I see that some of you are following the Journolist story. I think that probably means that you'd be interested to know that I'm on it. Or was. It's being ended by Ezra Klein as of this afternoon.

On the Dave Weigel matter, I second everything Marc Ambinder wrote here, including Marc's headline that Weigel should not have been fired:

In hiring Weigel, the Post knew it was bringing on board someone with a style of journalism -- and it definitely is journalism -- that was not orthodox, that would not always conform to the Post's habits and customs, and would occasionally become personal. Weigel does blog-based reporting better than just about anyone in the journalistic world. His opinions are plain: he's a disaffected libertarian. Not a conventional liberal. Not even a Fred Hiatt liberal. Weigel is best described as an anti-denialist. He hates stupid people and stupid human tricks and stupid political consultants. He's developed a natural rapport with conservatives because he says what he thinks. I was a member of the now defunct Journolist group. I'm also a voracious consumer of Dave Weigel's tweets. And I can tell you that nothing he wrote on the list was more outre than what he Tweeted.

I know Dave. Ambinder describes his politics precisely. He worked at Reason magazine. It's a libertarian mag. And he's been a great reporter of the tea party movement. His stuff at the Washington Independent first, and then the Post, showed that he obviously had loads of sources in that world. Which raises the important point: what matters to a journalist's work is how he behaves with his sources, in person and in print, not what he says to friends and acquaintances on a listserv that was supposed to be off-the-record in the first place. And it's quite obvious that Dave's sources trusted him, which in turn means he gave them reason to trust him.

As for Journolist, the media chatter about it has been silly from the start. Here's the lead of the first piece to appear about the group, from Politico earlier this year:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList. Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

The reporter who wrote this does good work generally, but this was an absolutely indefensible opening, cutesy and sensationalistic and cheap. Conspiracy is a heavy word. Even if intended jokingly, that lead suggests a cabal of people plotting something, and indeed, subsequent speculation about the list among conservatives seemed to assume that all of us on the list were taking talking points from the White House and running out to execute them.

It's not even worthy of serious response. It was just a forum in which basically like-minded people interested in the same things tossed out ideas and agreed and disagreed on various things (some raging disagreements; I was in one just the other day). And most of all, people taught one another things, because there were lots of folks with lots of different kinds of expertise.

That was its value. I learned things every day about health care, financial regulation and so on that helped me do a better job of writing these posts for you, because I was told things I didn't know or that challenged my take.

I mostly feel terribly for Dave. He was obviously set up by someone who wanted to sink him. And it's lousy that this happened to a fun and engaging forum. My only solace is knowing that the people who think that by breaking up J-list they've scored some major triumph over the vast left-wing conspiracy are deluding themselves, which I suppose is something.

