"He's going to get the paper he deserves."

Town Crier reporter Kathleen Acuff is quitting the paper in protest over publisher and Republican activist Paul Nyberg’s groveling apology of an editorial last week. The editorial followed Acuff's (still accurate) story that former City Council member King Lear was accusing the current council of violating the state's open meeting law, privately agreeing to tell a group of high school kids to go screw themselves (because at least that's less bad than being gay).

When someone with as few enemies as Kathleen Acuff leaves because the paper is afraid to cover the news, it’s a pretty good indication that your paper is afraid to cover the news. The Town Crier's other three news reporters have less than six months of combined experience, and are unlikely to fight Nyberg over all the good news the paper chooses to cover. Her departure further ensures that the only controversial reporting in the Town Crier will be in the sports section.

As long as Nyberg is apologizing, by the way, he ought to beg forgiveness from God and public for the paper’s disgraceful 2003 editorial backing the invasion of Iraq, particularly the use of a garbled sports cliché to justify the bombing of a third-world country. (The best offense is a good defense, not vice versa). If you think that’s bad, you’re right, first of all. But you also should have seen the print version, in which the last sentence was cut off.