The Washington Post on Wednesday evening deleted from its Web site a sizzling and brilliantly constructed blog post that criticized the paper's editorial board. Metro education reporter Bill Turque, in a Wednesday afternoon item on washingtonpost.com, explained to readers why they might have noticed an anomaly in the paper's coverage of a high-profile hubbub centering on D.C. public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Rhee, as the entire city knows, got herself in big trouble last week when comments she'd made to Fast Company magazine surfaced on the Web. Among other things, Rhee stated that a round of controversial layoffs last October had dumped teachers who had had sex with DCPS children.
It was an unsubstantiated charge that demanded elaboration, and that's where the local media comes in. Turque pushed as hard as anyone for details, badgering Rhee and her lieutenants for specifics on the abusive teachers. But in the end, he got scooped---not by theExaminer or Washington City Paper, but an in-house competitor:Jo-Ann Armao, another bulldog reporter and a member of the paper's editorial board.