In his latest column, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton offers a paradigmatic version of the earnest media critic’s exhortation. Being an earnest media critic myself, I’m inclined to cheer him on. At the same time, it’s important to note the blind spots that lie at the heart of his vision—about how reporting can be paid for, and about who the audience for political journalism is.

In the column, Pexton takes up an important question, which is, basically: is the Post essential? And he answers it honestly, concluding: not as much as it should be. Pexton notes both the steady encroachment by rivals on the Post’s core strength of Washington reporting and the paper’s comparatively lackluster response. He notes the Post’s business-side innovations, but identifies “less energy and enthusiasm in the journalism and more of a defensive crouch.” And he offers a prescription that will allow the paper to differentiate itself from its competitors, which write for “fat cats and power elites” while increasingly charging their premium audience a premium price:

The Post will always compete with the inside-the-Beltway journals and with the Times. It has to. But its future lies not with the rich; it lies with the citizenry. This newspaper must be the one source of high-quality, probing Washington news that readers in this region and across the country can look to for holding their government accountable. This publication must be for all Americans.

This means that The Post can’t be a liberal publication or a conservative one. It must be hard-hitting, scrappy and questioning—skeptical of all political figures and parties and beholden to no one. It has to be the rock-’em-sock-’em organization that is passionate about the news. It needs to be less bloodless and take more risks when chasing the story and the truth.

This is a pretty direct rebuke to the editorial vision that’s been outlined by the top leadership at the paper. As the Post’s executive editor, Marcus Brauchli, told CJR’s Scott Sherman last fall, the paper’s current strategy is “really to be for and about Washington.” To write about Washington but for “all Americans,” as Pexton calls on the paper to do, is a very different project—one that requires being not of D.C., but apart from it. It can be hard to connect this abstract journo-speak to specific reporting tasks, and Pexton’s column doesn’t really take that step. But as media critic Jay Rosen noted on Twitter Pexton is saying, in effect, that “the Post newsroom has its politics wrong.”

It’s a bracing critique, and an important one. By some measures, coverage of American politics is probably as good or better today than it’s ever been. But too often, for all the depth in the talent pool, the D.C. press corps can seem a self-referential circle chasing scooplets of ever-increasing obscurity. (Forget writing for “fat cats”—one of things Twitter has made clear is just how much journalists think of other journalists as their audience.) The feisty, fighting newsroom of Pexton’s dreams, with its unswerving focus on the interests of ordinary Americans, would indeed stand out, in a way that today’s Post—despite the stellar reporting it still produces—does not. And it would probably more closely embody our collective ideals about what “the press” is supposed to be.

But here’s where the blind spots come in. Like many earnest media critics, Pexton accepts almost on faith that a mass audience for the sort of political journalism he wants to see exists—and implicitly, that this audience can somehow be converted to revenues that will support the journalism. (Though apparently charging for content is out of bounds—Pexton lumps The New York Times’s new permeable paywall in with Bloomberg’s uber-pricey data terminals as “fee-based” barriers to the democratic flow of information.)

TAGS: , ,

Greg Marx is a CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @gregamarx.