At Talking Points Memo today, Greg Sargent concedes that the whole Dowd-dateline dust-up "isn’t the hugest deal in the world" and doesn’t suggest any rules were broken, but asks, "If datelines are an ‘anachronism’ and an ‘affectation,’ why bother having them at all?"
He continues:
Now, if Rosenthal doesn’t mind that readers are coming away with this mis-impression, that’s fine. It’s his newspaper. But if he does mind, then a small fix might be worth thinking about. Rosenthal doesn’t think a reporting credit is a good idea because it will take a line or two of space away from the columnist. But really, civilization as we know it will not grind to a halt if we get 10 less words from Dowd on any given day.
