Below the fold: Text of my email to the editors & writers of the JournalGate piece.
The subject on my letter was "Amateur Hour at the WSJ."
To the Editor,
Your recent story impugning the integrity of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and Jerome Armstrong is full of factual errors and unfounded inuendo and seems, furthermore, to imply some kind of parallel between their quite legitimate and above-board actions and the unethical, sleazy and possibly illegal actions of Armstrong Williams and the Department of Education. The most kind face that one can put on this story is that it is amateur-hour stuff, certainly below the journalistic standards of any self-respecting high-school newspaper. Of course another interpretation is that it's a partisan hatchet job. And still another interpretation is that it's perhaps work-for-hire (?).
By the way, have all the writers and editors involved with this story stated for the record that they were not paid by a third party to write it?
Pending your response, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume for the moment that this story was merely the result of incompetence.
Which is why that rather than do your homework for you and point out where and how you went wrong I'll going to let you learn from your mistakes and do it again. I'll even give you a few hints:
-- The telephone is your friend. You can even use it to call people about whom you're writing!
-- The internet is your friend. With a little practice you can even learn to distinguish between it and television.
-- Google is your friend. It can help you find out all kinds of stuff!
-- In "real journalism," the practice of "making shit up" is generally reserved for The New York Times when writing about Whitewater or Iraqi weapons programs.
Sincerely,
John Sundman
Vineyard Haven, MA
P.S. Nobody paid me to write this.