Reporter Dave Weigel, who has covered the conservative political movement for years, resigned from the Washington Post last week after a writer at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller rounded up emails Weigel wrote to a journalism listserv and presented them as evidence that Weigel isn’t a fair reporter. Absent in that Daily Caller piece was any reference to Weigel’s actual published stories that might have supported the thesis. In other words, there’s a journalism scandal at the center of Weigel’s resignation, but it’s not the one the Daily Caller reported.
Weigel worked at the Colorado Independent’s sister site, the Washington Independent, before he went to the Post. The Colorado Independent was proud to run Weigel’s stories regularly and grateful that he was one of the American Independent News Network’s most prolific contributors. Weigel made a name for himself by delivering fair and insightful and entertaining coverage of Obama-era movements on the right as they emerged and grew.
In light of the mediasphere dust up over Weigel’s resignation, Washington Independent Editor Aaron Wiener rounded up a sample of Weigel stories— stories, as Weiner puts it, “from a time in which Weigel helped define the birther and tea party movements and set a new standard for coverage of conservatives in America.”
The list:
- A piece on the influence of Ayn Rand in the conservative movement. (3/6/09)
- A look at the GOP’s much-heralded, but mind-boggling, charts. (3/26/09)
- Photos from the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. (4/6/09)
- The inside scoop on a civil war in the right-wing blogosphere. (4/21/09)
- A piece on the damage done to Tom Tancredo by his racist, karate-chopping confidant. (6/2/09)
- A conversation with Jim DeMint, where the senator compared America to pre-World War II Germany. (7/9/09)
- A prescient account of the dilemmas the “birther” movement threatened to cause the GOP. (7/17/09)
- An early look at the problems birthers were causing moderate Republicans at town hall meetings. (7/20/09)
- A glimpse of Saul Alinsky’s surprising new fan base. (8/11/09)
- An exclusive look at a propaganda-filled health care “survey” from the RNC. (8/27/09)
- A report from inside the How to Take Back America Conference, where fear of fascism and a “gay agenda” dominated. (9/28/09)
- Ahead-of-the-curve coverage of the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, where a Tea Party candidate split the GOP vote and led to a Democratic victory. (11/19/09)
- A spotlight on conservative attacks on Mike Huckabee for granting clemency to a future suspect in the shooting of four police officers. (11/30/09)
- A look at the strange campaign of the antiwar Republican Adam Kokesh to unseat John McCain. (12/18/09)
- A series of conversations with key Republicans who expressed their unwillingness to embrace party-switcher Parker Griffith. (12/22/09)
- A preview of Tucker Carlson’s journalism venture, The Daily Caller. (1/17/10)
- An investigation of the “perfect storm” that led to Scott Brown’s Senate win. (1/20/10)
- A heated conversation between Andrew Breitbart and Joseph Farah over the value of “birtherism.” (2/6/10)
- An account of growing pessimism among Tea Partiers that the passage of health care reform could be prevented. (3/17/10)
- After reports of the RNC’s lavish spending, a look at past conservative donor frustration with RNC habits that made the latest incident the “nail in the coffin.” (4/2/10)
Weigel posted an explanation piece Monday at Andrew Breitbart’s conservative BigGovernment website.
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