Rachel Sklar, senior editor at the Huffington Post and scribe of its “Eat the Press” column, has an article up on Romenesko today.
Which would be unremarkable, save for the fact that the article’s presence on Poynter wasn’t the result of curation: it was originally published there. As an entry in Poynter’s Forum, to be precise.
Seems Sklar’s article (“MADDOW IN, ABRAMS OUT, AS MSNBC MOVES DECISIVELY TO THE LEFT”)–which explores the political implications of Rachel Maddow’s much-buzzed-about promotion at MSNBC–was too focused on partisanship(!) to be HuffPo-publication-worthy(!). Which seems just, you know, a tad ironic. But, per Huffington, “Not everyone is approaching everything in this campaign from a right vs left perspective. Stop trying to force everything into that tired old way of looking at American politics.”
Whether Huffington, through delusion or sheer force of will, actually believes in her own exemption from the partisanization of political coverage is an open question. As is whether she “wants to tightly control how politics is discussed on her site.” Either way, though, Sklar’s (very good) article was spiked by the HuffPo. So Jim Romenesko took it in.
Per Sklar’s introduction to the piece on Poynter:
This post was originally written for “Eat The Press’ at the Huffington Post, but it was determined that the post was not “congruent with HuffPost’s editorial position against the media’s penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism” (see here). With respect, I disagreed, and together we decided that the piece would be best placed elsewhere. Thanks to Jim for that opportunity.
