You're dissing one of my heroes. Debbie Howell was my high school journalism teacher. She was a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times then and taught just the one course at my high school. She was probably 24 or 25 years old at the time. This was Texas in the mid-60's. The only career advice I ever got was - you have to be a secretary - it's the only decent job for a woman. What else are you going to do? Teach school? No pay, no respect, you'll end up an old maid school teacher. Or be a nurse? Yuck - disgusting things with sick people.

And into this world stepped a real life Lois Lane. I had no idea women could even be reporters outside of a comic book. She was one of the "cool teachers" - smart and funny and energetic. When the violence and abuse got too bad one night at my house, she took me in and found me a safe place to stay.

I read her column and I'm not seeing an attack or anything like it on Froomkin. She's just explaining the difference between WaPo print paper, and the .com and reporting some of the tensions between them.  She never says she doesn't like him - she's just telling us that some of the political reporters in the newsroom don't.

She does think that the title of his column should be changed, because it give the impression that he is a White House reporter - which he's not. From her column:

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular . . . . Froomkin said he is "happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I'm not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I'm doing, namely scrutinizing the White House's every move -- with an attitude -- is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism.""

So she says that Froomkin is "highly opinionated and liberal." This is some kind of insult? Seems to me like that's just a fact.

And she was the one who described Woodward thusly:

While Woodward is listed as an assistant managing editor, he has no management duties. He comes and goes as he pleases, mostly writing his best-selling books on what happens behind the doors of power, and he reports only to Executive Editor Len Downie. He is allowed to keep juicy stories to himself until his latest book is unveiled on the front page of The Post. He is the master of the anonymous source.

[Damn - no link, but it's from a comment of mine when I was reading that column of hers.]

I think she's getting a bum rap here. Cranky. Sheesh. Here's one of the women who really inspired me to think I could break out of the rigid female roles that were being force fed to me . . . and now she's just a "cranky lady." It's making me cranky.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -Edmund Burke