Washingtonian reports on fisticuffs inside the newsroom of the Washington Post:
“Details are sketchy, but numerous witnesses report that veteran feature editor Henry Allen punched out feature writer Manuel Roig-Franzia on Friday. The brawl took place in sight of Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli’s office. Brauchli rushed to the writhing bodies and helped pull Allen off…
According to many sources, the incident began when Style editor Ned Martel assigned a semi-political story to Monica Hesse and Roig-Franzia… Allen took a look and didn’t like. He started ranting about the number of mistakes he had found.
Hesse at one point asked him to send the copy back to her. She got a bit teary at the verbal beatdown.
Allen, according to sources, said: ‘This is total crap. It’s the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years.’
Roig-Franzia then wandered into the newsroom. A veteran foreign correspondent, he has been turning out political features for Style. He heard Allen’s rant and stopped by his desk.
‘Oh, Henry,” he supposedly said, “don’t be such a cocks——-.’
Allen lunged at Roig-Franzia, threw him to the newsroom floor, and started throwing punches. Roig-Franzia tried to fend him off. Brauchli and others pulled the two apart.
Veteran Style writers said they knew Allen wasn’t happy… Working part time on contract, Allen seethed over the lost art of long-form journalism.”
(via Rebecca Armendariz)
