David Weigel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Weigel in 2011 | |
| Born | (1981-09-26)September 26, 1981 (age 44) Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. |
| Education | Northwestern University (BS) |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, blogger |
| Employer | Semafor |
| Website | daveweigel |
David Weigel (born September 26, 1981) is an American journalist and columnist at the news websiteSemafor.[1] Weigel previously covered politics forThe Washington Post,Slate, andBloomberg Politics and is a contributing editor forReason magazine.[2][3]
Weigel was born and raised inWilmington, Delaware.[4] After moving to England in 1998, he graduated from theAmerican Community School inCobham, Surrey, in "thehigh Tory London suburbs"[5] of theLondon commuter belt, in 2000.[4][5]
He moved toEvanston, Illinois in 2000 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 2004 from theMedill School of Journalism atNorthwestern University, with a double-major injournalism andpolitical science and aminor inhistory.[6][7] While at college, Weigel wrote forThe Daily Northwestern and was editor-in-chief of the campus's conservative newspaperNorthwestern Chronicle.[5][8] In the summer of 2001,[9] he also had a "fun"internship at thelibertarianCenter for Individual Rights.[10]
In the2000 U.S. presidential election, Weigel voted forRalph Nader, and served as aDelawarecollege elector for Nader.[11] In May 2002, then-The Daily Northwestern writer and currentBloomberg News reporter[12][13] Dan Murtaugh noted how "in two years Dave Weigel has gone from being a Ralph Nader-voting uber-liberal to the scorn of the leftist movement at Northwestern" and how Weigel underwent a "180-degree political turn" "after he was turned away fromThe Daily" and started working forThe Chronicle.[8] In February 2003, while enrolled as a junior and working as editor-in-chief ofNorthwestern Chronicle,[14] Weigel supported theIraq War and crashed an anti-war protest atNorthwestern University.[9]
In the2004 election, Weigel voted forJohn Kerry. Weigel later wrote that "[he regrets] the Nader vote, but not the Kerry vote, as a weak Democratic president with a conservative Congress would have been pretty tolerable in retrospect".[11] He voted forJack Ryan in the2004 Republican U.S. Senate primary in Illinois.[15]
In early 2007, Weigel became aregistered Republican in the District of Columbia[16][17][18] in order to vote forRon Paul at theRepublican primary stage of the 2008 presidential election.[19] InNovember 2008, Weigel voted forBarack Obama, explaining "I really don't think McCain has the temperament to be President or the interest in standing up to a Democratic Congress....I've got the luxury of a guilt-free, zero-impact vote in the District of Columbia, which I would cast forBob Barr if he was on the ballot".[11]
In January 2011, Weigel stated that he had voted for RepublicanPatrick Mara in elections to theCouncil of the District of Columbia, and that he had voted for Mara "every time he's been on the ballot".[20]
In theRepublican Party presidential primaries 2012, Weigel voted forJon Huntsman, despite his having withdrawn from the race, because "If you looked past his whiff of a tax plan (Huntsman recommended using the flat rates thatSimpson and Bowles recommended not using), the guy had a few good ideas."[21] In the2012 general election, Weigel voted forGary Johnson.[22]
Weigel began his professional career as an editorial assistant and researcher for theUSA Today editorial page and as a reporter forCampaigns & Elections. He has contributed articles toSlate,The Daily Beast,Time,The Guardian,The American Prospect,The American Spectator,The Washington Monthly,The American Conservative,Politico, andThe Nation. He has appeared onNPR'sFresh Air andMSNBC'sThe Rachel Maddow Show.[23] Weigel has also blogged forThe Economist's "Democracy in America" blog, and guest-blogged forAndrew Sullivan's "Daily Dish" blog atThe Atlantic.[24][25] His bookThe Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock was published in June 2017.[26]
Weigel is a contributing editor of thelibertarianReason magazine and was one of its staffpolitical writers from 2006 to 2008.[6] He wrote for the liberalWashington Independent from November 2008 until early 2010 and was one of the "best sourced" reporters there, according to Michael Calderone ofPolitico.[27]
After working for theWashington Independent, Weigel took a job writing the "Right Now" column on theWashington Post website, focusing on the conservative movement. Weigel toldPolitico that "If readers get a deeper understanding of these people, their strategy, and their ideas, then I'm doing my job."[27] The national editor ofThe Washington Post said Weigel was hired to add a voice to the paper's online politics coverage.[27]Howard Kurtz ofThe Washington Post said the online columns were supposed to contain a mixture of reporting and opinion.[28]
Weigel was criticized by conservatives fortweets that he made on May 2, 2010, that disparaged news editorMatt Drudge,[29] and that called opponents of same-sex marriage "bigots". Penny Nance of conservative groupConcerned Women for America responded that Weigel's "arrogance disqualifies him as a serious journalist assigned to covering conservatives."[30]Politics Daily noted thatThe Washington Post's guidelines requirePost journalists to "refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything ... that could be perceived as reflecting political, racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility."[30] Weigel apologized on May 3.[31]
