The Pitch Ripped Off My Cauthen Resume Story?

David Martin published an account of the fabrications Wayne Cauthen loaded up his Austin resume with in yesterday's Pitch. According to blogger tradition, I should now respond with a dose of righteous indignation and self-important bluster about how they're ripping off my work and completely dependent on citizen-journalists like me for everything they do.

But I don't take myself quite as seriously as some bloggers.

While I've been a critic of David Martin's penchant for publishing guess work and sloppy personal attacks instead of trying his hand at real journalism, I see no reason whatsoever to believe that he ripped off my story idea. The fact that Cauthen told Austin that he had corrected a structurally imbalanced budget and then submitted a structurally imbalanced budget a couple months later was the sort of thing that would attract the attention of any thoughtful, alert person (I'm too kind to speculate as to why the Star didn't catch it).

And, even if he had read it first here (which I doubt he did), he went back and did a far better job than I did. He noticed a whole lot more creative writing on Cauthen's resume. He caught the numerical flim-flammery that Cauthen made up about reserve funds and the Downtown redevelopment. In short, I picked a piece of low-hanging fruit on Cauthen's resume and David Martin shook the tree. Good work.