[WL-law]

Those familiar with the situation said Griego Erwin could not provide more details to confirm the identities of an unnamed bar and a bartender who she had quoted in the man-on-the-street-style column. The piece was held from its normal spot on the front of the newspaper's Metro section on Sunday, April 24. It ran two days later — rewritten and with the suspect elements removed, two people familiar with the process said. They spoke on condition of anonymity. Bee editors reviewed several other recent Griego Erwin columns, and said that in ab

It sounds EXACTLY like the type of fake "color" quotes that got Mike Barnacle fired from the Boston Globe, years ago.

The savvy, ironic, local insight quotes that were the staple of Barnacle's stories were just made-up whole cloth by Barnacle, it turned out, as many readers had suspected for a long time.

[churchillbuff]

The savvy, ironic, local insight quotes that were the staple of Barnacle's stories were just made-up whole cloth by Barnacle"""

But of course. But in a sense, you have to kind of feel sorry for the columnists who are charged with finding such "man on the street" wisdom. Very few "men on the street" = or "women on the street" - have anything interesting to say, or the ability to say anything in an interesting way. How many bartenders are "savvy, ironic" offering "insight"? If a columnist's job is to fill his or her column with such men on the street insights, the temptation to make them up is going to be pretty strong.