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Published Monday, June 06, 2005 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

HOW NOT TO GAG ON DEEP THROAT COVERAGE: Almost a week after the initial bombshell revelation into W. Mark Felt (Spoiler alert! He was Deep Throat!) and the press still cannot get out of its own way to criticize him, the WaPo, the FBI and themselves, whether it's backtracking to what Felt shoulda coulda woulda done or how he couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't have done likewise now. In all of this mess, one of the few insightful pieces came, not surprisingly, from Hank Stuever. His "appreciation" of Deep Throat told us something about ourselves. Poynter interviewed Stuever the day his piece ran in the paper. It only reminded me of my own encounter with Sir Hank, many moons ago at a Poynter Writers Workshop in Bellevue, Wash., when I was still finding my own voice with The Sun across the pond in Bremerton. His informal talk about how his beat wasn't a beat at all was enlightening, but more importantly, for me, anyhow, was the sudden realization that the rules and conventions of modern newspapers were bunk -- and why the heck don't I just go ahead and spin the good yarn the best way I know how? So that's what I set out to do. Still working on it. Thanks, Hank!