It’s so refreshing when a journalist lets his hair down to say what he really thinks.
And what a better medium than Twitter!
The fighters: BuzzFeed Legal Editor Chris Geidner and Talk Points Memo national affairs reporter Hunter Walker.
Who started it: Geidner.
Medium: Twitter
(Full disclosure: I once fought with Walker. It was tense. He even changed his Twitter avatar to a shirtless version of himself – don’t ask!. But it’s all water under the bridge and we’ve since made up. Geidner typically acts like an angel on Twitter.)
Topic of the disagreement: Whether using an anecdote about drug users in a post about the cocaine congressman is OK or stupid.
4:44 p.m. GEIDNER: “@hunterw Breaking: Two people who have acknowledged addiction issues talked about doing drugs. I never would have guessed that.”
4:46 WALKER: “@chrisgeidner Thanks for reminding me to come to you for approval next time I want to be interested in an anecdote from a political feature.”
4:53 GEIDNER: “@hunterw No one needs my approval for anything they write … but that also doesn’t mean I can’t question anything anyone ever writes.”
The lede of the post that made Geidner spit (so to speak) at Walker:
A former colleague of Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL), who announced he was taking a leave of absence Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to a cocain possession charge, said the future politician used to boast about the cocaine he purchased while traveling in Colombia when they worked together on a Florida talk radio show. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mike Adams, who was a producer on the show Radel hosted, “Daybreak,” said the two regularly discussed cocaine and Radel’s backpacking trips in Colombia.
The current status of their relationship: Pretty good, actually.
As told to The Mirror, Geidner said, “Hunter’s great. People question me about my stories, and I question them. It’s nothing personal; it’s our job.”
As for Walker, he said he’d drink with Geidner again. “I didn’t even talk with Chris about it beyond that. I just thought he was being snarky, so I responded in kind. I thought it was a good anecdote to note, the folks at AP who printed it apparently did too. I don’t know him well, we’ve had drinks together once at the conventions. I can’t imagine either of us would take a miniscule disagreement about a story seriously enough that we would not drink again if we crossed paths.”
Walker added of Geidner that he’s “good people” and “phenomenally talented.”
