The 2007 Howie Kurtz-David Blum Peace Accord
Howie Kurtz, Washington Post media critic and author of "Reality Shows: Inside the Last Great Television News War," tells blog BigHeadDC that he'd be glad to meet with New York Press editor David Blum over similarities between Kurtz's book and a 2005 afterword to Blum's 2004 book. (Both the Kurtz and Blum books report, in similar ways, that Dan Rather threatened to take the Killian documents story that led to his dismissal from CBS to the Times if the network didn't promote, let alone run, the piece.) Kurtz has claimed the anecdote as a scoop. Speaking to the New York Observer last night, Kurtz described himself as "a fanatic about attributing information," but said he wouldn't mention Blum's book in any future editions of "Reality Show" because "since he got the information directly from [Josh] Howard, it didn't matter that the story had already been used elsewhere." Would Blum be open to a meeting? "It depends on the shape of the table," he told us.