ruth holladay reports that the newspaper guild is investigating rishawn biddle's firing. apparently the guild's contract with the star was not followed:

A Star insider notes that management "completely ignored the due process outlined in the union contract... They have to inform the Guild in writing whenever they terminate someone, and they didn't even bother to do that."

apparently the star didn't send that written notification to the guild about biddle's firing until two days later.

ruth also has a public statement from rishawn, but it doesn't have much that we don't already know: rishawn regrets what he wrote and is no longer with the star.

but the most interesting tidbit on ruth's blog is this:

FYI, sources inside the newsroom speculate that Dennis Ryerson and Barbara Henry are untouchable in this matter, and Tim Swarens will also survive. Apparently, this is not the only blog-related fiasco to occur at 307 N. Penn, but in other cases, the "mistakes" were made by non-employees -- you know, those freelancers -- and caught before they went online.

ruth speculates that these prior blog "mistakes" were made by freelancers—the star pays a lot of freelance reporters and editors who are thus technically not "employees". but if i had to guess, my money would be on the problems occurring over at INtouch, the star's "random folks we picked up off the street" blog. the standard of conversation there has always been far lower than at expresso, and as i've pointed out before on this blog, rishawn biddle was not the first person to have been "deleted" from the star blogs. the first i know of was jocelyn tandy-adande. and considering the kinds of garbage that was in her edited posts, i can only imagine what didn't get through.¶

Hey St. Awesome, I'll bet you are right about INtouch containing sketchy material. I can't keep all those venues straight -- fresh voices, expresso, indypaws, indymoms, indy.com. It's insane.
By freelancers, I meant all the above. I think that is what my source was implying. But then isn't almost everyone who writes for the Star now a contractual freelance drone? Very few reporters left... ¶

Well, to say RiShawn "regrets what he wrote" is a bit strong; he says both the language and the characterization were wrong, then proceeds to explain the one and defend the other, in the next two sentences.

If "nasty smirking hack" wasn't his job description then it was his avocation, and either way he ought to take what's coming to him instead of expecting us to go all weepy over a poor misunderstood satirist. ¶