Whining and Howelling

It's a start that Deborah Howell is telling reporters to stop whining about reader feedback. Hell, at least they have readers.

One agonizing realization that's still missing is that their commenters are more concerned with separating fact from myth than with decorum, while too often journalists reverse that priority. It's almost enough to make me nostalgic for Sam Donaldson. Almost.

There are several conventional themes that Howell cannot bring herself to discard, even though they don't apply to the liberal critique of journalism:

• She leads with the tired old dearth of good news.
• She quotes Paul Farhi conflating anger and ignorance.
• She sustains the pretense that anger is unjustified.
  

The Steve Pearlstein quote, however, is something journalists should take to heart:

[When I make a mistake,] it is invariably the e-mailers who are the first to point it out. I particularly look forward to the short, biting, irreverent e-mails that are negative or critical. They not only keep me on my toes but remind me to keep those qualities in my own columnizing.

But skip the word columnizing, please. (Or did he mean calumnizing?)