The last word
Regarding Jack Lessenberry's response (Oct. 1) to my criticism of his Free Press critique: Jack, you should be embarrassed: Only a chickenshit insists on having the last word on a reader letter! Hell, you even read it — and responded — before it was published! Sweet!
Your attempt to portray me as a toadie and diminish the months of work that went into the text message stories (and all that went after — Ferguson's contracts, the friends and family on the payroll, etc.) is almost as pathetic as your harping on the Free Press while ignoring the savagery inflicted upon the Toldeo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by your masters, the Block family. It wouldn't have taken more than one phone call for a true journalist — or even a two-bit columnist — to find out that when someone at this paper is in trouble and has to clash with the bosses, I am one of the first people they call for help.
But you're more interested in quick turns and superficial analysis than doing any real reporting. By the way, you're welcome in advance for my letter, which got you off the "I have to write a real column" hook by providing some fodder for another half-ass run of cheap shots. Your Hour Detroit profile of Kilpatrick shows just how feeble your reporting skills are. One phone call to his coach at Florida A&M would have exposed as a lie that back injury excuse you let Kilpatrick get away with when he so glibly explained why he isn't playing pro football. Or you could have just read the story I wrote in the Free Press the year before your hack job went into the magazine. Thank god the text messages didn't just fall into your lap!
OK, I've got to stop now. I don't want to keep a hot shit like you from doing your OWN exposé on the Moroun empire. You may want to start with the story I did on his financial ties to the mayor and Congresswoman Cheeks-Kilpatrick. —M. L. Elrick, reporter, Detroit Free Press, Detroit
