Is the Post too innovative? The paper's ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, points to several innovations since he came aboard 10 months ago: a website redesign, a new content management system, recent hires for Ezra Klein's blog, a new comment system, and the launches of the Facebook Social reader, @mentionmachine, The Root DC, and the She the People blog. Paxton and some readers are wondering "whether there’s just a bit too much innovation, too fast." Of course, the website is still a content jungle. Hiring more writers and launching blogs are hardly innovations. The Social Reader is a cynical, infuriating tool for boosting traffic. And the @mentionmachine is, as one reader wrote, "one more thing to clutter a Web site that already takes forever to download.” Paxton concludes "there’s a time to press on the accelerator, and a time to ease off. Substance, clarity and direction will be more important in the long run than buzz." I couldn't agree more. What the Post needs isn't more, but rather smarter, innovation. (Related: Managing Editor Raju Narisetti responds.)

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THE CLIPBOARD

Weekly Standard marketing email, written by Loudoun County Republican Eugene Delgaudio, warns of "radical homosexuals in Congress" [Politico, Fishbowl]

"When Zuckerberg Met Graham: A Facebook Love Story" [WSJ]

"Dump bodies" relates to dump trucks, not dumping corpses [WBJ]

"D.C. Council chair gets into 'screaming' match with WTOP analyst" [WTOP]

"Pre-Internet Citizen Journalism" [Washingtonian]

"Wash. Post Pulls Rug From Under New Electric Cars" [Media Matters]

"Corrections: Down in 2011" [WaPo]

"What BuzzFeed’s New Politics Team Is Doing Right" [Mediaite]

"Ben Smith’s Old Politico Blog Renamed" [Fishbowl]

"Ex-WaPo K St columnist Jeffrey Birnbaum has been a lobbyist for two years and already represents four foreign entities" [@justinelliot]

"Race, Class and the District: Top Five Stories of 2011" [DCentric]

"New York Times, Washington Post, AP Found NewsRight"/"AP, 28 news orgs launch NewsRight to collect licensing fees from aggregators" [Media Alley, Poynter]

"Live Q&A: The 2012 In/Out List" [WaPo]

HOOK, LINE, AND STINKER

"Harry Thomas Sr. was a happy and humble man. There is little humility in Harry Jr. The boy had too much arrogance, and that's what did him in." – "Tale of Two Harrys," by Harry Jaffe, Washington Examiner

And to think, Jaffe nearly made it through an entire column without offending anyone. This concluding sentence about Harry Thomas Jr., however, sounds wrong to these ears. Courts have ruled that "boy" alone is not a racist term, but it does appear in the Racial Slur Database, and it's sensitive enough that white politicians have apologized for using it to refer to a black person (in this case, Obama). Jaffe should've used "son," or even just a simple pronoun.

DAN ZAK WATCH

HE IS GOPH

TALK STROUP