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So, the story goes, the venerable Henry Allen, 68-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor at the Washington Post Style section, poet and, imho the most graceful narrative writer of our time, threw a single punch at colleague Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post newsroom over -- of all things -- the quality of a story Roig-Franzia wrote, and that writer's dismissive obscenity.

It's all second hand, but the one with the best sources is Gene Weingarten in the WaPo newsroom.

Gawker has the self-portrait of Henry above along with The Undefeated Champ-een of the Washington Post Style Desk.

Henry Allen's feature writing makes him one of my very few newspaper heroes.

Back when I was the Journal's Lifestyles Editor, I ran this wire piece in the Sunday Journal Accent section, and still remember it enough to go looking for it, mostly hidden behind an archives wall:

Ah, Those Smoky Yesterdays; When Cigarettes Were The Lights of Our Lives
The Washington Post | June 16, 1988| Henry Allen

Best of all was the cigarette afterward.

You blew out the match with a thick, authoritative exhale. You lay back in the dark, maybe put the ashtray on your belly, and smoked in silence so profound that you could hear the tiny whistle and crack of the tobacco burning. It was an offering. It was communion. It was said to be as indispensable to lovemaking as the smashed bottle of champagne was to the launching of an aircraft carrier.

"Ah," you said.

After a while, you might tell the old joke:

Do you smoke after sex?

I don't know, I never looked.

This was back before you quit smoking, ...

Worth noting:

The outsider is the Guardian (U.K.): Fists fly in the Washington Post newsroom.

Newsrooms often resemble Christian Science Reading Rooms, except when they explode into purposeful frenzy. I have heard shrieks on the discovery of a mouse and watched a managing editor vault over desks, but no fights. Fisticuffs over good writing is a very good sign, except that Henry, already retired and working on an expiring contract, is probably not going to be around the newsroom any more to insist on it.

Politico says Allen surprised by WaPo fistfight coverage.

"Back when I got into journalism, the idea that a fistfight in a newsroom would turn into a news story was unthinkable," Allen said when reached Monday evening. "The guys in the sports department at the New York Daily News, they had so many, you wouldn't even look up."

Update: The comments on this Washington City Paper piece about the incident are priceless. Some identify themselves as former "Posties" and flesh out the history of the men involved.

 Tags  Henry Allen

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