Once upon a time (some 20 years ago?), Private Eye used to have an illustation on top of its "Street of Shame" column of a drunken journalist peering at a computer screen with the words "Pissed old hack stumped by new technology". Maybe they should renew it for the next issue because the fall of heads at the Grauniad it promises to be a fascinating example of precisely that. As Scott reports today:
Albert Scardino, the Guardian's executive editor for news, has resigned as a direct result of Sassygate. My impression from that source's report is that his position had become untenable because of the split between Mr. Aslam's supporters and those who wanted him fired (the latter including, to his credit, Ian "Clark County" Katz).
According to that source, Alan Rusbridger has conceded that the Aslam affair and its internal repercussions constitute a significant crisis for the paper.
Despite the Grauniad being, generally speaking, an Internet aware newspaper with its own blog, they apparently seem unable to do basic things like google and show precisely the same arrogance that their transatlantic cousins - CBS/Rather and CNN/Eason Jordon - showed. There was a time earlier this year when various people were opining that the British were not going to see the same sort of blog effect that we saw last year in the US. I think the coverage of 7/7 and subsequent events has in general disproven that thesis and if there were any doubt, this event clearly shows that British blogs can be just as influential as their transatlantic cousins (even when their detractors do their best to paint the blogs as crazy-eyed Bush-loving yankees).
In the comments to Scott's piece and in this trade press article, linked in the comments, it is clear that there remains one more scalp - Seumas Milne - who seems at present to be passing the buck one way and the blame the other and not letting any of either fall on him. It will be truly fascinating to see how long he can last in the post 7/7 climate where the multi-culti-tranzi ideology that he espouses is suffering some severe criticism.