CAF In The News

niemanlab.org —
Enterprise reporting partnerships with online news organizations are in vogue at major newspapers these days, and arguably no paper has been more aggressive in pursuing them than the Washington Post. But in his ombudsman column Sunday, Andrew Alexander takes Post editors to task for a series of failures that plagued its most recent partnership, with a new organization calling itself the Fiscal Times.

huffingtonpost.com — People are saying that the so-called Cadillac tax "might fall flat" and "has real problems." And those are its defenders. I can't remember any new policy in recent history whose own advocates had so many complaints with its design.

news.firedoglake.com —
The next couple weeks will be all about the Prop. 8 trial around these parts – it starts in the morning. I’ll actually be reporting from a courthouse in Pasadena, CA, where a simulcast of the feed from Judge Vaughn Walker’s courtroom will be broadcast. And I’ll have a background post up in the morning. The trial starts at 8:30am Pacific.

digbysblog.blogspot.com — ... it's perfectly fine.

The Washington Post ombudsman finally responded to the complaints about the paper's inappropriate relationship with Pete Peterson and his new "news" operation the Fiscal Times. He says there's nothing wrong with it because Peterson has hired good reporters and the stories will be edited by the paper's staff.

huffingtonpost.com — Andrew Alexander, the Washington Post's ombudsman, gave an argument about the Post's use of copy produced by the Peter Peterson funded "Fiscal Times," which can also be used to justify the use of "news" stories generated by any "news" service created by an advocacy group.

tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com — 2009 was an exciting, thought-provoking year here at the Cafe. We're hoping to bring in a new slate of bloggers to ensure that 2010 is just a strong. But before we look at the top posts of the year, let's have a quick look at the week that flew by.

nytimes.com — Facing criticism for publishing the work of a start-up news organization, The Washington Post said Tuesday that it should have disclosed more about the group’s financier and his connections, and the paper’s ombudsman said he was looking into the relationship.

mediamatters.org — Lost amid the controversy over the Washington Post turning its news pages over to billionaire Pete Peterson's anti-government crusade is a fairly basic question: Do Peterson and his allies have a track record of being right? The guy didn't just appear out of nowhere; he's been trying to influence public policy for decades. Shouldn't newspapers give some consideration to his track record?

news.firedoglake.com — Roger Hickey reports on another letter of protest to the Washington Post from policy experts, demanding to meet with the Chairman of the Washington Post Company, Don Graham, about their content-sharing agreement with the “Fiscal Times,” a Pete Peterson-funded organization that is seemingly pressing his deficit-reduction, entitlement-slashing agenda and passing off that opinion as news. The letter notes multiple errors in the first Fiscal Times story published by the Post, which gave the impression that a deficit commission with fast-track powers to get an up or down vote for its recommendations in Congress was imminent and unstoppable. It also pointed out that the only policy analysis in the piece comes from a group funded by the same person whose organization wrote the story:

No academics or policy analysts are quoted in the story with the exception of the executive director of the Concord Coalition. The story fails to disclose that the founding President of the Concord Coalition is Mr. Peterson, a longtime advocate of the commission that was the focus of the story (and to repeat, the founder and financial backer of the Fiscal Times, which produced the story).

dailykos.com — Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey at the Campaign for America's Future had a dialog on how progressives can learn from the frustrations of 2009. [Video here.] The main points:

1. Change is brutal, and will always be resisted by powerful entrenched forces. ...

2. No matter how popular a reform idea is, like the public option, it still faces the buzzsaw of the United States Senate.

3. Progressives cannot wash their hands of the political process. We have to organize more, independent of the political parties.

4. This is still the best opportunity in 30 years for progressive reform.