Otterblog

One of the complaints that I hear very frequently is that the Journal cares way too much about public-school sports and not enough about academic excellence. It’s true that we cover a lot of high-school sports, but it’s a little simplistic to pit one against the other. They’re organized differently, and the story lines are different. Achievement is important, but it’s not often as compelling a story line as triumph in competition. And it tends to be more individual than team-oriented. So we try to cover achievement in different ways, through our milestone sections and the occasional stories of high achievers.

But we had a nice confluence of events this morning with our piece on the Hanes Academic team’s national quiz-bowl championship. There was drama. There was victory. And there was that most important element to making a front page work: great art.

David Broder is often called the Dean of Washington journalists. Yes, he’s part of the MSM, but he is an incredible shoe-leather reporter who knows more about government reporting than just about anybody, and he’s incredibly fair, tough, deferential, inquisitive and cynical—whatever is needed for the job at hand. And for someone who is that powerful and important, he’s also a heckuva nice guy. His column runs here as well. He took some questions this morning at the Washington Post’s site, where he discusses the state of the Bush Administration, as well as DC journalism and how cost-cutting affects coverage.