Suspended 'Blade' Reporter Fired

By: Joe Strupp George Tanber, the staff writer for The Blade of Toledo, Ohio. who admitted this week to writing an anonymous letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board claiming the newspaper's "Coingate" series was tainted, has been fired.

Tanber, a 14-year Blade veteran, told E&P he was informed of the firing Thursday evening by Luann Sharp, assistant managing editor, one day after he was suspended for writing the letter. Sharp confirmed the dismissal to E&P Friday, but declined further comment.

"I'm sad and disappointed. But I have no regrets about sacrificing a job I loved and have been successful at for many years for what I consider a greater good,? Tanber said in a statement to E&P.

As a member of the Newspaper Guild, Tanber has the right to file a grievance that could result in arbitration. Guild leaders could not be reached for comment this morning. Tanber would not comment on what his next course of action may be.

Tanber?s letter was sent to the board just weeks before it gathered to choose the Pulitzer Prize winners in April. The much-praised "Coingate" series (subject of a major E&P feature story last year) failed to win the Public Service prize, for which it had been a finalist, although there is no evidence the letter had any effect. But the letter then drew notice when Royhab hired a private investigator last month to track down the letter's author.

Tanber, who most recently worked out of the paper's Monroe, Mich. bureau, told E&P earlier this week that he had admitted authorship of the letter Tuesday night in a two-page statement he provided to Blade editors.

The anonymous letter, an eight-page document dated March 28, was titled "Deception and Coverup Taint Award-Winning Coingate Series." It claimed, among other things, that the Blade was aware of alleged illegal campaign contributions by GOP fundraiser Tom Noe prior to the 2004 presidential election. Noe was the chief architect of the Coingate scandal in which tens of millions of dollars in state funds were lost in a rare coin investment scheme that has already resulted in several convictions, including that of Noe.

Royhab, when he learned of the letter, wrote a lengthy rebuttal, denying all charges, and sent it to the Pulitzer board. "The content [of the letter] is inaccurate and false," he told E&P last month.

He then hired an investigator to find the culprit. Among other things, Tanber's computer records were seized. "We are trying to get to the bottom of something we find to be quite disturbing," Royhab told E&P at the time. "Wouldn't you want to know if someone is trying to injure your reputation?"

Wednesday evening, the Blade released a statement under Royhab's name. It said, in part, that besides writing the letter to the Pulitzer Board, since last summer Tanber had fed "information, some that was untrue, about the Blade and some of its staff members," to E&P and Salon.com.

In his statement to E&P today, Tanber commented: "I was fired for dishonesty....In fact, I was fired for revealing the truth, which, under the journalism code of ethics, I was obligated to do."