This is bad news and typical of the way the journalism business works these days. I really have little to add and just want to wish Dan Froomkin well — he will end up on his feet somewhere.
I’ll just add this comment from Glenn Greenwald, which sums up my feeling:
All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama. Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians “from the Left” (and it’s hardly a coincidence that it was MSNBC’s decision to give Maddow her own show — rather than the endless array of right-wing talk show hosts plaguing television for years — which prompted a tidal wave of “concern” over whether cable news was becoming “too partisan”). In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.