I have been arguing for some time that web sites, half gossip and politics, half news, need to commit--either they're true journalism sites or they're not.
Many continue to go their own merry way, exhibiting no desire to clean up their act, improve their quality and so on. An exception is Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, which though left-leaning, does a lot of very good reporting, has decent headlines and never misleads.
Then there's the Huffington Post site, which continues to run really wacky "medical" stories and does not seem to care a whit about accuracy in headlines.
Even its own bloggers are getting annoyed. Taylor Marsh lets us know what she thinks about the bizarre "Bill Upstages Hillary...Once Again" on the story about Bill Clinton bringing back 2 journalists from North Korea, and parked it at the top of its page for most of the day. Plainly put, this is not a story about the Clintons, which one is getting the most attention or anything else but a piece about the ex-president's mission to North Korea. It's time for everyone to get over their obsession with the Clintons' relationship and simply report the news.
I care less about political viewpoints on these web sites--you don't have to spend more than a minute at Red State or Drudge or HuffPost to see the poitical viewpoint. But I do object to lousy, misdirected headlines if you think you're going to replace newspapers.
Hire some editors and do it right.
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