Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman wrote to NRO yesterday, objecting to this post from over Christmas break.
 
Here is Coleman‘s letter in full:
 

I was angered to find that in Jim Geraghty's 12/29 column "Kerry Spot," the National Review has published a slander about me: In addition to calling me "a nasty little man," Geraghty's piece maliciously and recklessly states:

"Coleman's) step mother, Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star from 1965 to 1979, rising to the post of City Editor. In 1973, Nick was given a job as city hall reporter, for the Minneapolis Star. In 1979, Deborah Howell moved to the Pioneer Press serving as Managing Editor, then Executive Editor, until 1990. In 1986, stepson Nick was given a columnist position, at, guess what, the St. Paul Pioneer Press."

This passage is recklessly cut-and-pasted, verbatim, from a scurrilous blog published by anonymous character assassins. The facts are these:

1) My "stepmother", Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star when I worked at the Minneapolis Tribune. I never worked for the Minneapolis Star. The papers were completely separate until their merger in 1982.
 
2) I was hired by the Tribune in 1973 by editor Charles W. Bailey and Managing Editor Wally Allen. Howell had nothing to do with my hiring.
 
3) My move to my hometown newspaper, the St Paul Pioneer Press, which occurred in 1986, was not decided by Howell but by a team of senior newsroom editors, supervised by Howell's boss, Editor John Finnegan. All parties were in agreement that the nepotism issue was slight, defused by the fact that my father had been dead for as long as he and Howell had been married and that I was already an award-winning columnist of standing at the Star Tribune.
 
4) Howell re-married in 1988 and left the Twin Cities in 1990 to become chief of the Newhouse News Bureau in Washington, D.C., where she remains. In late 2003, I moved back to the StarTribune to become a general news columnist at my old newspaper.
 
5) Geraghty's vile slander from the sewers of the Internet is a ripe example of how bloggers conduct a smear campaign against Mainstream journalists. The insinuation that I owe my 32-year-career as a journalist and 22-year career as a columnist to a "stepmother" who married my father after I had begun my professional career is intentional defamation and an injury to my professional reputation.

I hereby demand a full retraction and apology from the National Review.

Yours,

Nick Coleman

My response:
 
1. “Nasty little man” is, clearly, a subjective opinion. I based it on my read of this column (subscription required). Readers are free to draw their own conclusions.
 
2. I do need to make a correction. As Coleman points out in his letter, the blog “Frateras Libertas,” linked to in my original post, was erroneous in stating that Coleman was hired by the Star in 1973; according to his biography Coleman was hired by the Tribune.
 
That’s something I should have fact-checked. I goofed there. I apologize.
 
3. That his father was State Senate Majority Leader in 1973, the year he was hired by the Tribune is true (Coleman does not refute it). That the Minneapolis Tribune gave the City Hall beat to the young Coleman seems a fact relevant to a media discussion. That said, he may very well have been hired based solely on merit.
 
4. Coleman said that my original post “insinuates that he owes his career to his stepmother,” then writes that in his move to the Tribune in 1986, the nepotism issue was “slight.” “Slight” is not the same as “nonexistent.” Coleman may reasonably conclude that his hiring was spurred almost entirely by his awards and his previous work, but others may reasonably suggest that the nepotism issue appears more than “slight.”
 
5. The relevance of Howell’s move in 1988 and Coleman’s move in 2003 is unclear, since the original post on “Frateras Libertas” did not say anything about Coleman’s career after 1986. I suppose Coleman is attempting to prove that his columnist position did not leave the publication when his stepmother did.
 
This is correct. This is also not disputed or referred to anywhere in my original post.
 
6. Coleman would have a stronger argument if he had objected to my comment, “No wonder he's so enraged by a bunch of no-name bankers building an audience comparable to or surpassing his and stepping onto his turf. He was born and bred for this role of Media Prince, and these peasants are acting like his equals!” That comment speculates on Coleman’s thinking, and as I am not telepathic, represents an unprovable-one-way-or-another opinion of what Coleman’s reaction is to bloggers.
 
Oddly, he did not object to that. And, of course, he does the same “mind reading” to me, concluding that my comments constitute “intentional defamation” and represent an intent to damage his professional reputation.
 
My intent was to object to his attack on the Powerline bloggers, not to damage his professional reputation.
 
In conclusion, I retract the statement that Coleman was hired by the Minneapolis Star in 1973—it was wrong — and have printed the correction that he was hired by the Minneapolis Tribune that year, here, in the same place where I posted the original mention of all this. I’m sorry for the inaccuracy.
 
Meanwhile, readers are welcome to draw their own conclusions—including about my opinion of him as a “nasty little man.” But, again, I direct you to his original column—where he suggests that the male bloggers he’s criticizing have small reproductive organs—to decide for yourself what you think of the whole matter.

[Posted 01/05 11:30 AM]