Bureau Chief Runs Column by Democrat, Gets Fired by AP [View All]

[Coexist]

This great diary on Kos caught my eye this morning.

Unreal. Partisanship taken to new heights. Even more frustrating is that part of the reason was this silly journalist didn't hop on the 'fluff' bus:

But this story is more complicated than just a straight case of "media being terrified of looking liberal" or "media suppresses Democratic voice," whichever your preference may be. But the deeper story shows even more clearly the danger to our civic culture from the print media.

I've dug around, asking some other members of the Vermont media to find out more to the story. They mostly confirm the story above, saying that from what they know that was the immediate cause of the firing. But they also point to a previous paragraph in the Freyne story as equally important.


First, since former USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley took over the reins at AP in 2003, things have taken a turn for the worse. Graff isn't the first veteran AP bureau chief to get axed recently. Curley's new Gannett-style policies and guidelines are being imposed with an iron fist by his new team of managers. There are complaints the news is being dumbed down by corporate, and the AP gold standard is being turned into cow flop.

Basically, according to my sources in the VT media, the AP has been making a real effort to fluff out their news, doing more stories on entertainment and celebrity journalism. The hard news that the AP provided local papers for years was being replaced by, for lack of a better term, more easily-digested news. Chris Graff wasn't on board, wasn't a "team player" in this new reality. He continued to focus on hard news, legislative stories, issue packages, that sort of thing, and the corporate hierarchy didn't like it. So there was tension, and then, when the Leahy column was spiked, it was either the straw that broke the camel's back, or the excuse they needed, depending on whom you ask.