AJC scooped by local blogger!

If you’ve spent much time on the Interwebs, you’ve come across the never-ending debate over the virtues of old-fashioned print journalism vs. blogging. (And if you haven’t, you can some catch up here, here and most especially, here.)

Yesterday, the local blog Atlanta Unfiltered scored a big coup, posting a story — including the PDF documents — about a new county report indicating that fired DeKalb Police Chief Terrell Bolton “told a subordinate to falsify records to hide two luxury cars that the chief took home for his own use.”

The day before, AU had reported that Bolton “took more than $35,000 in comp days after his supervisor refused to sign off on them,” also according to the investigation, which was overseen by DeKalb Sheriff Tom Brown.

My first reaction was, Damn, I’m glad my beat isn’t DeKalb police or I’d be getting a tongue-lashing from my editor about now for getting the shit scooped out of me by a blogger. In a follow-up story in today’s AJC, the reporter acknowledges that he gained access to the report via Atlanta Unfiltered. Ouch.