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I think Rosen has taken the wrong lesson from all this. 

 I'm not a great fan of the initial article (although I don't hold the headline against him).  But whether the article was good or bad is a largely separate question, in my view, from how the article was used by people on the left and right.  A piece of journalism, like a piece of scholarship, can be well done or poorly done.  I think Rosen's piece lacked some of the "nuance" that it should have had.  Moreover, as I've already written, I don't think whether a judge is nice to either lawyers in oral argument or her own clerks is especially relevant to her fitness for the Supreme Court.  Rosen makes the broader point in the NPR piece that he thought the piece was justified because temperament is an excellent predictor of judicial success, and thus, even if Sotomayor would be a fine Justice, sorting out questions of temperament would help decide whether she would be the best possible Justice.  That's fine, and it is a valid subject for reporting, although it would have helped immensely if Rosen had framed his initial article in precisely those terms rather than questioning her brightness and niceness tout court.  But it demands two more pieces of "nuance" (sort of like pieces of flair in Office Space, I guess).  FIrst, temperament is a tricky idea that may manifest itself in varied ways; a judge's treatment of clerks or advocates does not necessarily say much about how well she gets along with judicial colleagues, and thus what role she might play in coalition forming and persuasion.  Second, Supreme Court picks are not -- are never -- about who would be the best possible Justice, a question that is a mug's game and overstates the importance of any given nomination.  Presidents have other things to worry about, like the little matter of governing the nation, and a person may be the best possible nominee even if she is not the best possible Justice.

Still, all of this is about the value of the story itself.  Whether or not the story was perfect, Rosen shouldn't give a damn how the story was used by either the left or the right, any more than a scholar should care how a piece of scholarship is used by ideological friends or enemies.  Our job is not to change the world for the better.  It is, at most, to change the world for the better as journalists or scholars.  That means doing the best job we can in our given roles, not refraining from acting because we're afraid how our words will be taken.  As I've said before, if I thought some piece of scholarship I was writing would make this a worse world to live in, I would not ask whether or not to publish it; the only relevant question would be whether or not it was sound scholarship.  I hope every other scholar or journalist would say the same.  To those on the right who misused Rosen's piece to argue that Sotomayor was an idiot or shrew, Rosen's response should have been to refute them or ignore them.  To those on the left who argued that Rosen shouldn't have published the piece because it would give ammunition to the right, the response should have been the same.  Perhaps Rosen has decided that blogging is too conducive to impulsive writing.  If so, the same question should present itself whenever we are about to publish something -- is the piece good or bad.  That's the only relevant question.  I think Rosen should do a good job, of course.  But I also think he should get back on his horse.

In any event, what strikes me even more is that the real "villain" of this story, if there is one, is not just, or even primarily Rosen, who is after all a journalist.  Rosen's follow-up piece states:

I've seen startlingly little focus on these individuals in the discussion of Rosen's writing on Sotomayor.  As usual, the focus is on the journalist and not on the sources who pushed the story on the journalist -- and, who by virtue of wanting "the most effective liberal Supreme Court justices possible," most certainly did have axes and agendas.  They are, in Rosen's account (which I have no reason to disbelieve), "eminent liberal scholars."  The word "eminent" suggests, incidentally, that they are tenured and should have had little reason to seek anonymity, and perhaps a scholarly duty to refuse it.  So let me say that any of the "eminent liberal scholars" who urged the story on Rosen are welcome to write in and tell us why they did so, why they did so anonymously, and whether acting anonymously was in tension with their obligations as scholars -- an act of politics and not of scholarship (and I insist on the difference).  If anyone has first-hand or close to irrefutable evidence about who these individuals are, they are also welcome to contact me privately (although not anonymously!), and if I think the evidence is strong enough, I'd be happy to disclose it.  I don't owe these people a duty of anonymity, after all -- and, as a former journalist, I think more reporters ought to seek to uncover other journalists' sources where those sources' identities are newsworthy.