In late June 2010, excerpts of several of Weigel's private emails fromJournoList[32] were posted online by the website Fishbowl DC[33] and later byTucker Carlson's conservative news site,The Daily Caller.[32][34] JournoList had been started in 2007 byEzra Klein[28] as an invitation-only discussion and debate forum for left-of-center bloggers and reporters.[35] The excerpts of Weigel's archived emails contained negative remarks about various public figures associated with American conservatism such asPat Buchanan,Matt Drudge,Newt Gingrich, andRush Limbaugh.[34]
Weigel said all of the emails were sent before he joinedThe Washington Post.[28] He apologized online before the second round of email excerpts was published on the Tucker Carlson site, explaining that he had thought the off-the-record listserv environment was a place where he could "talk bluntly to friends".[36] However,The Washington Post responded that the apology could not save his job because "the damage was too severe."[37]Jim Geraghty of theNational Review Online wrote that "there was definitely a perception that his blog was designed to make conservatives look bad."[28]
Weigel on media tempest"I used to make fun of these people[...]when they tried to explain their downfall, or when they tried to express contrition. And suddenly I was one of them". "I can't imagine ever again writing about someone without manning up to get him or her to comment, or provide more context. I realized that no one could take the same scrutiny and walk away looking saintly".[38]
As a result of the leaked emails, Weigel resigned fromThe Washington Post andEzra Klein shut down JournoList.[32][35][39] The executive editor ofThe Washington Post said the paper "can't have any tolerance for the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work.”[35] JournalistMarc Ambinder of theAtlantic said Weigel was forced to resign under an "old media", "non-ideological standard that just doesn't exist".[35] In closing down JournoList, Klein said it had "become a weapon, and insofar as people's careers are now at stake, it has to die".[35] Describing Weigel as "an idiosyncratic libertarian who likes some politicians and media figures, and not others", Klein said that Weigel's "likes and dislikes do not fall neatly across party lines".[39] Remarking that leaked information can show only a partial, cherry picked truth, and that it can be just plain wrong, Klein said that if other emails had been chosen, Weigel could have been made to look like a conservative extremist.[39]
Weigel began appearing onMSNBC in 2009. On June 28, 2010,Keith Olbermann announced that Weigel was joining MSNBC as a news contributor.[40]
Politico, listing Weigel as one of the "50 politicos to watch",[41] commented that "Weigel may have lost a blogging job withThe Washington Post over his leaked e-mails to an off-the-record liberal e-mail list, but he didn't exactly damage his career. If anything, the enthusiastic endorsements of his reporting skills after he left thePost last month brought Weigel to the attention of a wider audience than the relatively small group of conservative activists and the reporters who write about them for whom Weigel has long been a must-read" and that he expected to sign on to "some outlet that has a big online presence" by the end of July.[42]
In August 2010, Weigel joinedSlate magazine (owned byThe Washington Post) as a political reporter. Weigel said "This is the magazine that invented the sort of journalism I want to do", he continued, "And I'm very pleased that I'll get to continue working the beat I developed at thePost, theIndependent, andReason." Weigel ran a blog covering politics, focusing largely but not exclusively on the conservative movement, his area of expertise. He also wrote long-form pieces,[43] including a multi-part series onprogressive rock.
In September 2014, Weigel leftSlate in preparation for a new job at Bloomberg Politics.[44]
After only nine months at Bloomberg Politics, Weigel returned toThe Washington Post on July 20, 2015.[45] His beat was to cover grassroots movements as part of thePost's presidential coverage. He began authoring thenewsletterThe Trailer in 2018, which focused on electoral campaigns.[46]
On December 8, 2017, Weigel tweeted a photo of the crowd at PresidentDonald Trump's rally at thePensacola Bay Center in Florida that showed many empty seats. He quickly deleted the tweet after it was pointed out that the photo was taken before the venue filled up. Trump addressed the incident the next day on hisTwitter account and demanded that Weigel be fired. Weigel replied and apologized, writing "Was confused by the image of you walking in the bottom right corner."[47]
In June 2022, thePost suspended Weigel without salary for a month after he retweeted an allegedly sexist joke which characterized all women as either bisexual or bipolar.[48] Weigel, who later removed the retweet and apologized, was publicly criticized by colleagueFelicia Sonmez.[49][50][51][52]
In September 2022, Weigel left theWashington Post and was hired by news startupSemafor, which launched the following month.[53] He writes theAmericana newsletter, which focuses on national politics.[54]
Weigel was mentioned in a 2006 article inThe New York Times about bloggers who roomed together. At that time, he shared a house with fellow Reason.com writerJulian Sanchez that they had dubbed "Casa de Libertarios".[55]
He lives inLos Angeles.[56]
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