Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Michael Silence of the Knoxville News Sentinel finished out the week the way the publisher of the Metro Pulse began it -- apologizing to South Knox Bubba, a well-known local blogger of the sort sometimes called "citizen journalists."

Ironically, Silence's apology on Saturday concerned his News Sentinel story about the earlier apology, which was from Brian Conley, publisher of the local alt-weekly.

Conley was apologizing for sending SKB e-mail messages that threatened to reveal the blogger's name, his unrelated business, his credit report and other personal info by putting them in a Metro Pulse cover story. Even though his message began, "If I wanted to manipulate you," Conley said he didn't really mean it.

Next round: Silence was apologizing for his News Sentinel story that reported Conley's apology without quoting the offensive e-mail, which would have made it clear that SKB was being threatened with more than revelation of his name. (In fact, as a result of Conley's mail, SKB felt it necessary to make those revelations himself, taking the teeth out of what he saw as a real threat from Conley.)

As Silence points out, his own weblog last week did a better job of telling the story than his newspaper article. He said the print edition's editors removed the threatening e-mail text and put in more quotes from Conley, making it sound like SKB was at fault. (That would be for allowing anonymous readers to make harsh comments about authors of a MetroPulse entertainment story, the behavior Conley says got him angry in the first place.)

Even News Sentinel editor Jack McElroy ultimately agreed his paper mishandled the SKB story, Silence said, and the editor agreed the result was unbalanced.

(Unless I missed it, both Silence's blog and the News Sentinel article neglected some meaningful context: SKB and his readers have long engaged in commenting on Conley's local business interests as a real estate developer, as well as his ownership of the weekly paper. Many commenters on SKB's blog suggested Conley's focus on the frivolous entertainment article was an excuse to get leverage over those more serious topics.)

Final note: At this point, everyone has apologized and SKB has suggested that folks just drop this topic and move on, but since I've mentioned the beginning of the saga, I felt I had to add this closing item. At least that gives me a trendy ending:

I apologize, Bubba.

10:23:11 AM