When Washington Post blogger Elizabeth Flock resigned from her position after making her second aggregation error in four months on blogPost, the Post’s breaking news blog, ombudsman Patrick Pexton wrote an opinion piece asserting that the paper had failed Flock as a young journalist; soon after Pexton’s column was published, a wave of criticism and concerns about the dangers of blogging surfaced, Poynter reported.  

According to Pexton’s article, Flock was often the only reporter writing for blogPost, writing an average of 5.9 posts per day on a wide array of topics. The blog was meant to achieve 1-2 million views per month, the article said.

Flock’s first error, which earned her a strongly-worded editor’s note criticizing her actions, was in reporting a viral but false story that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had used a slogan favored by the Ku Klux Klan in one of his speeches—without calling the campaign to confirm before publishing, the article said.

Is The Washington Post having an identity crisis?

It seems that ever since 6 August, when Patrick B. Pexton published his piece mooting the idea of a more populist standpoint for The Post, American journalists have been considering not only the type of paper The Post should be, but also contemplate the what political coverage means to the American audience and who actually constitutes said audience.

Pexton's piece attempts to analyse the range of news organisations operating in Washington and the choices they offer to the American people in terms of journalistic style, use of media and - crucially - cost.

In fact, Pexton adopts a very strong stance against the pay wall initiatives taken by the likes of The New York Times, which he feels marks them out as "the fee-based national newspaper for the liberal, cultured elite". This contrasts strongly with those who have embraced the idea of the so-called 'leaky pay-wall', which Poynter has praised for allowing people to choose to pay relying on "motivations such as convenience, duty or appreciation" which "are more compelling than coercion".

So, would a more populist approach for The Post be a success?

The Washington Post launched the redesign of its website during the weekend of March 11, which included a new Tumblr, according to Mediabistro.com. Now, only two weeks later, its new ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton, has already had to issue a letter explaining the website's $7million changes.

This letter is in response to an actively angry reader response to the site. Pexton claims he was "deluged... with reader emails," and that they "ran about 8 to 1 negative." All emails, he promised, were sent to the tech team.

What exactly did readers have to complain about? After all, that same system is currently used by the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Seattle Times, to name a few. EidosMedia's Méthode has become the platform for many major news corporations.