Advancing the Story: Black’s Paulose Coverage Fuels Media Nationwide

Eric Black, a National Fellow for the Center for Independent Media who writes for Minnesota Monitor, broke Tuesday’s story about an ongoing federal investigation into Minnesota U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose’s leadership of her office. The charges include allegations that she mishandled “classified” documents relating to the war on terror, retaliated against an employee who reported the errors, and denigrated another employee using terms such as “lazy,” “fat,” and “black.”

Black’s reporting, which he follows up here, has been referenced across the blogosphere and in the mainstream media, where the story is being advanced.

Area television newsrooms, including KARE-11 and KSTP covered the story. The latter, the Twin Cities’ ABC affiliate, confirmed that reports of turmoil at Paulose’s office are “dead on.” Fox 9 featured Black’s story and reported that the Office of Special Counsel is asking Paulose’s subordinates to save documentation, including emails and voicemails, about Paulose’s treatment.

Print and online news organizations followed the story, too, largely through the The Associated Press‘ wire. City Pages, writing that “Eric Black has been doing his homework… as usual,” posted a timeline of Paulose’s contentious career as U.S. attorney, while the Star Tribune, Black’s former employer, put a reporter on the story.

Black has also been interviewed on WCCO-AM’s The Jack Rice Show and for its newscasts, and on Tuesday he was a guest on Mark Heaney’s show on Air America [mp3], following up links from prominent national blogs and websites, including Alternet,  Atrios, Buzzflash,  Memeorandum, Talking Points Memo, Harper’s magazine, The Huffington Post, ThinkProgress, The Raw Story, Rook’s Rant and many others.

The story was also disseminated through community ranking sites like Digg, Reddit, Tailrank, and others, which sparked stories that didn’t mention Black but pushed out the news, including Wonkette and others. Ed Kohler, who blogs at The Deets, noted that Black’s story caught on at Memeorandum, a buzz-tracking site for politicos. “This probably isn’t something that will happen all the time for Mr. Black since he writes political stories that may or may not be interesting to a national political audience,” he wrote. “But for times when he writes appropriate content, I bet he’ll see some serious traffic spikes from the site.”

Look for audio and video clips of Black’s media appearances soon.