City Paper Weighs in on Philly Weekly Lawsuit; Everybody Else Weighs in on CP [Update]
UPDATE [8:52 a.m.] City Paper has pulled the satire piece and issued an apology.
City Paper writer Ryan Briggs tries to satirize Tara Murtha’s harassment suit against Philly Weekly:
Senior veteran reporter Ryan Briggs personally filed a lawsuit today, alleging gender bias at the female-dominatedCity Paper.
The handwritten complaint, a grease-stained document that seemed to underscore the writer’s emotional distress, referred to Briggs as “the greatest journalist, living or dead” and outlined harassment and repression at the hands of the City Paper‘s almost-all-female editorial staff.
“I would try my best to make this office place a friendly environment for men like myself, throwing daily beer-drinking competitions with the guys from sales, putting up cool black-light posters and pictures of totally rockin’ muscle cars around the office,” said Briggs. “I can’t tell you how many times I would come back into the office only to find my beer, my leftover pizza, the posters, everything — vandalized. Gone.”
“It was disrespectful to men everywhere. It was discrimination,” said Briggs, wearing a striking muscle tee and Zubaz combination outside of a federal courthouse.
This didn’t go over well at Philebrity:
Whether it’s a failed attempt at satire that fell totally flat, a weirdly aggressive prodding of Murtha, or just overall stupidity, we’re not sure. But we do know one thing: This is really fucking dumb. For one, there’s no reason for the writing screen-capped above to actually exist, and secondly, if CP and PW really are “rivals” of sorts, shouldn’t the CP people be on Murtha’s side, since she’s suing their rival paper and potentially costing them a whole bunch of money?
Philebrity, in turn, pointed to Will Bunch’s commentary on Twitter:
If you mock a woman’s lawsuit against rampant newsroom sexism, you may be actually confirming there’s rampant sexism in journalism
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) August 1, 2013
Meanwhile, check out Monica Weymouth writing here at PhillyMag about the whole, sordid mess.
And by writing about all of this here, I’m pretty sure we’ve just completed the most incestuous, circle-of-lifey Philly media piece ever. Excuse me while I disappear into my own belly button.
