John Harris Ain't Got Nothing on the Captain Pantload Posse

(Deshea Townsend assaults Raymond Burgess Chris Henry unknown bar patron at Margarita Mama's on Sunday night.)

Jeebus, anybody got a copy of the Tribune-Review's mission statement? Is it written in crayon with a bunch of misspelled words? Do you think employees wear bags over their heads on the way to work so nobody knows who they are?

First off, let me apologize to John Harris for yesterday's CPW. Compared to this latest steaming pile (which I'm sure will be pulled off the Tubes any second now), he's Michael Lewis.

Anyway, according to budding reporter Jill King Greenwood, Deshea Townsend was was arrested after a bar fight:

... Townsend and and another man surrendered to police after getting into a fistfight at a Station Square nightclub, authorities said today.

Townsend was at Margarita Mama's at 1:45 a.m. Friday when Chris Graham, whose age and address were not available, began arguing with another man, Raymond Burgess, Pittsburgh police said.

Burgess and Graham began fighting and Townsend jumped into the fray, said police spokeswoman Diane Richard.

"Mr. Burgess threw punches, hitting Mr. Graham in the face," Richard said. "As he was beating Mr. Graham, Mr. Townsend jumped in and started hitting the victim with a closed fist in the head and face."

It's 8:05 PM EST as I write this and the facts -- according to Greenwood, anyway -- have already been changed. In a previous version, Raymond Burgess was a Steelers' practice squad player. Now, he's just "another man."

Well, ProFootballTalk.com might have something to do with the correction. At 5:44 PM EST, Florio wrote:

Per a league source, Steelers cornerback Deshea Townsend denies a report that he was arrested for an early Saturday bar fight. Townsend also claims, we're told, that he was not involved in the altercation that gave rise to a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Townsend and another player on the team had been busted.

We're also told that Raymond Burgess, identified by the Tribune-Review as a member of the Steelers' practice squad, has no connection to the team. He's supposedly a freaking bartender at the club where the fight occurred.

And then, at 7:51 PM EST, he added this:

At a time when the old media loves to criticize the new media for getting stuff wrong and/or making sh-t up, a member of the old media pulled a decidedly new media trick by revising one of its stories to remove a glaring error that appeared in a prior version.

Earlier on Monday, the Tribune-Review reported that Steelers cornerback Deshea Townsend and practice squad player Raymond Burgess were arrested over the weekend.

But we later learned that Burgess is not, and never has been, a member of the team. Instead, he's a bartender at the club where the fight occurred.

And, apparently, we're right. Because the Tribune-Review story has been revised, with no reference to the fact that it ever said that Burgess played for the Steelers.

Nicely done.

Look, I know typing is brain surgery for some people, but how freakin' hard is it to, oh, I don't know, click this link (if you work at the Trib, when I write "click this link," that means you should take your mouse -- it's not really a mouse, it's the little mouse-shaped object next to the keyboard typewriter buttons -- and drag it along the mousepad mousecarpet so that the pointer arrow-thingy on your computer screen picture maker hovers over the words "click this link." Then, click hit the mouse on top of the head.

Welcome to the Internets! You just traveled through space. You are presently viewing the Pittsburgh Steelers -- they are the local football team ... in Pittsburgh -- team roster. Now, all you have to do is look for a guy named Raymond Burgess. If you DO NOT see him on this list, that means he doesn't play for the Pittsburgh Steelers (again, the local football team ... in Pittsburgh ... Pennsylvania). This is called "fact checking." It's an interesting idea many news organizations are now adopting to make sure their stories are "accurate," or, as some people might say, "not full of shit."

God, what an embarrassment. Somebody ought to ask Jill King Greenwood who her source was on the Raymond Burgess tip. I also heard from my sources that Steelers' punter Mark Madden frequents strip clubs, and punt returner Sally Wiggin eats boogers.

I guess we really shouldn't expect that much from an outfit that features the slogan: "We Deliver Newspapers. And More." Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Whatever, congratulations to Jill King Greenwood (if you wonder why I keep using her full name, it's because I want this post to appear near the top of The Googles when her family and friends check to see what she's been up to); you're now second only to Mike Prisuta in All-Time Captain Pantload-ness.

Speaking of Prisuta, I stumbled across little piece of rumor-mill comedy gold: Apparently, some of the higher-ups at the Trib (the smart monkeys, I'm guessing) called Prisuta in to find out what the hell happened with the crash-and-burn job he did on the "Grimm is the Steelers' next head coach!!!" piece.

Like any of us would do, he marched into the office, presented a copy of the CBSSportsLine.com column as proof he was right ... even though Mike Tomlin had the job. At least on this planet, anyway. Evidently, some Trib employees use the SportsLine column as proof Captain Pantload was right. Uh, okay.

