I'm glad that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is defending itself on the Cheney story.

The Caller-Times is an old Texas newspaper with a good reputation as a news organ and as a place to work.

I was offered a position there as a copy editor shortly after I graduated from SMU. I turned it down with great regret because my father was terminally ill and I felt it was no time to leave my parents. Otherwise, I would have gone there in a snap.

A conscientious organ, it would have been a terrific training ground. It was just too long a drive.

Now, I agree that the news should have gone out sooner. But to whom? You'd have wound up with a bunch of camera trucks sitting outside the ranch and the Corpus Christi hospital, with reporters growing wider-eyed and more hysterical by the minute.

We saw it around the hurricanes, and we saw it during the mining accident.

Campbell Brown might have been a good reporter in the circumstance. She is a girl local to an area with a passel of relatives and family friends who hunt. She could've kept perspective.

But she's a busy woman.

UPDATE: Gary, the paper might have been responding to NBC's David Gregory in this Time story:

McClellan endured two of his testiest briefings ever, with NBC's David Gregory saying at an off-camera morning briefing that the Administration neglected its duty to put out the information and that White House reporters "don't care if some ranch owner calls a local paper." McClellan accused Gregory of grandstanding: "Hold on. Cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later." That infuriated Gregory. "You don't have to yell," McClellan said. Gregory shot back: "I will yell. If you want to use that podium and try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong." McClellan said: "Calm down, David."

And Howard Kurtz quoting New Republic's Ryan Lizza:

But still, I'm having trouble getting worked up. Some of the criticism of the White House is a tad disingenuous. Reporters usually complain that the Bushies control all information. Now they are complaining that news of the event was first relayed by eyewitness Katharine Armstrong rather than the veep's official spin team. Some of my good friends are White House reporters, but some of their whining seems driven as much by the Bush press corps' famous sense of entitlement--we must be the first to know or the country will be kept in the dark!--as it is by any high-mindedness about the public being properly informed.

And here's a story from Editor & Publisher, with a quote from one of the Caller-Times reporters:

When asked about the White House press corps' continued grilling of Press Secretary Scott McClellan, the pair supported the ongoing interest, but disagreed with the harsh approach. "We need to ask every question we can think of," Powell noted. "But until someone has proven themselves untrustworthy, I don't think we need to act like pit bulls. That makes us look bad."

For Garcia, the job of the Washington reporters is "to get to the bottom of things." But, she added, "I don't understand why they are so upset about it."

She also had a message for those larger news outlets who have hinted that the Caller-Times should not have been the first called with the story, and perhaps could not cover it completely: "Sometimes it seems that they think we can't handle it, but we can and we did everything right."

UPDATE: My conclusion is that Ms. Armstrong should have called the Caller-Times on Saturday night.