Dave Wiegel is–or was–a blogger for the Washington Post assigned to cover conservative issues. He recently was involved in a dispute with Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report and that dispute went public. On a liberal mailing list called Journolist, Wiegel posted the following:
This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.
Reaction has been swift. Yesterday Wiegel published an apology. It would appear that today Wiegel has resigned from his position at the Post (via the Corner).
Ann Althouse has some thoughts on how and why Wiegel has destroyed his journalistic integrity, if not his career.
Update: Ezra Klein, the reporter at the Post who created the Journolist mailing list has announced that he is deleting the mailing list.
In any case, Journolist is done now. I’ll delete the group soon after this post goes live. That’s not because Journolist was a bad idea, or anyone on it did anything wrong. It was a wonderful, chaotic, educational discussion. I’m proud of having started it, grateful to have participated in it, and I have no doubt that someone else will reform it, with many of the same members, and keep it going.
This deletion sounds very much like ACORN shutting down–just so they can change their name and continue doing the exact same thing. Or, as Althouse puts it: “So it’s not done. It just got too big. And it needs a new name.”
