Annals of bizarro: Andisheh publicly questions Sunday Paper news editor
December 16, 2008 at 1:30 pm by Mara Shalhoup in News
On his blog Andy2000.org, former CL senior writer and current freelancer Andisheh Nouraee poses a rather pointed question to the Sunday Paper and its news editor, former CL staff writer Stephanie Ramage:
Ms. Ramage and Sunday Paper management owe the public a clear answer to a simple question: Did Ms. Ramage author a comment to John Sugg’s column using the pseudonym Lazarus?
If so, Nouraee continues:
[S]he has used her position as an editor at Sunday Paper to launch anonymous personal attacks, [and] she’s violating more professional rules and ethics than I can count.
The Lazarus comment, according to Nouraee, contains “several false and slanderous personal and professional allegations about my friend and former CL editor Ken Edelstein.”
The column to which the comment was posted was written by yet another former Loafer, Sugg. His column — in my estimation, anyway — has its own conflict-rich history. (For yet another potential conflict-of-interest that I didn’t address, check out the end of this Atlanta Magazine blog post.)
That brings the total number of former Loafers involved in this imbroglio to FOUR — not counting Sunday Paper Publisher Patrick Best, who’s hardly kept his nose out of the news.
Real Housewives, move over.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
You people at CL really need to get it together. Andy, Mara, Ken, and John this is an embarrassment to the newspaper business. I’ve heard of rap beefs, but weekly newspaper beefs? This is ridiculous and indicative of why CL is in its current situation. What happened to my beloved CL of the 80’s?
December 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
C.L. should have never became such a political paper giving half ass comments about political races with such a bias and slant toward whom ever the journalist favored. A paper that blogs about politicians and others like it is an personal blog not linked to a newspaper. Until staff writers become independent of cliques and focus more on culture in Atlanta. This paper will be ushered into its last days.
December 16th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Thomas, you realize that people in Macon are going to have to give up their hobby of being shot at and robbed at ATMs down here in order to follow this saga, don’t you?
December 16th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
This whole saga has finally gotten to the point where I finally dropped my nail file. I think. I could care less who Lazarus is, although it sure sounds like Ms. Ramage! It also sounds like she knows exactly what she’s writing about as I’ve heard virtually the same rant from just about every other former CL staffer (some totally bat shit crazy, some moderately sane) for f-in years now. Fuck, decades maybe.
Just keep the dirt flying PLEASE so that some Atlanta hack under 45 will eventually produce a line worth quoting. That hasn’t happened since David T. Lindsay circa 1986 typed “the reason Ninjas were invented.”
TRY HARDER PEOPLE!
December 16th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Everyone needs an identity. Your clients count on you to help them create an identity that builds loyal customer relationships and creates a strong presence in the marketplace. I can help.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Mara, I respect you greatly but I think you’re obsessed with my imagined failure to report conflicts. As Mike Sigman, a former CL publisher who had the brains to get out after nine days when he saw how bad corporate management was, wrote in an email about your critique, when I disclosed I was a shareholder, I disclosed it all. Or as the highly regarded Chicago Reader media critic, Mike Miner, wrote, that particular criticism of yours is “weak” and “lame.” (http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/news-bites/2008/12/04/lame-response-creative-loafing-critique/). (Shouldn’t, in the context of full disclosure, you have linked to Miner’s comment?) I didn’t respond earlier because this is truly inside baseball stuff. However, your latest mention here is simply erroneous reporting.
The facts: I wrote a column that the Sunday Paper. A week later, Patrick Best announced expansion plans for Tampa and Charlotte. At the point he posted his release about the planned expansion — a week after my column ran — he asked me if I would consult on the project. I told him that if other initiatives weren’t in conflict, which they may well be, I’d be pleased to render advice. Your criticism (you wrote: “For yet another potential conflict-of-interest that I didn’t address, check out the end of this Atlanta Magazine blog post”) in essence accuses me of a “future crime.” I’m not Tom Cruise, but even I can figure out that it’s hard to be guilty of something today that I won’t do for another week. Before accusing me of a conflict, you might have asked, and I would have told you that, at the point SP printed my column, I had had absolutely no conversation with Best over rendering advice on his expansion plans. The Atlanta magazine blog by Steve Fennessy that’s the basis of your accusation makes clear the time context, a fact you chose to disregard.
Two weeks before Ken Edelstein was fired, he and I had agreed I would no longer be paid for columns due to the draconian financial cuts imposed by CL management. I had no problem with that — it’s clear, after all, that I’m very much in opposition to CL’s management and the bankruptcy, and (in the interests of full disclosure) if I have a driving motivation for that, it’s to preserve the great editorial content produced by you and all of the other fine staffers at CL. I told Ken that any expectations that my work ran exclusively in CL ceased at the point I stopped getting paid. From conversations with you, I gather Ken may not have made that conversation clear to you, but that isn’t my fault and I certainly did make it clear in conversations with you shortly after his firing. I would think that with your insistence on full disclosure, you would have disclosed that. I have no ill will towards the staff at CL; indeed, I have nothing but good will and admiration, especially for you.
