I suspect much of this hand-wringing is due to the fact that newspapers can no longer control what gets printed for public consumption.

Used to be, if a paper didn't want to issue a retraction, they could simply throw away all letters to the editor complaining about errors without ever acknowleging their mistakes.

The web makes this old approach untenable.

Basically, this whole thing boiled down to the WaPo not wanting to admit they (Howell) had made a mistake.  Before the internet and the blogs, they wouldn't have had to.  And they don't like these new rules.  Which is really too bad, so sad for them, because the good old days, when they owned all the ink....they aren't coming back.