WASHINGTON, D.C. May 19 (DPI) – The Washington Post website generates a lot of words these days – at least five times more words daily than its print edition, to say nothing of thousands more pages archived online. The demand for digital content alone explains the erosion in quality of both news reporting and op-ed writing from a paper once considered a bastion of journalistic excellence.
Exhibit A in the Post’s decline are the largely incoherent op-eds of a columnist named Petula Dvorak, a former reporter with the New Orleans Times-Picayune who claims expertise in parenting and gender issues, among others.
Dvorak’s most recent column –headlined “Why we’re riveted when bad things happen to rich people” – was published Sunday after two separate incidents in which an older Montgomery County couple and a well-to-do D.C. family were murdered in their homes. (Police have already charged a neighbor in the former case; a suspect has been identified in the latter.)
Dvorak suggests in her column that the public has an obsession with wealth that spurs greater interest in such incidents, and the public bears resentment toward the wealthy, which makes them inwardly smile when bad things happen to rich people. (The phrase “inwardly smile” was removed Sunday night after the op-ed was taken down for several hours, but the odd and unsupported premise remained intact.)
Readers pushed back, not for the first time following one of her columns. The top four “most liked” reader comments to Dvorak’s most recent column:
I don’t understand why Devorak interprets interest in these two crimes as an obsession with wealth. I live in Washington and my interest in these crimes was out of concern that these were random home invasions which could have befallen any of us – regardless of wealth.
Wow…we “inwardly smile” when something bad happens to people up the social ladder??? That would make one a pretty lousy human being… She should speak for herself…
“Bad things”???? They’re dead, Petula. The Washington Post should be deeply embarrassed and ashamed of this columnist’s idiotic writing.
I find the premise of the article to be revolting. Petula focuses on vanity, rather than compassion for the family.
Other recent posts, not unlike many of the 260 other posts attached to Dvorak’s column:
If this writer ever had a good idea it would die of loneliness. There is plenty of news coverage and attention regarding people who aren’t rich. I’m pretty sure that the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases absolutely dwarfed this case. I also felt that the murder of 4 innocent people should not be trivialized or turned into some sort of silly social commentary. How does this woman even have a job at the WaPo?
Please make it stop. The inanity of Dvorak’s columns is making my computer stupid.
What an inane blog of an article. Petulant Petula, your insight into the human condition is an ink-stained blunderbuss gone awry. Thoughtless generalizations that demean us all as well as a tasteless and utterly artless backhanded stab at social commentary. Pathetic.
Readers increasingly are getting the impression that Dvorak’s only purpose is to provoke and poke rather than enlighten or provide insight – generally the objective of a news columnist. Moreover, the poking appears intended to get an emotional response out of readers – often driven by race or class or some other chronically hot-button issue – and is something of a new trend in online publishing. Note the reader feedback of some recent columns: