"I broke the story about the mayor's marriage being 'kaput' — that was my headline back on January 29, talking about L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa," Ford told XBIZ. "I wrote that initial entry as a media-criticism story, because I didn't want to write about the health of somebody's marriage, but this was such an obvious story. The mayor had not worn his wedding ring in public for about eight months. He hadn't appeared in public with his wife for about a year. Most of the City Hall journalists knew about this, but they knew their editors would never permit them to put this story in the newspaper.
"The story was pushed forward by blogs such as mine on LukeFord.net, and the mainstream media is following behind and picking up the pieces."
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman mentioned the blog news coverage of Villaraigosa's marriage on his blog on the KTLA website on July 10. Ford responded, and their email exchanges were posted on LukeFord.net.
Following that, Tim Cavanaugh, L.A. Times online Opinion page editor, invited Ford to continue the discussion with Spillman on the L.A. Times website, discussing questions including "Has the breaking-news function of major media changed from one of breaking news to one of giving a stamp of authority to news that's already known?" and "What story has been most screwed up by the mainstream media in the last 10 years? What's been most screwed up by blogs?"
In the first exchange, Spillman credited Ford with being the first to spot Villaraigosa without his wedding ring, but then took bloggers to task for posting "a lot of other stuff that was just plain gossip."
Defending his tactics in his reply, Ford said, "If tomorrow I break a story by violating every journalistic principle, but it is an important story containing new information that positively affects thousands of lives, then I've done a good thing, even if it is bad journalism."
The discussion can be read here.
