Last Call

Louisville Courier-Journal winger nutjob John David Dyche is calling it quits after the paper refused to publish his latest screed on how evilly liberal the Louisville Courier-Journal is.

Conservative columnist John David Dyche will no longer write for The Courier-Journal after the newspaper rejected a piece he'd written that suggested reforms to the editorial page and that the paper disclose political affiliations of editors and reporters.

On Monday, Courier-Journal Editorial Director Pam Platt told Dyche that his most recently submitted column would not be published. Platt explained that piece didn't reflect what he was supposed to be writing—a conservative take on the issues of the day, according to Dyche's transcript of a voicemail left by Platt.

Dyche wrote back to Platt and C-J Publisher Wes Jackson arguing that he'd never before been told what his column was supposed to be about and that a conservative take on issues includes "liberal media bias." Dyche told Platt that if the paper wouldn't change its mind, he'd sever their relationship. Platt wished him well on future endeavors.

"I never had a column censored or refused before," Dyche told WFPL on Friday. "I wrote about things that were interesting to readers and things that were public issues. I thought this was both. Media bias, the status of newspapers, et cetera. This seemed to me to be interesting, and the only problem apparently was that it was about The Courier-Journal itself. They just don't seem willing to subject themselves to the same scrutiny and demands that they routinely subject others to."

Platt responds via e-mail: "I believe my remarks about the reason I declined (the) column and my best wishes to him in the future have been posted."

Any newspaper editor will tell you that if you've got a problem with the paper's op-ed rules, formal or informal, writing a column for public consumption about your beef with them is the last thing you do.   No newspaper is going to want to make themselves the story, so Dyche did it for them.

If you can show me where in the Constitution it says that Dyche has the inalienable right to slag his employer in his column and that they must print it, go for it.  And let's remember, Dyche then tendered his resignation, he wasn't fired.

Good riddance.  His column was crap anyway.