The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has been chastized by his bosses at the paper after he showed up on MSNBC Monday night wearing a bright-orange hunting vest and cap. Ombudsman Deborah Howell addresses the issue in her column this week:

From reader Eric Welch: "Does Dana Milbank's wearing of a bright orange hat and vest to cover the vice president's accidental shooting of a friend convey professionalism and objective journalism by Washington Post standards?"

Spayd said she felt Milbank "crossed the line" on his TV appearance. "What he intended as a playful joke was viewed by many as mocking and unprofessional, and understandably so." Suffice it to say that he has been taken to The Post's version of the woodshed and told not to do that again.

After reading the Howell column, I feel a little bit of sympathy for Milbank -- he's serving two masters. He's the national political reporter for the Post, but he's also an "opinion columnist" for the paper's washingtonpost.com, which is a separate entity. I don't know how many newspapers organize their Web and print products this way, but it certainly presents a dilemma for someone like Milbank. When he goes on Kenneth Olbermann's MSNBC show, who is he representing? And can he truly work in a fair, even-handed way as an obstensibly unbiased, non-partisan reporter for the Post one minute, and transform into the washingtonpost.com's opinion writer the next? Even if he can, should Milbank's bosses at the Post expect readers to know which Milbank they're reading, watching on TV, or listening to on the radio from one moment to the next?

The best solution seems to me to turn Milbank into a liberal version of Robert Novak. Novak does real reporting, but he's a conservative and you know that right off. Milbank can certainly do the same -- and then no one will have a problem if he shows up on MSNBC dressed like a clown.

By maintaining the status quo -- even with Milbank having had the woodshed experience this week -- the Post is just setting themselves up for more trouble somewhere down the road. Milbank is a talented reporter, and a liberal. Let him be "out" about both.