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Jack Shafer calls it "a bad, bad idea... from the Washington Post Company." Chris Hayes says, "If you asked me to come up w story that encapsulates everything wrong with Washington, couldn't top this."
What's the story?
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to "those powerful few" -- Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."
The offer -- which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters -- is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
This is a bad idea. The Washington Post Company is behaving far better when it subsidizes its reporting by preparing upper middle class kids to game the SAT. But I can't say I'm surprised. America can have a press that assiduously avoids these ethical mine fields, but only if we pay for it. The information gathered by newspapers, the skill set of reporters, and platforms of societal influence have value. If citizens aren't willing to pay for it, owners and workers in media are going to find some other way to be compensated, regrettable and unwise though some of their decisions may be.
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