Filed under: Journalism, Amy Argetsinger, Washington Post, David Vitter
From the City Paper:
Last July, Post gossip columnist Amy Argetsinger was making some calls on David Vitter, the Louisiana senator whose phone number had shown up in the phone records of the famous “D.C. Madam.” After the story bounced all over the country, a New Orleans madam spoke up with allegations that Vitter had been a client of her brothel.
Argetsinger was all over it, nailing an interview with the Southern madam and pushing it toward publication. But her editor, Steve Reiss, spiked the story on sourcing grounds, arguing that the Post account rested precariously on the word of the New Orleans madam. Says Argetsinger via e-mail: “Reiss was aware that everyone else was writing about her but said that we can’t use that as an excuse—in essence, that the Post had to take the higher moral ground.” Argetsinger rushed to find a replacement item.
The next day, the columnist set out to “revisit” the Vitter issue. She pumped “New Orleans madam” into Google and found that the first story to pop up came from the Post. Turns out that washingtonpost.com had piped into the Web site an AP version of the very same story that a Style editor had just killed.
Argetsinger wasn’t mad; she was encouraged. Now she had an argument for her editors: Hey, if we have the AP story on our site, why can’t we publish our own version? “I guess I was arguing, ‘look, the Post’s already tainted here,’” writes Argetsinger via e-mail. Not tainted enough: When the issue reached the desk of top editor Downie, he sided with Argetsinger’s editor.
“Two different companies and two different standards operating under the same rubric”—that’s how Argetsinger sums it up.
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From Rox and Amy: 