.

The ad is surrounded on either side by links to video coverage of the child porn case. The TV station that ran the ad and Ward story, KGO/ABC7, is owned by Disney, hence the unfortunate house ad. (Incidentally, the radio host worked for a radio station with the same call letters, but it is owned by a different company.)

As Debbie Nathan writes, Ward's defense is hardly novel. His case seems nearly identical to that of DC radio personality Larry Matthews in the late 1990s. Nathan predictably also sees a parallel to her longtime subject, former Times writer Kurt Eichenwald.

Ward, a former Catholic priest, hosted both a religious show and a liberal talk show.

1. Eichenwald is in a terrible way; he feels pursued by kiddie porn enthusiasts, though no actual reasons for his concern are mentioned, which we suppose is the point. Gosh, he sounds paranoid!

2. A totally interesting rehash of the Justin Berry story.

3. Eichenwald is a real dick in edits! Unlike, you know, most of those other well-established male star journalists.

4. It's like the legal department removed a page of the story?

5. "Now Eichenwald is in a trap at least partly of his own making, and he sees danger everywhere. 'I was told these people are relentless, that they never stop,' he tells me in his Dallas office. 'That they will torture you till you are destroyed or dead,' he says. 'I put my son at risk! Because I chose to save somebody else's kid! Do you have any idea how guilty I feel?' He thought about installing a panic button in the house or buying a gun. Instead, he got a second dog. 'A three-legged dog was not enough protection,' he confided a few days ago."

Saving Justin Berry [NY]

Great! One more reason to not want to write about this! It's just much more comfortable leave this story to Daniel Radosh and anti-Eichenwald crusader Debbie Nathan.

Did Eichenwald's editors know how much his memory had deteriorated? The New York Times' own stories on the story don't seem to indicate that anyone was too sympathetic to his "I forgot" defense before these revelations.

But yeah, now Eichenwald's credibility and reporting methods are at the heart of the cases against two child pornographers currently on trial—so we all get to take sides between a reporter who can only remember what he documents at the moment he's doing it and people who may or may not have had sex with children. Ugh.

Former 'Times' Reporter Reveals Secret [NPR]

Watching Matt Drudge [NY; alternate online headline: "Stalking Matt Drudge"]

Now, we didn't pick up on Debbie Nathan's story last week either, because her piece didn't name a dollar figure. So we thought: Paypal? Porn sites? Okay, so in the course of learning stuff for his story about child pornography on the internet, or in advance of working on the story, he sent $19.99 to a bunch of porn sites. Go figure. (Please. What American hasn't Paypaled money to a porn site, after all?)

Now the Times coughs up a dollar figure for this transaction: $1100. This comes from the same people who are "familiar" with the sealed documents. So, that could be true!

And that's more money. That's interesting!

But really there's another reason we can't stand writing about Kurt Eichenwald, and we're probably not alone. It's the people who email us. Like so:

On 8/3/07, Mike Murphy wrote:

Hey, if you folks are bored with dumping on Eichenwald, let me know. Nothing from you guys all week, even though there was a lot to snark about. Here is the latest from those in the know:
http://www.generationq.net/articles/Justin-Berry-Sex-Lies-and-Videotape.html

Which is too bad. The stuff that's verifiably true IS interesting! The stuff that's not is just scary.

And our correspondent Mike Murphy, who seems like a very nice guy, by the way, whatever his real name is, is very busy disseminating stuff about Eichenwald: he hits all the weblogs, from Texas Monthly's to Jossip.

Check what happens in the comments on this thread over on journalist Daniel Radosh's site. Daniel picked up Debbie's piece last week, and next thing you know, people are writing about Tim Richards and how Kurt Eichenwald put innocent people in jail and blah blah crazy conspiracy land.

And so we never ever ever want to write about any of this ever again. What's most annoying is that we're against the hysteria about internet porn, and against innocent people going to jail and all that. And we figure there's gotta be at least more than one good story in all this. But is it worth the disgusting hassle?

We're also told that Eichenwald is steamed that Portfolio editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman won't let him resell the piece. Her reasoning is that he shouldn't because the magazine is paying him so well for his work. "He's pissed," a source at the magazine said.

It's a tense time at Portfolio in general, report staffers. The next issue, dated September, is ramping up for a late July close.

Eichenwald is still under contract to the magazine, but there's speculation among staffers that the magazine is hoping he'll just leave quietly on his own accord. We imagine the lawyer-happy fella would undoubtedly not respond well to his contract being broken.

