Newsroom Brawls: All the Rage These Days

The Washington Post Newsroom Smackdown

By CARISSA DIMARGO

Updated 4:25 PM EST, Mon, Nov 2, 2009

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Who said crazy stuff only happens in Texas and Florida?

All these Washington journalist types are buzzing today about Friday's smackdown in the Washington Post newsroom. A nearly 70-year-old features editor (and Vietnam vet) Henry Allen reportedly landed a solid punch on reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia.

Now, aside from the offensive fact that one of Roig-Franzia's names is shared with the worst possible boxed wine EVER, the guy got punched out for calling his editor a c***s**cker.

We would pretty much say that's the #1 thing to not say to one's editor, but then again, what do we know? We write for the Internets.

Reports Harry Jaffe at Washingtonian:

According to many sources, the incident began when Style editor Ned Martel assigned a semi-political story to Monica Hesse and Roig-Franzia. Playing off of an inadvertent disclosure last week that many congressmen are being investigated for ethics violations, Martel asked the two Style writers to compile a list of similar disclosures in the past. They came up with a "charticle" with a dozen examples, starting with Robert E. Lee's Civil War battle plans for Antietam showing up wrapped around cigars.

Dear God, we are terrified of these people. And that is why we write for the Internets.

Anyway, features ed Allen didn't like the piece and made Monica Hesse cry about the "charticle," the end result of which you can read here. There's some debate about whether Allen and Roig-Franzia were on the floor and whether they were multiple punches or just one, but even a single punch is juicy enough gossip to keep the media grapevine buzzing for awhile.

And that is why we like to stick with Twitter (soooo much better than charticles!). Andrew Beaujon, managing editor of City Paper Tweeted today:

[Photographer] Darrow [Montgomery] and I will be fighting at 1 p.m. if anyone wants to send a reporter.

Actually, we would be more than happy to send a reporter, if City Paper will send one of their people to capture the newsroom brawl we're planning for 5 p.m. today here. We can't say a whole lot about it except that it WILL involve nunchucks.