I e-mailed Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell on Friday to ask her about the origins of “Red America,” the Post’s beleaguered conservative blog.

In December of last year, Howell wrote:

Political reporters at The Post don’t like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin’s “White House Briefing,” which is highly opinionated and liberal. They’re afraid that some readers think that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.
John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, “The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset — our credibility” as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column “that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display.”
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 — and [Post.com executive editor Jim] Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

Two days later, Brady contradicted her — telling Jay Rosen in an interview:

Actually, the desire to bring on a conservative blogger has never been related to Dan. Ever since we launched our new Opinions area back in August, we