By Jack Shafer
Slate

I thank the Fates every day that my greatest professional mistakes came when nobody was watching. This morning, as her newspaper reported the spiking of a piece of the sort she had bad-mouthed, Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth must be wishing that the Fates had been as kind to her.

Katharine Weymouth

Earlier this summer, Weymouth got in Dutch when a Post plan to sell off-the-record access to reporters and government officials at “salons” at Weymouth’s home was made public by Politico.

Weymouth and Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli quickly canceled the events after much confusion over whether the paper had put its soul up for sale or whether miscommunication on the part of the management team was to blame.

In the latest Weymouth miscue, she appears to have told freelancer Matt Mendelsohn, a friend of hers, that advertisers desired “happier stories, not ‘depressing’ ones” like the one he had been working on about a young woman whose arms and legs were amputated.

His piece was ultimately killed by the Post’s Sunday magazine. The editor who killed it, Sydney Trent, told the Post’s Howard Kurtz that the spike had been delivered “because it was clear the newspaper wanted to move in a different direction. That handwriting was very clearly on the wall.”

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Filed under: Guild News