over at Salon.com, and has stayed on top of it ever since — he seems to think the firing is the result of Froomkin’s refusal to stop discussing the Bush-era torture revelations, which has offended the Post’s current management. Certainly, it’s not about what they say it’s about, which is that the column isn’t “working”.

For his part, Froomkin has refrained from speaking out on the situation, and he signed off in Friday’s column as the mensch he is:

I wish The Washington Post well. I’m proud to have been associated with it for 12 years (I was a producer and editor at the Web site before starting the column.) I remain a big believer in the “traditional media,” especially when it sticks to traditional journalistic values. The Post was, is and will always be a great newspaper, and I have confidence that it will rise to the challenges ahead.

I’m not so sure, myself; it sounds to me like they just failed a pretty big one.

Anyway, my blogroll link to Froomkin’s columns will stay up as long as it remains functional. If you aren’t a regular reader, take a few minutes and see what real reporting looks like in our age of political stenography.