Finally, my imagined conflicts aren’t the “bizarro” story. That’s like the old newspaper joke where a reporter steps over a body and asks, “What’s the story?” The “bizarro” story is about a company that borrows $40 million while its value is plunging, and now seeks to use bankruptcy to keep from honoring agreements it had made.
December 17th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
While I seldom agree with Mr. Sugg, I’m glad he points out Mara’s penchant to erroneously report the facts. Those of us who have followed her BMF stories and have half a brain, know sometimes her ambitions for a good story sometime overcome the truth. BTW, has she ever FULLY disclosed her book deal about BMF to the readers of CL?
December 17th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
CL reporters and editors, and errouneous reporting? Some of us already know not to look for truth (particularly when Mara is involved)in this publication-or what’s left of it. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
December 18th, 2008 at 8:29 am
How is it that Ms. Ramage, assuming that’s her, is using her “official capacity” when she’s neither using her name nor her title as news editor? Looks to me like any former employee has every right to gripe about an old boss as long as they don’t make any criminal allegations (and Lazarus doesn’t).
The Creating Loafing is going on some kind of Joe McCarthy witch-hunt to figure out who an anonymous commenter was.
Maybe you ought to get a little perspect and look at the sitch:
Someone, who is a former Creative Loafing employee using the alias of Lazarus posted an unflattering comment about a public figure, Ken Edelstein (one that made no criminal accusation) on the unofficial comments section of the Sunday Paper website, and now CL responds in its official capacity, on its official news blog, under an official byline (that of its news editor Mara Shalhoup) and publicly accuses the news editor of the rival newspaper of using her official capacity to target the Loaf.
When and how, exactly, did she do this?
Unless there is a page I have missed, it looks to me like she didn’t write an official story or even an official blog entry. She didn’t post a comment in any official capacity. I can find no Sunday Paper references to Stephanie Ramage and Ken Edelstein at all. And there is no proof that she is, as Andisheh claims, Lazarus. The Loaf, however, has publicly used its official capacity and its official news blog, and Mara Shalhoup has used her official capacity as a news editor of CL, to attack this rival news editor.
It is also using its official capacity to attack a former employee, John Sugg, with the flimsy accusation that he’s not revealed he lost money on CL. Tell me, Mara, what part of “He’s a shareholder in a company that’s in bankruptcy” do you not understand?
Do any of you even think about what you are doing anymore, or are you just in freefall?
December 18th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Although I buy the conjecture that “Lazarus” might indeed be Ms. Rampage, I can’t for the life of me imagine why the intelligent folks at CL are engaging in this embarrassingly juvenile blog war.
Perhaps, Mr. Eason, this is what Editors are for – people whose jobs it is to stop the animals from biting and scratching and flailing.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
JoJo, or whatever your name is, Ms. Ramage is the news editor of a publication that calls itself a serious newspaper.
She has a professional obligation not to use her news section for libel and slander.
The purpose of my post, on my personal blog, was to point out the truth then see what happens.
It’s not an Earth-shattering post. I’m not submitting it to the Pulitzer committee. But I’m more than happy with the result.
Among other results, we’ve seen that three not-very-bright anonymous commenters are fine with Ms. Ramage and Sunday Paper’s unprofessionalism.
Unsurprisingly, not one of the commenters defending or rationalizing Ms. Ramage’s comments are willing to use a real name.
I don’t think this is blog war.
But if it is, my side won already.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Sugg and Mara — I think you should duke it out in the ring. Charge $20 a head with all the proceeds going to CL’s bailout.
Andisheh: I will agree that the post was inside baseball, but – as you said – it was on your blog. And I do think that alt weeklies (or at least those still trying to be) should be holding the media accountable.
HOWEVER, my fellow Iranian, the best part of your blog was the link to your wedding photo video. I don’t even know you and I was practically in tears. Beautiful!
And congrats!
December 19th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Andisheh, we all know the comment wasn’t actually a part of the “news” section anymore than anonymous comments on the New York Times website are part of the Times’ news section (and some of them make outrageous, even criminal, allegations about people).
How is that different from you, a well known columnist, using your personal blog to disparage people?
And why, after all, give this much attention to a subjective comment by a former and obviously disgruntled employee? (She/he/it says something like “I’ve heard he’s changed a lot for the better since then, but that is how he was when I knew him”.)
I went back to see if there was something I had missed and I saw that comment by “James”.
