Halloween festivities evidently got off on the wrong foot at the Washington Post, as reports came in that Pulitzer Prize winning editor Henry Allen punched a reporter in the face on Friday evening.

The altercation apparently happened after Allen upbraided Style reporter Monica Hesse for penning “the second worst story [he had] seen in Style in 43 years.”

As Hesse became increasingly emotional, her colleague in the Style section, Manuel Roig-Franzia, called Allen a “c***sucker.” The insult prompted a physical response from the ex-Marine editor, who, by the way, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize—for Criticism no less.

Allen swung twice, with one punch hitting Roig-Franzi, according to sources.

In looking at  Hesse’s most recent piece, “On the Internet, Everybody is a Sit-Down Comic,” we begin to understand where Allen is coming from:

Erin Ryan has more than a thousand followers on the popular femblog Jezebel.com, which would be a lot for anyone on the Internet but is really a lot considering that she’s not one of the site’s bloggers; she’s merely one of the site’s anonymous commenters, responding to posts with dry, breezy one-liners that one reads and thinks: “Withering.” [emphasis added]

We just aren’t sure that Hesse’s writing, poor as it may be, warranted physical violence.

Tags: Brawl, Editing, Henry Allen, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Monica Hesse, Newsroom Tension, Opinions, Pulitzer Prize, Washington Post

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Blog.