Before this binge, for instance, I almost never turned on the computer during daytime except in times of major horniness. As it happened, on the day I first received a call about this job, it was about 4 p.m. when I put down the phone, fired up the laptop and headed over to Gawker. I was not yet equipped with an RSS reader, so for the next several hours I dipped in and out while I went about other business. My strongest reaction that first afternoon was, "Who are these people and why are they shouting at me?"

It was mid-March. The first shouting I read came on a post about Anna Nicole Smith. The post was so emphatic that a reader said, "Well, I guess there's no need to do the paternity test. Let's just declare Stern the father." This is analysis, I thought, and remembered a favorite saying of the day that had once been posted on the newsstand where I buy fetish magazines: "It doesn't have to be hard and veiny to still be a dick."

Next up was a post from Doree Shafrir. Shafrir wasn't exactly yelling at me, but the porn stand quote came to mind again. My reading was interrupted by a phone call (the fucking escort canceled again), and when I returned to the living room, two more heads were hollering. It was Balk and Emily Gould mixing it up about Dana Vachon. Back and forth they argued, with increasing vehemence and loathing. It was incredibly pointless, and only amused the sales team at Riverhead, who were no doubt thrilled for the publicity.

I was close to concluding that my sensibility was too far removed from that of Gawker for me to represent its audience, but I hung in there, as I had been asked to do, and kept reading. I learned more than a thing or two from analysts and editors like Choire Sicha, whose New Yorker piece was, until yesterday's madness about Portfolio, the longest thing ever to be posted to Gawker. I got several good laughs a day, most days, from the photo captions. When I wanted my gossip straight up, I could go, most days, to the Gossip Roundup.

Still, that first impression has remained. In the past two months, I have read a lot of yelling, from some but not all of the editors—that Joshua David Stein is unfailingly demure when away from the bowling lanes—from some but not all of the commenters, and always from Balk. The yelling editors sound manic. The yelling commenters sound angry. None of the yellers sounds to me as if he is reacting authentically to something he cares about. Asked to confirm this impression, Balk admitted that it was indeed the case. "Two months on this job and you learn not to care about anything, particularly self-respect."

Maybe the vast majority of Gawker's readers enjoy this ramped-up, in-your-face, I'm-the-show approach to New York media and gossip. Maybe it is not my business as an ombudsman to object to the hollering just because it doesn't suit me. I hope your responses to this column will let me know how far off or close to the mark I am about this, and I will take note, especially about hollered highlights, because after all, it does no serious harm. Neither does hollering about "what dead Playboy centerfold you'd stick it to."

There is harm, though, when the loud, cocksure approach is applied to certain off-the-blog issues. Take Danniellynn's disputed paternity. In mid-March, when they were burying the pill-popping model, a tip suggested that Smith's daughter's father was actually Smith's son. Lab tests would be conducted within a few days' time, but suspending judgment till the evidence is in does not suit the formats of Gawker blogs, which require judgment to be passed on 54 or more topics a day. The bloggers need material, so Danniellynn's incestuous origin was rushed straight to judgment within hours of the first sketchy e-mail.

The child was not only presumed to be the product of the most sickening potential coupling in 2007, she was immediately declared to be so. The editors hedged their bet by calling the rumor "ridiculous" but quickly added that the source seemed credible. I suspect most readers quickly forgot the "ridiculous."

When lab tests named Larry Birkhead the father last week, I did not hear any apologies. It is, in my opinion, Anna Nicole Smith's misfortune to have become a running Gawker story line (also that whole dying thing), which too often means a designated caricature who—like Atoosa Rubenstein or Dave Zinczenko or the socialite of the day—is considered open game for character assassination. I am as skeptical as anyone about what Zinczenko has to say about his oral sex skills but I still cringe every time I see his name next to the words "subpar oral sex provider." Mostly because of the image it puts in my head.

It's not fair or realistic to ask on-Internet opinionators to be as informed or measured in their off-the-cuff responses to breaking news, often indistinguishable from breaking rumor, as a magazine writer can be on his longer leash. But I think it is fair to ask a greater degree of humility and suspended judgment than is often seen on Gawker. And I think it is fair to ask Managing Editor Choire Sicha to encourage less ill-informed vehemence. "Good idea," responded Sicha via e-mail. "Also, go fuck yourself! Fuck yourself hard! Have a great day!"

