Systemic problems with the Washington press corps

One of the reasons you should be reading Brad DeLong regularly is his ongoing discussion of the failures of our press corps. He has an interesting post on the subject today.

I have received a number of emails from various journalism insiders defending or excusing Jonathan Weisman, which make some interesting points that I would like to share:
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Jonathan Weisman responded to my critique that one of his news articles from the Washington Post read like a rewritten White House press release by writing:

F*** Brad DeLong. The first piece put on the web is slapped together as quickly as possible, and the guy for some reason doesn't like me. Here's my analysis

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All--well most of--these points seem to me to be good ones. But they suggest that what we have here is a much deeper, profound, structural problem. It's much more than a lack of editorial quality control.