National Review senior editor and Bloomberg View columnist Ramesh Ponnuru had some big problems with a column he wrote that ran in the Washington Post’s Outlook section.
My beef with the Washington Post. http://t.co/kmDpHLDTTn
— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) May 12, 2014
Ponnuru broke down the problems he had with the Post in an article at NRO. In short, he says the Washington Post “added an error to my submission, published the erroneous version without running it by me, and then ran two letters to the editor rebuking me for the error — which was actually the newspaper’s.” He explains:
My original version read in relevant part: “Getting rid of President’s Day would not be difficult. All we would have to do is start calling the third Monday of February by its proper name under federal law: Washington’s Birthday. That’s the practice state governments and advertisers ought to follow.” The version the Post ended up running struck the third sentence and replaced the second with “All we would have to do is designate the third Monday of February to mark George Washington’s Birthday.” The new language is misleading, since the federal government has already made that designation, and anyone who knew the truth of the matter would think I did not know it.
Ponnuru wrote an email to his WaPo editor, who responded that “her colleagues had decided that their new language was more accurate than mine and that the difference was too minor to run the change by me.”
After receiving around two dozen emails correcting his “error,” Ponnuru received one from the Washington Post.
Just got an email from someone at @washingtonpost wanting to talk.
— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) May 12, 2014
An editor at @PostOutlook apologized and said a correction will run. Apology accepted.
— Ramesh Ponnuru (@RameshPonnuru) May 12, 2014
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