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Besides, my subjective impression is that the over-the-top shouted certainty of opinion has toned down a bit since I began my binge-reading in mid-March. Maybe the lead-up to a celebrity paternity test is the peak of the yelling season. Or maybe I have just gotten used to it. I hope not.

One reassuring sign: After the Duke lacrosse rape case unraveled, the editors did not say anything about it except to mock one of the young men whose life has been by both an overzealous prosecutor and a media rush to judgment. They did mock him, however, on a real-estate related matter. They seemed to realize that one can viciously malign a victim without shouting.

As I gather first impressions, I needed that lesson, too. But that's a subject for another column. —Byron "Dan" Worthington III

Byron "Dan" Worthington III is Gawker's ombudsman and a noted crank with a lot of free time on his hands. He will write a sporadic column responding to the reader complaints that the editors usually send right to the trash file. This is his first column, which is to say, probably his fifth. He can be reached at tips@gawker.com. Please use the word "Ombudsman" in the subject line or the e-mail will probably be deleted by anxious editors before he can read it.

Related: Too much shouting obscures the message [ESPN]
Previously: Spit It The Hell Out Already

Nathan and Eichenwald have positions on opposite sides of an underpinning debate, which is what really fuels this fracas. From his point of view, Debbie Nathan is in league with pedophiles! She has this crazy idea that there's a hysteria in the U.S. about child sex predators. And also from his point of view, Kurt Eichenwald, whose employers at Conde Nast surely aren't loving this, is exposing a massive secret internets-based network of adults who prey on children everywhere. "Every webcam in every child's room in America should be thrown out today," as Eichenwald told Oprah. Child porn is a "$20 billion-dollar business," he told the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

From her version to his, there are many differences in detail, narrative, and the meaning of events. Nathan's question is this:

Who had turned Justin from being a "happy kid" for whom "life was going well" and "everything was great"—as he would later tell Congress and Oprah Winfrey—into a "pretty messed up kid"?

Eichenwald noted that when [Justin's girlfriend] Michelle told Justin to stop the camwhoring, she was contravened by insidious online predators, who cajoled with treacly blandishments such as, "Just try and remember, Justin, that she may not love you, but most of us in your chat room, your friends, love you very much."

What Eichenwald doesn't reveal is that according to chat logs Justin's actual friends—his age peers in Bakersfield—were pressuring him much more intensely.

"Michelle, I'm whoring to help out some friends. It's the only way I can think of how to get that much money instantly... it's a job, and I enjoy it... I guess you don't see what I'm trying to accomplish with my cam."

But there are totally pedophiles out there, no mistake about it.

Not long before he turned 19, Justin joined Greg Mitchel in Virginia, where Mitchel ran a Sonic hamburger franchise. Teens hung around in the summer, and one, whom we will call David, was 14. Sometime in May or June, Mitchel began encouraging David to make videos of himself masturbating, using Mitchel's recording equipment. Eichenwald would later write in the Times that during the same period he had just contacted Justin and was communicating with him only online. However, in an audiotaped interview done of David by a private investigator employed by lawyers for one of the defendants charged after Eichenwald's piece was published, David says Eichenwald also was talking to Justin by phone. David describes grabbing the phone at least once, and chatting with Eichenwald. Back then, David, Justin and Greg Mitchel were unaware of Eichenwald's true identity and that he was a New York Times reporter. "We all didn't know his real name," David says on the tape. "All of us knew him as... Roy."

Eichenwald told Congress... "There were images I couldn't get out of my head when the lights went out." One image may have been of Justin in a legal pose, first displayed on his website after he turned state's evidence and not removed until about the time he gave his nationally televised congressional testimony. The image - a photo - shows him looking pensive, anxious, in sunglasses and shirtless. Viewers who click under the picture are transferred to MyLiveWebCam.com/Teen-Cams. Justin implores them to enter and register. By so doing, they can "vote" for him. But they must act soon because he is already 19, and soon will be too old for the election.

