Box-turtle Ben breaks out of the blogosphere

Salon joins the crowd, limited previously to the blogosphere, wondering what on earth the Washington Post could have been thinking?

Joe Conason writes:

Those questions arise from the Post's hiring of Ben Domenech -- best known as a founder of RedState.com, but also known as a Bush appointee, and the son of a Bush appointee, and as a contributor to National Review Online -- to write a daily blog on the newspaper's Web site. That decision by Post management has provoked much speculation about its motive for employing Domenech. Many observers surmise that Domenech was brought on to "balance" Dan Froomkin, the popular White House Briefing blogger on WashingtonPost.com whose skepticism and wit have provoked whining from the right -- and defensive reactions from certain Post reporters worried by accusations of "liberal bias" at the paper.

Media watchers will remember that the Post's internal thrashing over Froomkin's column led to the Web site's last major public stumble, when it removed blog comments from a post by the paper's ombudswoman, Deborah Howell (after an imbroglio that began over Froomkin's column and continued over Howell's imprecise post about allegedly bipartisan political contributions by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.) In their eagerness to appease critics on the right, the Post editors have blundered again. Whatever Froomkin's political views may be, he is a veteran reporter with a long résumé of newspaper jobs, including a decade at the Post. Domenech is a partisan operative with no newsroom experience of any kind, no training in journalistic standards and ethics, and nothing to guide him except home schooling and Republican reflexes.

Almost immediately the liberal blogosphere exploded with outrage over Domenech's hiring by the Post. But by Thursday bloggers had more than ideological reasons to oppose the Post's move, as he plagiarized film critic Stephanie Zacharek, and Mary Elizabeth Williams, writing about television.

Salon goes on to provide excerpts of their writers' work compared to Domenech's plagiarisms.

All of it is worth a look.