That white male biz may be related to this same reporter's copying of the long-discredited "Artie" story. I wrote to him to complain; he wrote back rather petulantly as follows:
That's why we attributed it to CNN, so people could judge it's credibility for themselves. As soon as we confirmed that it was incorrect, we put up a new version of the story without it. That's the difference between writing for the web and writing for the newspaper.
To which I replied:
Dear Mr. Lauter:
I'll keep this brief. First, the Times site ran an AP dispatch with the Artie story, then your story came along the wrong byline, then it had the Artie story, then based on the Artie story you decided the perpetrator was a white male. Someone without a cozy job in the news trade may therefore be slightly ticked. Further, nowhere in the line in question,
A second witness, identified as Josef Bootski, told CNN the gunman was shouting, "Artie took my job, Artie took my job" before he started shooting.
do you contradict or even challenge the story. To me this is stenography, not reporting. The fact that it ran on the Web is no excuse, either; had this story happened on a non-holiday at a different time of day it might have made the print edition.
I'm a little sad that you're so peremptorily dismissive of my complaint; while I do not envy reporters for having to file dispatches in short order with such a high risk of error, the Artie story shows that too often reporters can be the most credulous people on earth, and thanks to reporters' credulousness this story survived long enough that some people who only casually heard of the shooting may still believe it. You guys have fallen victim to Howard Stern and his apparatchiks too often for the average reader to be amused.
You need not respond to this, but I hope you will take heed.
Yours,
[GeneD]
I hope this is the LAST I hear of Artie, though we may learn more from Howie Kurtz, and he can make it irritating too.