When Legacy Publications Knock

"It's all in the game, right?"

The Wire’s Omar Little.

The Rooster is a humble newsletter produced by a mentally ill communist who resides in a neighborhood with the lowest life expectancy in the state.

But there are still rules to this game, which is why I always cites author and publication with an attached link whenever somebody else’s work is cited. (Unless I am being critical, then I only cite the publication.) You would think this is rudimentary stuff. Not for the big boys in the industry.

One time a reporter at The Washington Post copy and pasted an entire swath of my article on State Senator Andrew Brenner driving while appearing on an official Zoom conference call into his article in which it made it look like I gave the quote to him over the phone or something.

The email to him wasn’t long, it got the job done. The Rooster has now been linked in The Washington Post.

I shouldn’t have had to send that email. That asshole knew what he was doing; he just didn’t think anybody would notice. After all, how many of his prestigious WaPo readers are familiar with The Rooster? Well, more than he thought.

The Henry Hoeft saga is another textbook example of how easy it is to get bogarted on the beat. Here is a timeline for those scoring at home:

• March 6th: The Columbus Dispatch wrote a fawning article on Henry Hoeft that failed to mention his connections to the Boogaloo movement. The story ran on the front page of the Sunday paper.

• March 7th: The Rooster exposes Hoeft’s Boogaloo past, and The Columbus Dispatch issues a one-sentence correction while scrubbing large parts of the original profile.

• March 8th: The Rooster lambasts The Dispatch’s inadequate correction and lists everything scrubbed from the story without mention.

• March 17th: The Rooster writes on Hoeft’s immediate flight from Ukraine and shows how his cover story immediately got blown to pieces by those that served on the ground with him.

• March 20th: Rolling Stone covers the entire Hoeft saga, blow-by-blow, without linking The Rooster despite having all the same information.

• March 21st: The Rooster obtains Hoeft’s service records that show he was never deployed to a combat zone and lied about a Purple Heart.

That all sets the stage for April 4th, when The Dispatch once again profiled Hoeft. The headline notes his expedition “raise[d] extremist ties” and includes the following paragraph which mentions every single source on the story except one:

Since The Dispatch's original story was published, Hoeft has struck a nerve — on social media, in the pages of Rolling Stone and among Dispatch readers —partly because of his past association with the Boogaloo Bois.

Notice the slick verbage trying to pass the buck.

Hoeft did not strike the nerve. The Dispatch struck the nerve because they painted Hoeft as a combat vet who was going to Ukraine “for as long as it took,” while never even so much as asking about his involvement with the Boogaloo Bois, which was on Page 1 of Google results for “Henry Hoeft.”

The Dispatch never mentions their original goof in the new profile. Their hesitancy is understandable considering they have the backing of Gannett News, which has roughly 20,000 employees while The Rooster is just some asshole with an internet connection.

It’s hard for a legacy publication to admit they didn’t due basic journalistic jurisprudence by fact-checking anything Hoeft told them before they printed his story verbatim in the Sunday paper.

Being first is supposed to matter in this business. It’s not like throwing a link is a monumental task, either. It’s a tip of a cap. A basic decency. But apparently that’s too much for some with journalism degrees.

Oh well. Their readers might not know they’ve been bamboozled. But that will never be the case in the pages of this prestigious publication. That’s The Rooster guarantee.

THOSE WMDs. Welcome to the girl bossification of crypto… Shrinking the Gap: How the clothing brand lost its way… It’s the wine bottles that are getting really expensive.. Ice shelf half the size of New York City collapses in East Antartica… Brett Favre and the thin line between “making plays” and “massive fraud.”