Also, as much as most of us detested the job Joe Bendel did last year as the Steelers' beat guy, when he quit right before training camp (strategically planned, it seems), the Trib replaced him with a guy who previously covered the Division II golf beat. Now, this dude might be a great writer getting his big break. I don't begrudge him for being in the right place at the right time, but you have to think the Trib could've had almost anybody for the job. (Actually, I have no idea; I'm just assuming it would be a popular gig since the Steelers ARE sports in Pittsburgh.)

At any rate, the Tribune-Review has out-Prisutaed themselves. Didn't think they could do it, but I've been proven wrong ... again. Just like the time I thought the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin ...

Stay Classy, Trib

I know I should write about Mike Tomlin, but there will be plenty of time for that. Plus, his press conference was impressive enough that I don't need to muck things up with half-formulated thoughts and passing them off as insight. Or something like that.

Instead, I thought I'd talk about something else, something much more sinister. That's right, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. We're all aware of Mike Prisuta's Pulitzer Prize-winning piece in Sunday's paper where he wrote that Russ Grimm was the next Steelers head coach. If you didn't see it, you can read it here ... except you can't. Because the paper's web site pulled the story after it became clear to everybody that Prisuta so totally crapped himself on this one that the only sensible thing to do was pretend it didn't happen, collectively stick their heads in the sand, and hope it all blows over.

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. I'm not in the newspaper business so I have no sense of how things work. I can read, however, and I'm not exaggerating when I say the Tribune-Review, well, sucks balls. Not everybody at the paper, just the people I have to read. (That's not entirely true. I've given Joe Starkey the business in the past, but he's written a lot of solid stuff this football season. I can't, in good conscience, lump the whole lot of them together ... like I'm some big, fat, lazy important media person, so I think it's important to put that out there.)

I've bellyached about this in the past, but -- and I suspect this is because I live here -- the Washington Post's local football coverage might be some of the best in the country. And I HATE the Redskins. Pittsburgh's, by and large, sucks. Even before I worked for Jim Wexell, I thought he was the best beat reporter in town -- and I haven't changed my opinion -- but he's not at either of the big two papers. What does that tell you?

Before going on, I should do two things. First, thanks to Eric's etymological prowess, I'm introducing a new word into the lexicon:

prisuta [pris-uta]
noun

To f*ck up royally and cleverly conceal.

-related forms
pris-uta-ed, verb

ex. I farted but prisutaed myself by blaming the dog.

Second, barring a Jayson Blair-esque scandal, Prisuta is the unquestioned all-time Captain Pantload. So congratulations on that because it's the only work-related award your winning this year ever.

With the niceties out of the way, I have a question: Why isn't more being made of this? As much as I love making fun of Chris Mortensen for his general douchebaggery, he was right on this one (well, Michael Silver was right, Mortensen agreed). Local guys who didn't have anything new to report -- Ed Bouchette, Wex -- didn't. Except for Prisuta. I'm assuming he had a source for his "Grimm is the new coach" column, but his source bent him over and, um, stuck it to him in a very uncomfortable place (like the back of a Volkswagen?).

Fair enough, breaking a story is, ostensibly, what the newspaper business is all about. Nothing's sweeter than the local beat guy sticking it to the national know-it-alls. But that's not what happened. Two national outlets reported Tomlin had the job, one local paper reported it was Grimm ... and when Prisuta's steaming pile started to really attract flies, his paper pulled it off the Internets ... forever. No explanation. No admission of rampant stupidity. Nothing other than the hopes that it all just goes away.

I try to steer clear of the bloggers vs. mainstream media talk because (a) I think the term "bloggers" sounds ridiculous and I feel goofy typing it (if you want me to say it, forget about it), and (b) it sounds pretentious when some dude with a decent thought every month or so thinks he's better than the guys who do this full-time. That said, Prisuta should be embarrassed enough to seriously thinking about changing his name … and maybe even his line of work. He's a joke. I mean, I thought he was a joke when he wrote this compelling piece of sports journalism in April 2004, but after this latest debacle, it's unfair to the people we classify as jokes to compare them to Prisuta.

I'm sure the Tribune-Review will do nothing and I'm okay with that. Obviously, they're not interested in people taking them seriously, and I'm okay with that too. If this outfit were an NFL team, they'd be the Detroit Lions. Sure, they get by, and maybe make a little money along the way, but at the expense of the consumer and their credibility.

Yeah, I hope it works out for them. And as long as they're at it, why not give Matt Millen Mike Prisuta a raise. I mean, isn't that the whole culture of "failing upwards?" Stay hot, Trib. Stay hot.