The newest left-wing blog: The Washington Post?

The Post’s foray into the new media world received some unfavorable attention last weekend when its latest hire, Dave Weigel, who covers conservatives, referred to gay marriage foes as “bigots.” But the resulting controversy brought into relief a larger shift: The Post now hosts three of the strongest liberal blogs on the Internet, and draws a disproportionate share of its traffic and buzz from them, a significant change for a traditional newspaper that has struggled to remake itself…

Weigel’s hire brought with it some internal confusion, as might be expected of a journalist whose journey took him from the libertarian Reason Magazine to the new progressive fixture, the Washington Independent. He made his name covering the dark corners of conservatism – purveyors of rumors that President Barack Obama is gay or a foreigner – that play widely among Democrats eager to view conservatives at their worst. He offered early, respectful coverage of the tea party movement, occasionally leavened by sharp jabs at conservatives on his personal Twitter account. He is nobody’s doctrinaire conservative, though some Posties said he was initially viewed as such internally. And he uses his eclectic views to bond with conservative sources, he said…

Some at the paper took Weigel for a true conservative counter-balance to Klein’s wonky, but fairly reliable, liberalism, two people familiar with his hiring said. Merida, in a web chat last month, was asked, “Will you (or Chris Cillizza) be adding more conservative/Republican voices to better balance what is now your predominately liberal/Democratic leaning coverage?”

He responded that “we recently have added to our staff the well-regarded Dave Weigel, who writes the new ‘Right Now’ blog,” before mentioning conservative columnists Kathleen Parker and Charles Krauthammer.