Post Toast: Foot In Weymouth's Disease

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth (right) offers a mea culpa A Letter To Our Readers for getting caught trying to make some dough by enticing lobbyists and corporations to fork over between $25,000 and $250,00 for "intimate dinners" billed as "salons" in the finest Perle Mesta manner with Post journos and hot shot Obama officials:

"If the events were to be sponsored by other companies, everything would be at arm's length -- sponsors would have no control over the content of the discussions, and no special access to our journalists."

"If our reporters were to participate, there would be no limits on what they could ask. They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion. They would not be asked to invite other participants and would serve only as moderators."

"When the flier promoting our first planned event to potential sponsors was released, it overstepped all these lines. Neither I nor anyone in our news department would have approved any event such as the flier described."

The first dinner - now canceled - was fingered by Politico.com after a lobbyist got the promotional flier created seemingly unilaterally - if you believe The Post spin - by Charles Pelton - the Post's new marketing guy only two months into the gig.  Apparently the fall guy has not been fired.  Yet. 

Not content with Weymouth's "rare" letter, the paper assigns scribe Paul Farhi to beat the horse.