Oh, Come On...

.
There is no way the spat I had with Brian Pierce over one of his blog postings could have (or should have) been a legitimate reason to fire him from his job. But that’s what sort of alluded to in today’s SJ-R:

There is no obvious indication "Briblog" has had anything to do with Pierce and Michaels leaving WNNS. But a recent post drew Pierce into a fierce war of words among Springfield-area bloggers.

In a Saturday post titled "Hillary gets 'owned,'" Pierce questioned U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for the military as part of her presidential campaign.

The Briblog post included this passage: "Many have never forgotten that when she was co-president for eight years she was quoted as saying: 'I loathe the military.' "

However, another local blog, The 11th Hour (http ://the11thhour.blogspot.com/), challenged that quote, calling it "bogus information" taken from right-wing Web postings.

Another local blogger, Jerome Prophet (http://jeromeprophet.blogspot.com/), joined the call for Pierce to cite a "reputable source."

A heated online exchange among the three included this response from Pierce: "I simply don't take this thing as seriously as you guys do. I've been in media 32 years. I cume (reach a cumulative audience of) 35,000 people a day on the radio show. ... I can say anything I want here - that's the fun."

On Monday, Pierce edited his original post to remove the questioned quote and extended an olive branch. He acknowledged not "researching the topic completely," but added, "I hope you react similarly to the tens of thousands of blog posts that get the facts wrong."

The 11th Hour acknowledged the sarcasm, but accepted the apology. On Wednesday, that blog posted this response to the WNNS news: "Just to be clear, I really, really had nothing to do with this. I sent no bad karma or nothin'. I certainly would never wish anyone to lose their job. So best of luck to both of them in the future."

If this was used as a reason to fire Pierce then someone was looking for any excuse to do so. I mean, that’s ridiculous. This was, in the scheme of things, fairly minor and in no way had anything to do with Brian Pierce’s job. The comments I objected to were limited to his blog and had nothing to do with anything I heard him say on the air. I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to Brian & Kellie so I don’t know if anything was said on the air related to our brief exchange, but I sort of doubt it. And even if he had broadcast something, so what?

The only thing I can see in the blog battle that might have gotten Pierce in trouble at work was his mentioning his cume (cumulative audience) numbers. Maybe that’s some sort of “secret” at his place of employment. Still, that seems awfully petty.

It’s just weird to see this thing in the paper. I suspect this incident was included as filler in a story about which there really isn’t much information. It’s kind of a big deal in the Springfield radio world that Brian & Kellie are gone so it deserves coverage but with the parties involved not saying much, their isn’t much of a story.

And one final thing: I feel stupid having to say this but I want to make it clear that my comments were limited strictly to this blog. I did not contact the radio station and complain about Pierce or anything he posted on his blog. As far as I’m concerned his blogging and broadcasting are two separate things.

Update: In the comments section of the SJ-R story someone pretending to be me entered a comment that is just a copy and paste of an earlier post of mine. That was not me who posted that resonse to the story. I’m only commenting here.