Times' Chico reporter apologizes *

Eric Slater, the L.A. Times roving state reporter whose piece on Cal State Chico is under fire, has apologized in an email sent to "friends and colleagues." Slater sent the email Sunday and intended for it to be made public:

Friends and colleagues,

I wrote the worst story in my 19-year journalism career the other day. I wanted to apologize to you directly.

Please read the story and the corrections, as a favor to me. You will see why the national media is now writing about me. I also suggest you read that coverage. Slate, Romesko, and the New York Post are the best/worst.

Most of you are journalists and will enjoy reading these pieces. You may note that I have spoken to no outside media. No one at Slate, Romenesko, has ever called, left a message at any of three public phone numbers, or sent me an email. A reporter for the Chico paper, which broke the story, did call me after her first piece ran.

I have spoken with very few people. Now, at the suggestion of a wise colleague who weathered a difficult and mostly false snowstorm--blown up mostly by colleagues in journalism--I have decided to apologize to you. You, in turn, may pass this mea culpa along to anyone you like. You may call or email me and ask me about anything, including my handsome BMW GS1100 Paris-Dakar motorcycle. If I don't get back with you swiftly, please know that I am clad in helmet and leather and follow many of the better rules of the road.

Those of you who know me well may hang me the highest or cut that rope from which I'm dangling. (There's some melodrama. Forgive me) You know I am a terrible book/housekeeper who I can file a prize-winning story via satellite phone while sitting in the high desert of Afghanistan ducking red tracer rounds, an 80-inch tale complete with multisyllabic words and purple prose and lots of facts and lots of color and more sources than ever make any story. You know I need a damn haircut, hippie, and to go back to church, maybe.

I hope you also know I would never make up a source--not now, not ever.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Eric Slater

Over the weekend, the Chico Enterprise-Record also ran a story saying that Slater and State Editor Steve Padilla had called the university to apologize, but the Chico president was unmollified and said there were more errors than the Times corrected in its For the Record. Slater has been a reporter in the Valley and Metro, Chicago bureau chief and a war correspondent. He shared an Overseas Press Club award in 2002 for coverage of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the episode is being used (by Jack Shafer at Slate, among others) to heap further ridicule on Times media critic David Shaw's argument that bloggers are not journalists in part because their pieces don't go through three or four layers of editing.

* Update: There's a letter responding to Slater on the feedback page. Also, people are forwarding me earlier, slightly different versions of Slater's email. Posted below is the email he sent to Chico Enterprise-Record reporter Melissa Daugherty, which doesn't have the last line about never making up sources (mine didn't come from her, but from someone else who got a copy through her):