This morning I posted a story about a violent attack on a truck driver by a black biker gang called the Outcasts of Alabama. The editor of the Macon Beacon, a weekly in Mississippi, offered the story to the beat reporter for the Birmingham News. The beat reporter told the editor of the Beacon the story of the attack was “not newsworthy.”
A mere seven hours after PJ Media broke the story, and over a week since learning about the events, the Birmingham News has changed their mind. Apparently an attack on a law abiding citizen by a gang of bikers in broad daylight was newsworthy. Read the weeks-late story here.
UPDATE: The editor of the Birmingham News has taken to the webpage to defend the weeks-late coverage of this story. Chuck Clark falsely states: “There were several errors of fact and false assumptions in what the bloggers posted regarding this incident — including the false assumption that we were purposely ignoring this story. But the bottom line is, as soon as the incident was brought to our attention, we looked into it.”
Balderdash. Many days ago, Scott Boyd of the Macon Beacon contacted Carol Robinson of the Birmingham News. Robinson, according to Boyd, flat out told her the Birmingham News wasn’t interested. Now that the new media has shamed Mr. Clark’s newspaper, the Birmingham News is pretending the call from Boyd never happened. It did. They might have “looked into it,” but the look lasted about three seconds and then Carol Robinson of the Birmingham News decided not to cover the stabbing, over a week ago. A weekly paper in Mississippi and the new conservative media at PJ Media covered events in Alabama better and quicker than the Birmingham News.
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