• Southampton Press, owned by entirely nutty Joseph Louchheim, begets East Hampton Press; East Hampton Star not thrilled. We say: If there are two places to read crime reports about dumb girls named Amy Kline who miss the last train back to the city and call the police, who then actually call and get them a bus back to town instead of telling them to sleep on the street, we're thrilled. [NYT]
  
• Page Six calls out the New Yorker for a correction. WEIRD! [NYP]

• Newspaper shocked that the two suspiciously not-American-named dudes who broadcast Al Manar in the U.S. are pleading the First Amendment. Hey, yeah, that's our Amendment! [NY Sun]
  
• Don Imus is "a lawn jockey to the establishment." Also, he'll be going on Al Sharpton's radio show today. That'll be a treat. [NYT]
  
• HP is now obsessed that you aren't printing out websites and reading them on paper. (Apparently, you're not retarded enough for today's printer companies.) Crazy futurists! [NYT]
  
• New York mag gets official Portfolio editor interview, denounces gripers. Why do people hope Portfolio will fail? Duh. Everyone hates a poacher. [NY]
  
• Lawsuit-threatening-and-not-filing Kurt Eichenwald has his Payne Award affirmed. [UofO]
  
• This Is A Profile Of Keith Olbermann. [NY]

• There's a lot of backbiting and infighting at the Los Angeles Times, which is completely unusual behavior at a major newspaper. [NYT]
  
• Kurt Eichenwald's "checkbook journalism" controversy may keep him out of the first issue of Portfolio, which should give him plenty of free time to file that lawsuit he keeps talking about. [WWD]
  
• Quick recap of the action in the first week of Conrad Black's fraud trial. [ToTheCenter]
  
• At this point we don't care who buys Tribune, we just want to see an end to this fucking story. Now Ron Burkle and Eli Broad have popped up again. [NYT]
  

• Donald Rumsfeld was asked to guest-edit the LAT's Current section after producer Brian Grazer. Say sources at the paper, "We wanted to find someone responsible for a bigger disaster than Cinderella Man." [DHD]
  
• Those American Media numbers: not so good. [WWD]
  
• Dana Vachon: not a fuckup. Dana Vachon's audience: Easily influenced. [NYM]
  
• Former Voice editor David Blum returns to his old stomping grounds to bemoan the lack of critics willing to take on Joan Didion. There's a lot of unpacking to do on this one. [NYS]
  
• The album is dying. Articles about the death of the album, however, seem to have a healthy future. [NYT]
  
• Esquire EIC David Granger's in-laws promise that he's still pure Tennessee. So sweet! [Thomas P.M. Barnett]

• Lady Black flips out on Canuck media outside hubbie Conrad's court date, calls producer a slut, claims "I used to be a journalist!" Oh my God, when? [CP]
  
• Tribune sends out another publisher to the provinces; will the new Baltimore Sun publisher go native and turn on the Chicago Fatherland? Question! Do they just keep a stockpile of VP suits, each ready to be dispatched to the front lines? Is it a clone army? And if so, is it Tribune HQ that's spending too much money on staff, rather than the papers? [Sun]

• Ricky Gervais kills "Extras." Why, you crazy-faced bastard, why? Why you wanna hurt us? [HR]
  
• Speaking of TV comedy, syndication viewership for comedies is up, while network sitcom viewership is down. Surely this is somehow YouTube's fault. [WP]
  
• Morton-Groves Newspaper Newsletter says "Good luck on your own, ya ungrateful bastards!" [Newsosaur]
  
• Bloggers strain necks, gaze deeply into own butts, trying to decide who and what is "A-list." [BH]
  
• Laurel Touby finds a way for her Mediabistro to service publicists more directly. [MB]
  
• Kurt Eichenwald still hasn't sued anyone, including Debbie Nathan. Just FYI!

• Everything you need to know about Conrad Black, whose fraud trial starts this week. [Maclean's]
  
• The week in redesigns: Time's print edition (coming Friday), The New Republic's print edition, and the dreadful, dreadful Daily News' website. [NYDN]
  
• David Carr on the Village Voice situation: Michael Lacey should really be running things. We loved the last two paragraphs of this column. [NYT]
  
• Which TV news anchorwoman is almost certainly Maria Bartiromo? [NYP]

• New culprit in Brian Williams' tanking ratings: Ellen DeGeneres. [NYT]
  
• If Sam Zell buys Tribune - and who knows if he will, this story is as fucking ridiculous as it is long-running - this is the kind of boss he might be. [LAT]
  
• NYT will nod politely, pretend to listen, as disgruntled institutional shareholders make presentations to the board. [WSJ]
  
• Kurt Eichenwald: not a buyer of stories. Or young boys. [MarketWatch]
  
• Why bad things happen to reporters in Russia. [NYT]
  
• It's hard to believe now, but at one point Premiere was actually relevant. And now it's dead. [LAT]
  

Eichenwald now knows why news biz has a bad reputation [Romenesko]