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The Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell weighs in on how the Post decided to run the Charlotte Allen piece -- the only Post official to do so on the paper's own pages to date:
An Outlook assigning editor, Zofia Smardz, who worked directly on the piece, tells Howell the piece was meant to be satire -- a point disputed by Allen in her chat. John Pomfret, the top editor at the Outlook section to sign off on the piece, said he thought that "it presented a different, albeit very non-PC take at a time when women and politics is a riveting topic in this country. I expected the piece to be controversial, but I did not expect the intensity of the reaction. It was a learning experience about the section, my job and our readership."Thousands of women -- including this one -- were offended by an Outlook opinion piece last Sunday by writer Charlotte Allen. Complaints flooded my in-box, letters to the editor, the comment board linked to the article on washingtonpost.com, and the blogs. Outlook editors thought the piece was humorous and knew it might be controversial, but they were stunned at the outpouring of outrage. ...
The only person to come out looking good is Post deputy editor Warren Bass, who "wrote a fairly blunt e-mail arguing that it wasn't up to snuff and that the paper shouldn't run a glib, essentialist screed that insulted an entire gender."
Right!
How did Smardz and Pomfret so misread what Allen herself indicated was not meant to be quite satire? And which their colleague Bass - and a gazillion readers across political lines -- recognized and responded to right away as "a glib, essentialist screed that insulted an entire gender"?
And when is the Post going to apologize, for the failure in judgment in running the piece, as Post editors immediately apologized when an online "On Faith" column by Gandhi's grandson they ran offended some Jewish groups a couple months ago? Howell:
... [Editors Jon] Meacham and [Sally] Quinn apologized on Jan. 18 and published a critical letter from Judea Pearl, father of the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by Muslim extremists in Pakistan in 2002.
The apologies helped, but some readers wanted the article removed and Gandhi off the panel. Quinn and Meacham said Gandhi will stay on the panel. It is the policy of washingtonpost.com editors not to remove articles; they equate that with trying to change history.
In hindsight, everyone sees the error. Straus said the piece should not have been published. Waters said Gandhi should have been asked to rewrite it. Meacham said the article was "ill-conceived and sloppily written. I regret the whole thing. When I read it, I flinched. It should have come down." Meacham and Quinn also wished they had apologized earlier. The lessons learned, Meacham said, were: "Take it down. Always apologize when you're in the wrong and quickly."...
As Newsweek/Post editor Jon Meacham says: "Always apologize when you're in the wrong and quickly."
Hello, Post?
Is the reason there is no apology because the Post still doesn't think it was wrong to publish the Allen piece? Or more precisely, because it thinks it can get away with running a "glib, essentialist screed that insulted an entire gender" by saying its readers were just not sophisticated enough to get the joke, as Smardz implies? When by all accounts, including Allen's: Zofia Smardz and John Pomfret, the joke was on you.