If you cared about your friend Ken then why haven’t you addressed James’ comment on the same Sunday Paper blog? I hate to say this, but are you sure this isn’t about some personal beef you have with Ms. Ramage? Did she write something unflattering about you or one of your columns?
Nobody would care and you shouldn’t either. Then again, as you’ve pointed out, I’m not very bright, so what would I know?
December 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Unsurprisingly, I agree with Andy. He is my closest friend. But I am also a former journalist and still believe in the professional code that should guide all journalists. The principal difference between Andy’s approach and Stephanie’s is that Andy put his name on the accusation. Period.
It goes like this; The Sunday Paper runs a column by John Sugg that (I believe) accurately savages the CL mothership and it’s leaders. The News Editor of The Sunday Paper then anonymously levels some ugly personal and professional charges at the deposed CL Editor, which in addition to venting her crazy also serves to support the downward spiral of The Sunday Paper’s main competition in the market.
That’s not okay. If Patrick Best and his sales team want to covertly sabotage their competition by undercutting rates or even spreading rumors, fine. But journalists are and should be held to a higher standard.
As Andy said, this may all be high-minded. And it may also not be an important enough issue to make the broader point. But those of us that take journalism and its role in this society seriously sometimes get offended when you break your readers’ trust to settle a personal score.
Warmest Regards,
T
P.S. I’m not even going to address the fact that JoJo and Lazarus have the same writing style
December 19th, 2008 at 10:10 am
JoJo/Lazarus/et al – it’s called “accountability”, a concept which is key to a real journalist. By putting his name on his comments Andisheh has it, those who hide behind Internet pseudonyms do not. Especially when that person has a byline on the same site.
December 19th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Also, if JoJo doesn’t understand the difference between publishing under the banner of a news publication and publishing under a persons own blog site, they are either dumb, not a real journalist or intentionally disingenuous, possibly a combination of all three.
December 19th, 2008 at 11:55 am
“…those who hide behind Internet pseudonyms do not. Especially when that person has a byline on the same site.”
But Mr. T is using a pseudonym on his own byline’s website (it’s still all over the site).
“The principal difference between Andy’s approach and Stephanie’s is that Andy put his name on the accusation. Period.”
Mr. T., you are a journalist and you are not using your real name (your last name doesn’t begin with the letter “T”), so you have not put your name on the following personal accusation:
“The News Editor of The Sunday Paper then anonymously levels some ugly personal and professional charges at the deposed CL Editor, which in addition to venting her crazy”
So much for still believing in the “professional code that should guide all journalists.”
December 19th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I said who hide behind pseudonyms, T is one who definitely does not hide.
I guess I should have been more clear, an anonymous pseudoym. Poorly worded on my part, but I am not a journalist, so sue me.
I am pretty sure we all know that Mark Twain wasn’t a real person and we also know Mr T, if nto the person, then certainly the persona.
Nice try.
It is so fascinating to me to see all of these blog handles that I have never seen on here before. Too bad I don’t run CL because I would be forced to do a little IP tracking, identify exactly who is who and restore credibility and accountability to this whole process. ahh, to dream the impossible dream….
December 19th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
So, Dale (who used to be a journalist), on the one hand you’re saying there’s nothing wrong with using a nom de plume (after all, Twain did it, and I might add he did it when he ragged other writers, too, and yes, actually, he was hiding behind it until he became successful..sorry dear, know your history), but on the other hand you’re suggesting that CL reveal the identities of the people who comment on its site.
All of them, or just the ones you don’t like?
Because Mr. T’s been clingin’ to that handle for a while now. I don’t think he’d like to give it up.
So, are you suggesting a policy whereby the Loaf reveals the identity of people who are critical of it and its writers, or who work for other publications, or who run for office, or who are featured in its stories? Or all of the above?
Or do you just want to scare them with the threat?
I think threats like that and the policy of which it speaks are necessary to protect accountability and the integrity of the public domain.
But, then again, I’m Joe McCarthy.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
@Arsnic – I am not a journalist and do not represent myself as one, only a person who believes that journalists owe it to their readers to be honest and transparent. If you read my comment, you would’ve recognized that.
As for, “But Mr. T is using a pseudonym on his own byline’s website (it’s still all over the site),” I cannot respond because I cannot divine what you’re trying to say. I am a frequent commenter to Fresh Loaf because several people I know and respect post to it. I also like to pick fights with DaleC. But I don’t work for CL or any other news organization.
Plenty of folks who know and worked with her have confirmed that Stephanie is Lazarus. My accusation is far from scurrilous or irresponsible, unlike Lazarus’ post.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
No one actually has any proof that Ms. Rampage wrote the disparaging comments, right? It seems likely. But there’s no proof, correct?
