• Washington Post, Monday, July 6, 2009 10:45 AM

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth apologized to readers yesterday for a derailed plan to host a series of off-the-record, sponsored dinners at her home to which Obama administration officials, lawmakers, lobbyists, business leaders, and Post editors and reporters would be invited. The plan "exploded in controversy," Paul Farhi reports, after a promotional flier described selling sponsorships of $25,000 for each dinner -- or as much as $250,000 for a series of 11 dinners -- surfaced and was featured in a Politico.com story.

Weymouth took responsibility for the mess but said that a recently hired marketing executive had sent out the flier without approval, and that planning for the July 21 event was done in too much haste.

Critics accused the Post of abusing its journalistic integrity and of attempting to profit from selling access. In interviews, Weymouth and Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told Farhi that the long-standing plan for the dinners was to have multiple sponsors so that a single sponsor would not be perceived as controlling or influencing the discussion.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, says attracting multiple sponsors misses the point of the controversy. "Their first obligation is to make information public and to inspire public debate and discussion. ... In this case, the Washington Post would be arranging events that only insiders have access to and profiting from those events. "

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