. . . it’s obviously not just coming from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Washington Post, outside of its salon-for-sale controversy, also fired one of its most successful aggressive bloggers, Dan Froomkin, a couple weeks back. Well, today, Glenn Greenwald (at the actual Salon) broke the news that Froomkin is landing . . . at The Huffington Post!
In a piece as much about the failure of traditional media as Froomkin’s new gig, Greenwald writes:
In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of four reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post’s Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page.
As important as his column-writing may be, the prospect of Froomkin controlling a little force of mini-Froomkins — reporters who can help him investigate and write about the parts of Washington ignored by others — may be the more important development in Froomkin’s hiring.
The big-picture news, though, is that Froomkin’s hiring shows us that journalism is alive and well, as Greenwald writes:
Clearly, journalism itself is not dying. What is dying — and rightfully so — is the staid, establishment-serving, passion-free, access-desperate, mindless stenographic model to which establishment journalism rigidly adheres. . . . People are obviously hungry for the type of real journalism Froomkin practices. The Huffington Post immediately capitalized on the Post’s short-sighted and myopic decision to fire one of their most vibrant, passionate and innovative journalists. In this episode lies many insights about the real reasons establishment journalism is struggling severely.
Congratulations to Froomkin and The HuffPo, which just became an even better read.
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Chris Geidner is the senior political writer at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found