Isn’t that the highest standard of journalism – to only publish things – yes, even on one’s blog – that are verifiably true? Isn’t it conceivable that someone else could have written it, aided by knowledge of the situation?
December 19th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Talk about knowing history, I am not a journalist.
I can’t make a threat to scare anyone because I have absolutely no power at CL. You see, I am just the token Conservastive on this site.
To answer your question, if a professional journalist were doing something unethical and I had the power, I would out them.
My point about Twain? A well known pseudonym is not hiding or protection. I was commenting in the present, not the 1800’s. Mr T is a clebrity here and his persona, just like Twain, has become his person.
Again, keep trying, you may say something logical sooner or later.
December 19th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
“Isn’t that the highest standard of journalism – to only publish things – yes, even on one’s blog – that are verifiably true?”
You just shut down every editorial page and cloumn in the known universe.
December 19th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Mr. T,
I thought you used to be a journalist, but you don’t even know what “confirmed” means. It means someone in a position of authority who knows beyond a shadow of a doubt says “yes, that’s the case.”
How would anyone she worked with know what happened to her after she left? Did she hang out with any of them after she left?
(Or did the Attorney General’s office call you and confirm it?)
So, are you saying that indeed Ms. Ramage was treated in the manner that Lazarus describes while working at the Loaf?
That’s the worst kept in secret in town.
Or are you saying they were standing there watching her when she made a post under the name Lazarus?
Well, since we’re all going to go over and drag her out of her house, beat her ass and hang her in her front yard, we might as well gird up our loins with the unassailable fact that she certainly hasn’t denied being Lazarus.
(But the governor hasn’t denied beating his wife either.)
December 19th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
This is great. It’s almost like watching the Titanic sink and listening to the band fight amongst themselves on the way down. I think its fair to say so long to this iteration of CL and, as a previous poster said, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
December 19th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Dear JoJo/Joe McCarthy/Arsnic (same person, right?)
No one is asking SP to out its commenters.
I’m asking SP’s news editor to admit or deny authorship of a particular slanderous comment. If someone who doesn’t work for SP wrote it, they should say so.
This afternoon, I posted my entire e-mail exchange with Ms. Ramage on my web site.
http://tinyurl.com/5z34xy
+++
Two points for record:
1. Mr. T. has never worked for CL.
2. I have no personal quarrel with Ms. Ramage. I barely know her. I’ve run into her every once in a while and it’s always cordial.
December 19th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Don’t forget S. DeKalb Voter–surely he/she and JoJo Arsnic McCarthy are the same, or at least related.
December 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
No relation to any of the other posters here Simon. Why is it so hard to believe readers are fed up with the poor journalism practiced by CL of late? I’ve been reading CL for almost 20 years and the current crop of hacks over there sucks. Take this whole post as an example. This is an embarrassment! Mara, Andy, John, Ken, et al should be ashamed.
December 19th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I enjoy the assumptions you employ as you attempt to dispatch mine. Make you a deal Arsnic. Expose yourself and I’ll do the same. jibbajabba21 at yahoo dot com. I’ll be waiting.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
“I’m not Tom Cruise.” John, are you sure? I’m starting to see a resemblance:
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b72924_tom_cruise_more_of_les_grossman_in_works.html
;-)
December 20th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
S Dekab Voter calls out the “current crop of hacks” at CL and says that “Mara, Andy, John, Ken, et al should be ashamed.”
You do realize that only Mara is in the current crop of hacks, right? John, Ken and Andisheh were in the previous crop of hacks.
December 20th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
John, Andy, and Ken have a lot to do with the current state of CL. Just because they jumped off the sinking ship does not mean they shouldn’t share the blame. I’ve never seen anything like this before. This type of stuff shouldn’t leave the locker room.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Ken jumped off the ship?
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
I was being a smartass.
John and Andy have a lot to do with the current state of CL? Columnists don’t determine the state of a paper, publishers do.
I almost always disagree with Sugg, less so with Andisheh, but they are both excellent writers with compelling subjects, so I am curious how they have had a negative effect on CL. Nice try.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I read the NY Times everyday strictly for their columns. Therefore, I disagree with your point about columnists not having any control. They don’t have financial control, but clearly than have some control of readership by the content of their columns. The state of CL speaks for itself. It’s a failing newspaper and I hope whoever is chosen to fix it restores the credibility it had in the late 80’s and 90’s.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Columnists write, but are often assigned topics and their editors determine what gets published and how. I may have the “inside baseball” stuff a little sketchy, but that seems to be the basic process. That gives the editor and the publisher for whom they work ALL of the control.
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Don’t quit now, everyone is just starting to get good and paranoid over the pseudonym issue. How old are you guys?
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Says the anonymous poster.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
bwahahaha.
how did i miss this clusterfuck?
i’m upset with myself…