Dan Froomkin

Dan Froomkin is a journalist whose column (also termed a blog on the site) for the online version of The Washington Post is now entitled White House Watch and published on washingtonpost.com, as hosted by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. On June 18, 2009 it was reported that his blog would cease to exist and his employment at The Washington Post was terminated. On July, 2009, he was hired by the Huffington Post.

Personal history and career

Froomkin has ties to Bermuda but was raised in Washington, D.C. http://froomkin.com Saul Froomkin was the attorney general of tax haven Bermuda.

In 1997 he joined washingtonpost.com as a senior producer for politics. From 2001 to 2003, he was editor of washingtonpost.com. His column launched on January 12, 2004. In a career in journalism spanning over 20 years, he has also worked at The Winston-Salem Journal, The Miami Herald, and The Orange County Register. He was a Michigan Journalism Fellow and editor of new media for Education Week. Froomkin's brother is University of Miami Law Professor Michael Froomkin.

Publications

White House Watch

Froomkin's column White House Watch is a critical daily anthology of White House-related items from news Web sites, blogs and other sources, in which he "scrutinizes" what people in the White House are doing "with an attitude". Before the end of January 2007, it was entitled White House Briefing.

From White House Briefing to White House Watch

In her editorial "The Two Washington Posts", published on December 11, 2005, Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell observes that the print newspaper The Washington Post and the website washingtonpost.com are two different entities; although "The Post Web site is owned by the Washington Post Co....it is not run by the newspaper. It is a separate company called Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, or WPNI, with offices in Arlington." Whereas "The Post provides the vast majority of the Web site's content...the Web site has its own staff of 65 editorial employees and its own features.... [Moreover,] [t]here are cultural differences between the two newsrooms, which could be expected between a traditional newspaper and the more free-wheeling Web site....The two Posts interact every day. Post reporters and editors often participate in online chats (about 50 hours a week) and there is a Continuous News Desk at The Post in charge of feeding the Web site."

Howell states that

John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, "The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset—our credibility" as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column "that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display."

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular—and [Executive Editor of the website Jim] Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

Froomkin said he is "happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I'm not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I'm doing, namely scrutinizing the White House's every move—with an attitude—is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism."

On the other hand, Chris Cillizza, a washingtonpost.com political reporter, appears in The Post frequently. When he writes for the paper, he works for Harris, who is happy to have him.

On the editorial discussion page of washingtonpost.com, Froomkin presented his own defense of the title of his column, stating that, although irreverent, he does not advocate policy. There was also some support from reader for Froomkin in editorial correspondence about the matter.

On January 30, 2007, the column White House Briefing became the blog White House Watch, although the online archive search feature still lists some of the more recent entries under the title "White House Briefing".

Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask

Froomkin is also deputy editor of Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask, a blog hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that, according to his account of it, "seeks to encourage more informed reporting by soliciting probing questions from experts."

Firing from the Washington Post

On June 18, 2009, it was widely reported that Froomkin was being fired by the Washington Post. Froomkin confirmed this in a June 19 entry on White House Watch: "As Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander and others reported yesterday, The Washington Post has terminated my contract. So sometime in late June or early July, I'll be writing my last blog post here."

External links

• Nieman Watchdog:Questions the press should ask Blog hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University edited by Dan Froomkin.
• The Washington Post official website.
• White House Watch Dan Froomkin's column and blog hosted by Washingtonpost/Newsweek Interactive.
• About White House Watch.
• Dan Froomkin's personal website.