Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Counterswarm 

Peter Swanson:
It is one thing to ask that a reporter be reassigned to a different beat during an election. It is quite another to interfere with a civilian journalist's day job in retaliation for something he writes on his blog. That is what happened when both the Nick Coleman and the City Pages went after Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson's employer (which is my employer, too). They took a look at the time stamp on posts and decided that he was blogging during work hours. This, they rationalized, justified their attacks on his day job. At the time of the controversy (coffee break-gate?), I asked Scott where and when the City Pages reporter called him. He replied that he got the call at work, at around 5pm. So to prove that Scott was engaging in politics when he should have been working, the reporter calls him AT THE OFFICE. It is true that waiting until typical quitting time is better than calling during the day, but the fact that he was still at the office sort of undercuts the whole slacker accusation.
Combined with RedState's and Hugh's assessment of the American Prospect's misfire, you can clearly see the markings of a counterswarm, when, as Doug tells us, we never started the swarm. And swarming the City Pages would give that scratchy toilet paper more attention than its worth.

[Top]