Hearst biz reporter Buhl fired; Did Gasparino play a part?

Reuters columnist Felix Salmon writes Saturday about the firing of Hearst Connecticut papers business reporter Teri Buhl, and the fact that Fox Business Network correspondent Charles Gasparino was involved in her departure.

Salmon writes, “I talked briefly today to Buhl’s editor, Jim Zebora, and to McCumber; both of them politely declined to comment, so the only source I have to go on here is Buhl herself. But I’ve been following her stuff for some time, and I consider her to be a very good, very dogged financial reporter, with an intuitive understanding of the blog medium. Nothing I’ve ever seen from her would seem to merit this kind of punishment.

“So what happened here? Buhl wrote about Gasparino a couple of times on the blog she was hired to write at the beginning of this year — the blog entries are now down, of course, but for the time being the Google cache can be seen here and here. They weren’t particularly nice about Charlie, and they called him ‘Gas-bag’, a common nickname which he doesn’t like. Angered, Charlie called up Zebora, Teri’s editor, and accused her of ‘stalking’ him; Zebora, like any good editor, had her back.

“But it didn’t end there: Charlie then called Zebora’s boss, McCumber, and made the same complaint. Once again, he didn’t get very far. And then Charlie went further still, calling Steven Swartz, the president of Hearst newspapers, again with the same complaint. (Again, I only know about these calls because their substance was conveyed to Teri, who told me about them, but I do believe her when she says they happened.)”

Read more here. UPDATE: Salmon has now updated his post downplaying Gasparino’s role.