Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
I don't think so, but Clay Risen at the website The Morning News does. His reasoning is a little tortured: he calls Claire Hoffman's piece in last Sunday's West magazine "extreme journalism" and "riveting reading," and says that some new journalism is to be allowed. But, he argues, it ran under the Los Angeles Times banner and thus Hoffman "uses the cloak of objectivity provided by the reported-profile form to lend credence to her side of what could easily be a major lawsuit." He goes on:
Hoffman’s editor should have scratched her article, on the grounds that she was too compromised to give Francis an objective treatment. Then, her editor could have assigned another reporter to present Hoffman’s story as well as Francis’s. This new piece could have even re-reported the events surrounding Francis’s possible assault of Szyszka. It’s an awkward solution, and it dilutes much of the force from the Hoffman’s moving piece. But it satisfies the ethical obligations of journalism, which is ultimately what matters.
The assault he refers to is a sexual encounter between Francis, the founder of the Girls Gone Wild video franchise, and a young woman on the GGW bus. It is detailed in the Hoffman piece, which all but calls it a rape. "Baby, Give Me a Kiss" still tops the LAT's most-emailed list. TMN is a group website based largely in Brooklyn that publishes writers around the country. Risen is an assistant editor at The New Republic in his day job. TMN's masthead includes Choire Sicha, the original second blogger at Gawker.