I hope that Times editors realize that their mistake was not the decision to allow a staff writer to operate a blog — it was the choice of Michael Hiltzik as that blogger.

My guess is the Times, when they decided to experiment, looked around and said "who here looks like a blogger?" Hiltzik: brash, opinionated, edgy, not afraid to get in someone's face. Not afraid of computers. Perfect!

Except really, Hiltzik wasn't used to being questioned at this point in his career. Or something. I'm catching only the tail-end of this story. But the facts fit.

If the Times really wanted to test the waters with blogging, and get someone who has done it, who already has a readership, who is more-or-less ideologically sympatico but not syncophantic, and seems tempramentally suited to really suffering the slings and arrows, they'd pay Kaus whatever it took.

This has nothing to do with mainstream media versus bloggers. It's not about a news organisation or a news organisation's credibility. I assume that getting into blogging with "somebody" like this as your front man was an honest mistake, and it would seem unreasonable as well as ungenerous to assume otherwise.

This has nothing to do with policy. It is not about liberal versus conservative. I would not care if all the opinions of the Hiltzik, Mikekoshi, Nofanofcablecos identities were published at RedState and were considered solidly conservative there.

This has to do with a fake, a sham pretending to be a somebody or multiple somebodies. It's like "Lucy Ramirez" Bill Burkett's "source" regarding the Killian documents - with a body, walking around, but still fundamentally fraudulent.

I disagree that Hiltzik, Mikekoshi, Nofanofcablecos should have a future (that anyone should pay attention to). It doesn't / they don't even have a proper past.

Whats most suprising to me is how such a shallow insecure pussy managed to become a "pulitzer prize winning" reporter in the first place.

One more example of the extreme thin skin of most of the print media. "reporters" are indeed bullies who love to dish it out, but don't you dare challenge them. We've seen this time and time again. In this case, the person in question was so insecure that he created his own virtual support system, a sign of mental illness in my view.

There probably should be a journalistic-ethics rule (if there isn't already) that a reporter who becomes part of a story has screwed up big-time.

Any working reporters out there reading this want to clue me in?

(And Gabriel, I can't agree with your wholesale condemnation of reporters. Too many go into the profession thinking that it's a good place from which to save the world, I think. But having said that, most of the ones I've met -- and I wrote freelance business articles for a while -- are perfectly nice people.)

Point taken Mark, the trouble with generalization is just that.

I still see an issue though with a elitism that emanates from modern journalists. Its palpable in many pieces I read, and as just your average member of the unwashed masses, I can't help but feel that if the tables were turned and a lens was brought to bear on many in the journalistic profession, they wouldn't hold up to the scrutiny that they put forth on others, nor would the respond well to the snark they attempt to pass off as educated wit.

Sadly the media will not learn from this, just as they didn’t from Rather, Mapes, etc.

Declining readership and a professional cocooning of opinion will eventually take their toll, but it shouldn't have to be that way.

Three cheers for comrade Patterico.

I know that this is supposed to be about truth and journalistic integrity and all that heavy stuff, not about shooting down MSM Zeppelins for the fun of it. Watching one of those gas-bloated babies plow into the dirt and explode should give us sober pause, not entertainment. Oh, the humanity. Ha ha ha.

I've got to say (using a pseudonym that I've never used before, at least in English), that I'm amazed at how forgiving the community has been - at least the bloggers, if not the commenters. This guy screwed up big time, and rather than turning on him like sharks in a feeding frenzy, everyone's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt or show him how to stop digging a hole, as long as he takes a little personal responsibility.

Maybe I shouldn't be so impressed by this, but I think it's great, and it's a great answer to all of the vitriol that's been spewed in your general direction by those few bad actors who make MSM look bad.

As a working reporter, I agree that reporters should not become part of the story. That sometimes happens for reasons beyond the reporter's control. But not with Hiltzik. He brought this all on himself.

The worst consequence for someone like Hiltzik, a Pulitzer winner, is the loss of one's reputation. And that's what's happened here.

My blog is at:
http://southwestleftcoast.blog spot.com

Take out the space between blog and spot, because a certain URL cannot be posted here.

Please! No mention of "Lucy" lest you draw the dread p.lukasiak into WoC. Just drop your keyboard and slowly back yourself out of the room.

I think one of the reasons people are being kinder to this fellow is that he was only trying to buttress his own image/POV, which for a bloviator is less reprehensible than (say) denying/stonewalling the evidence regarding typefaces no Air Force typewriter could have created decades ago.

He just stepped on his own d*ck, as they say.