WARNING: I'm about to do the unthinkable

I'm going to defend a Timesman in the face of rightwing attacks.

Andrew Sullivan has picked up on this NY Daily News piece about problems with this story written by Rick Bragg last year.

Sullivan describes Bragg as one of Howell Raines's "cronies" accused of "fabricating by-lines or inventing color or falsely appropriating other people's reporting" and speaks of "Blair-like" errors."

But when you read what the Times admitted it doesn't sound Blair-like at all.

The Times has reviewed the article. It found that while Mr. Bragg indeed visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, the interviewing and reporting on the scene were done by a freelance journalist, J. Wes Yoder. The article should have carried Mr. Yoder's byline with Mr. Bragg's.

It sounds like Bragg may have big-footed the story and not shared credit with MR. Yoder. But note, he did not plagiarize or make stuff up a la Mr. Blair-- he wrote the story and the facts don't seem to be in question.


And note what Mr. Yoder told the Washington Post:

Yoder, now a reporter at the Anniston (Ala.) Star, said in an interview yesterday that he had volunteered to be an assistant to Bragg and was never an official Times stringer. "I just told him I wanted to come learn from him," said Yoder, who moved to New Orleans to be near Bragg.

He did interviews and other reporting for Bragg on 15 stories, with the oystermen yarn involving the most work, and didn't feel exploited when Bragg got all the credit. "We have nothing to hide," Yoder said. "We didn't do anything wrong."

While the stint was supposed to be unpaid, Bragg "probably felt sorry for me" and wound up "paying my rent and got my lunch every day and sometimes my dinner," Yoder said. "He was very generous," Yoder added, saying he believed Bragg paid these expenses out of his own pocket.

It is ironic that Sullivan-- one of the stingiest linkers among big-name bloggers-- should slam Bragg because he did not share credit with an intern. (Maybe the word I am really looking for is hypocritical).

Bragg is not the first big-name journalist to write a story based on someone else's uncredited research. As i've noted before, Goldberg and Lowery are constantly asking Corner readers for help and yet never acknowledge those who helped them in the resulting column. I know for a fact that other reporters put their by-lines on stories whose core ideas come from (nameless) others.

Looking beyond print, doesn't this happen with every installment of 60 Minutes? Mike and the gang really don't do the digging-- is it a scandal that they are called reporters? And why haven't we jumped on Fox News which clearly uses blogs to dig up interesting stuff which they then turn into segments for their network.

It is mendacious for Sullivan to imply that Bragg might get special treatment only because he is a "crony" of Howell Raines and a fellow native of Alabama. Bragg is a great writer with a Pulitzer Prize. "All Over But the Shoutin'" and "Ava's Man" are moving, eloquent, critically acclaimed, and best sellers. In short, Bragg is a star.

I also believe that Bragg, who does features after all, not hard news or investigative work, is a great reporter. He possesses an empathy for his subjects who often are poor or working class. My guess is that Bobby Varnes, the oysterman, is happy that Rick Bragg told his story rather than Paul D. Colford of the Daily News. When Bragg wrote the story he pictured a man working at his father's trade not a "colorful rustic" in his "environs." And that, in the end, was at least as important as the onsite footwork.