The Washington Post accepted the resignation of Dave Weigel whom they hired in April to blog about the conservative movement after e-mails that he posted on a left wing journalist list serve became public.

From the Politico

Blogger David Weigel’s resignation from the Washington Post after emails he wrote disparaging conservatives were made public touched off a raging Internet debate about journalistic objectivity and prompted Weigel’s fellow Post blogger, Ezra Klein, to shut down the listserve where Weigel expressed his opinions.

The Post, which stood by Weigel after his first emails from Jounolist were published and Wiegel apologized on his blog “Right Now,” apparently changed its mind when a new batch surfaced Friday.

“Time to move on,” Managing Editor Raju Narisetti told POLITICO Thursday night. But Friday Kris Coratti, the Post’s spokesman, said: “Dave offered his resignation and we accepted it.”

It was the second time an attempt by the Post to find a credible blogger to cover the right ended badly. In 2006, it hired Ben Domenech, founder of the RedState group blog, but allegations of plagiarism against Domenech quickly surfaced in the blogosphere, and he never started.

More recently, the Post has moved aggressively into the blogging space, hiring a cadre of young bloggers who had built their names at more opinionated sites, including Klein, Weigel and Greg Sargent. But while Klein has been presented from the start as a liberal voice, Weigel’s ideology was less clear. A former writer for Reason magazine, he describes himself as having libertarian tendencies, but having voted for Obama. Post National Editor Keven Merida told POLITICO’s Ben Smith last month that he had never asked Weigel about his politics.

Weigel declined to comment, but Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reported that Weigel offered his resignation Thursday night and heard from Post editors that his comments were not serious enough to cost him his job. It was only after the Daily Caller published more emails that Post editors decided Weigel’s position at the paper had become “untenable,” Stein wrote.

In the latest emails from the list, Weigel joked about wishing for the death of Rush Limbaugh and accused Republicans of “racism.” A spokesman for the Daily Caller said the reporter had been working on the story on for several weeks. The site crashed after the Drudge Report linked to it.

The hiring of Weigel by the Post to cover conservatives was  a joke to begin with. He didn’t have any conservative credentials (sorry but working for the Libertarian Reason magazine doesn’t qualify) and there isn’t anyone that I know in D.C. who trusted him to cover conservative events fairly. And he didn’t disappoint as his posts were just a shade more towards the center than Kleins were. So in essence the Post only covered conservatives from a liberal viewpoint.  Then again with the Post that shouldn’t be a big surprise.

Now the Post not only has a slot to fill but they have egg on their face for trying to clothe a liberal in conservative clothing.

I guess the Post can always defend themselves by saying they never said that Weigel was a conservative only that he was assigned to cover conservatives. Yes it’s a weak defense but we are talking the Post here.

The liberals will probably miss Weigel poking away at the conservatives but more than that they will miss their private list serve where they could vent about conservatives and other issues that thanks to a leak cost Weigel his job.

Hopefully the Post will fill Weigels slot with a real conservative. There are many fine young bloggers available in D.C. who would probably jump at the chance to earn a paycheck from the liberal paper and use it to support conservative causes.

Based on their experience with the conservative bloggers  to date I suggest that the Post ask some of us who know the D.C, blogosphere for our opinions so that they don’t step on yet another landmine as they try to build their blogging credibility.

So if anyone at the Post is listening I can send you my list tomorrow if you want it.

More on the Weigel e-mails.

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