Dan Froomkin

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'Dan Froomkin is a journalist for The Washington Posts website Washington Post Newsweek Interactive.

He writes the White House Watch column for washingtonpost.com, a pugnacious daily anthology of White House-related items from news Web sites, blogs and other sources. It was previously titled "White House Briefing".

He is also deputy editor of NiemanWatchdog.org a Web site from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that encourages reporters to ask more probing questions and hold the powerful accountable.

[edit] Criticism

On December 11, 2005 Froomkin was criticised by the new Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell, who stated[1] Froomkin's column "White House Briefing" is "highly opinionated and liberal". As such, Howell concluded Froomkin's feature should bear a name other than "White House Briefing," because the title may lead some readers to think it is the work of the paper’s reporting staff.

Howell cited Washington Post political editor John Harris's view that the name of the column dilutes the credibility of the newspaper. A second purpose of Howell's piece was to point out that The Washington Post and Washingtonpost.com are in fact two individual entities that simply share resources.

Froomkin defended[2] himself on Washingtonpost.com's editorial discussion page. His main point in defending himself was that although irreverent, he does not advocate policy. On January 30, 2007, Froomkin and The Washington Post changed the name of the column to "White House Watch".