Dear PD - Apologize already, or just CLAM UP

I've been resisting commenting on the PD Wide Open farce, but then came today's column by Dick Feagler, which appears weeks after the initial firing of Jeff Coryell, and months after the initial interference of Congressman Latourette.  Feagler spits and trips over the word "blog" like a guy with La-Tourette's Syndrome, as if he can't bring himself to say the word in print.

...I'll get to blogs in a minute, but first, there's another thing that's gone.

...That's the way we did it when newspapering was a trade and not a cyberspalogical blab show. Or do I mean blog? No, I think I mean blab.  The blogs have replaced riding with the candidate and hearing that whisper of doubt that we would not print.

...I think the blog school ought to get some crash training from the guys who kept ego out of this trade.

...Bloggers. Have they ridden with a candidate in the middle of the night? Have they covered the murder of a young girl lying dead in the grass but looking as if she's sleeping? Have they covered anything?  Or do they merely spew opinions and Google? Once, you had to pay dues in this business. Give me one good reason why we should let the bloggers off the hook.

First of all, does anyone edit Feagler anymore?  Reading the column, it's completely incoherent...all I can gather from it is that Feagler is somehow defending newspapers against blogs by arguing in favor of off-the-record conversations with politicians.  Honestly, I can't figure it out.  If anyone can, I'm all ears.

Bottom line is this.  The PD knows it screwed up, but instead of apologizing, they are acting like a bunch of soviet politburo members and holding a show trial to prove they didn't.

They breached a contract based on the outside interference of a third party.  They entered into the contract without doing the most basic due diligence on the issues they now claim to be paramount, issues so breathtakingly important they continue to make them up as the situation gets worse.  If it weren't for the fact that whatever pittance the PD coughed up for these blog posts is likely so de minimus, I'd advise Jeff to find a lawyer.  They have since gone well out of their way to demean, smear, insult, and otherwise dismiss the person WITH WHOM THEY CONTRACTED AND WHOSE CONTRACT THEY BREACHED in a blizzard of holier-than-thou ethical chest pounding. And as of today, they continue to.

The only way to address Feagler's bizarrely incomprehensible screed is to note that whatever time he spent on it, one of only 2 pieces he will "write" this week, it is dwarfed by the amount of work any one of the former Wide Open bloggers did on any given day, let alone week, to cover something they actually care about.   All for an employer who had zero respect for a contractual arrangement, did not afford the bloggers any level of protection Mr. Feagler himself enjoys either through a union or a contract, and an employer who subjected their contractors to a level of pressure from outside parties so absurd on its face that had Mr. Feagler been on the receiving end, he'd be spontaneously combusting with self-righteous sanctimony.

It is no secret that the PD, more than most newspapers, has a love-hate relationship with bloggers, emphasis lately on the hate.  It is now also apparent that they are tying themselves in knots over it, still.  Here's my best advice.

Apologize.  Publicly and with authority.  In the same forum in which you have consistently smeared the aggrieved party you contracted with.  Better yet, make Diadiun do it in his "column".  If you can't bring yourselves to stomach that minimal level of maturity which mothers expect of their god damned 3 year olds, then just shut the FUCK UP.