THIS JUST IN: ASSISTANT CONTRIBUTES CONTENT TO CEO MEMO! WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? Andrew Sullivan continues jihad against his former employers, making a mountainous molehill out of a Times story reported from the Florida Gulf Coast. Turns out the bylined author relied on reporting from a freelancer, but didn't acknowledge it.

In terms of inside baseball, this is maybe a big deal, and the reporter should be censured. But the point is, someone did make the scene and take the notes -- the story would appear to be sound, though the attribution isn't.

The Blair scandal was about making shit up and publishing it as observed reality. Whether a name was left of the credits is not nearly so big a deal -- it sucks for the freelancer, sure, but freelancers get screwed all the time, as boy don't I know. Does it change your perception of the story that the reporter had unaccredited help?

Sullivan's been looking to get back at Raines for a while, and it would be churlish to deny him the golden opportunity presented by the Blair case. Still, I'm getting a little sick of it. It's a good thing that people are paying attention, but Sullivan and the rest of his crew seem a lot less interested in getting the Times to maintain its high journalistic standards than in discrediting it.

When the Times starts running the kind of crap Deborah Orin regularly vomits up onto the "news" pages of the New York Post, I'll worry about it, but till then it's a non-story to me.