Raw Story posts an inside scoop from the Washington Post that their on-line site will hire two bloggers to replace the disgraced Ben Domenech -- one liberal and one conservative. This means that Jim Brady has not given up on his efforts to engage the blogosphere, good news for both the newspaper and bloggers:

The paper’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, has informed RAW STORY that Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, is looking for a liberal blogger, along with a conservative one, to replace Ben Domenech who resigned after only three days of blogging, when his earlier writings were discovered by mostly liberal bloggers to be racially insensitive and – in multiple cases – plagiarized.

The paper doesn’t plan on making any formal announcement, but the news should be welcome to many critics on the left who felt that it was unfair to hire just a conservative blogger in the first place.

I have to admit that I like this approach better than the original idea. Many may consider Dan Froomkin's blog liberal enough to require balance, but that should have been balanced by another Post reporter contributing his conservative thoughts to a blog -- assuming, of course, that they could find one. The Froomkin blog is really another animal altogether, an opportunity for a reporter to share his biases in the open and allow readers to make their own decisions as to his credibility.

(I met Dan at The Week's awards dinner, and he has a good sense of humor about his image in the blogosphere. He introduced himself to me by saying that he was glad to meet someone who had almost certainly made fun of him at some point. I couldn't recall if I had, but it turns out he was correct, at least in that I had criticized him earlier, but only once. He wrote the infamous story about George Bush having polled at 2% among African-Americans that turned out to be a sampling disaster.)

Brady and the Post have reached the correct conclusion about bringing on regular bloggers for political perspectives; they should accommodate both sides. Quite frankly, I hope that the two bloggers they do select agree to occasionally square off on issues simultaneously, giving us a blogger version of Point/Counterpoint for the day. The comment sections should go wild for those debates.

Some have suggested that I should ask about the conservative slot. I can tell you from my experience with the people at the Post that they are a class act, and any blogger fortunate enough to be invited to work on this project should jump at the chance. I know I will look forward to reading the blogs when the Post launches the project.

UPDATE: Jon at QandO suggests three bloggers, naturally desiring a libertarian blogger as well as a conservative and a liberal. Why not? My only suggestion for that position would be Jon himself rather than the two he selects, or perhaps Dale Franks.

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