I blinked and missed the entire tenure, scandal, and resignation of conservative blogger Ben Domenech at WashingtonPost.com. I was busy working. Sorry.
But I think it’s absurd for the paper to hire a conservative blogger for the sake of having one. First, by believing you have to hire someone from the right to fill a void you are tacitly acknowledging that you’re liberal — but without actually saying so. Just say. Repeat after me: I’m liberal. I’m liberal. I’m liberal.
Second, why do you feel as if you have to buy, rent, lease, or own a blogger? There are tons of good bloggers out there from the right, left, and libertarian persuasions. Quote them. Link to them. Blogroll them. Aggregate them. Sell ads on them. You don’t have to hire them anymore. This is the distributed age, remember? And here’s the fringe benefit: When they F up, you’re not responsible for them. You just link to another. Cool, huh? It’s called the web.