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For his part, Woodward maintained the nonjudgmental posture about Iraq and the Bush administration that so infuriates his critics. "I’m gonna not associate myself with your judgments, as you might understand," Woodward responded after Bernstein had finished whacking Bush.

When moderator Alex Jones asked Bernstein whether he believed Bush misled the country about the Iraq war, he answered with an emphatic "yes."

"My inclination is not to make the judgment," responded Woodward.

"I think sometimes you have to be a little more explicit," retorted Bernstein, as the audience chuckled.

Whatever their political and temperamental differences, Bernstein proved his loyalty by repeatedly defending his partner against critics who say Woodward has traded his journalistic talons for access and has become a White House stenographer.

At one point, noting that the Norwich Bulletin in Connecticut had the nerve to call for Woodward’s resignation from the Washington Post, Bernstein — with deep disbelief, obvious distaste, and theatrical timing — declared: "It’s like journalists eat their young ... and their old." (Ba-da-boom).

THE LOCAL-NEWS BLUES

Two weeks ago, I devoted this column to a story about Margaret Menge’s short stint as a Londonderry correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader that raised the issue of whether someone with a New York–magazine background could succeed in small-town journalism (See "A Small-Town Tale," News and Features, November 25).

After the story ran, I heard from a few journalists willing to talk about the pitfalls of reporting in smaller, insular communities.

For all the time spent discussing the Jayson Blairs and Judy Millers, as well as the job cuts in big metro newsrooms, the cozy community outlets where many reporters start out get scant attention. The experience can be rewarding. But small-town journalism is a largely unscrutinized world in which publishers have been known to pursue not-so-subtle agendas, editors can be tormentors rather than mentors, and young journalists are sometimes lucky if they emerge with their ambition, idealism, and résumés intact.

Here are a few anecdotes churned up by the story and sent to me over the past two weeks. In two cases, the identities of the journalists are hidden in order to protect the innocent and the guilty.

• Rhonda (not her real name) works for a rural paper where her editor is nice, but "the newsroom is a rudderless ship. I’m pretty much left to my own devices," she says. "At this point, I’d really like to work under someone who looks at my first draft, calls it crap, and then shows me where I can tighten copy, improve structure and flow."

Rhonda says she found herself in hot water with some local pols for being too aggressive on a story. She "argued that my behavior was neither illegal nor unethical," but the message she got from her editor was "I can’t go around making people angry.... The real low blow came when I was told to write about two issues that [one of the pols] wanted covered. Jobs are hard to come by here, so I wrote them."

"Community journalists walk among those they are serving," she adds. "Journalism at the most local level is a service. People don’t get that."

• Barbara (not her real name) worked at a small-town publication where her stint ended after the police objected to her reporting and declined to cooperate with her. Her bosses at the paper forbade her to have contact with law-enforcement personnel. She says she learned that the paper’s policy was to avoid writing "bad cop" stories in exchange for police tips about "perp walks, arrests or other news that would sell papers."

"What I saw as initiative, they saw as insubordination," Barbara says. "I think basically you’re not dealing with journalists. You’re dealing with small town politics."

• Jerry Ackerman recalls his first job more than 40 years ago as a city reporter at the De Kalb Daily Chronicle, in Illinois. (The journalist and paper are real.) "I was canned ... after 90 days, also for being too big-city minded," he writes in an e-mail. "I never figured out what story, if any, got the editor’s goat. Nor did any of the people I covered ... have any inkling — other than to comment ... that Bob Greenaway (the editor and 51 percent owner) was always unpredictable and quirky. The two brothers who held the other 49 percent of the paper ... just shook their heads in dismay when I went to tell them goodbye."

Despite that setback, Ackerman went on to spend 30 years at the Boston Globe before taking a 2001 buyout. So there can be happy endings.

Read Mar Jurkowitz's daily Media Log here. Mark Jurkowitz can be reached at mjurkowitz[a]phx.com.