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Bob Barnes, call your agent

By Mark Obbie

If I were the Washington Post's Supreme Court beat reporter, Robert Barnes, I'd be jealous of some of my competitors today. Yesterday's decisions included two highly newsworthy ones, on the death penalty for child rape and the Exxon Valdez punitive damages case. The Post carried AP reports on the decisions until just before noon -- less than two hours after the decisions' release -- when a pair of staff stories appeared on the Post's Web site: Barnes writing about the death penalty decision and William Branigin about Exxon. This morning's Post tops its front page with Barnes stories on both decisions. Lotsa work for Barnes, who last year had an assist from outgoing beat reporter Chuck Lane.Over at the Times, recent buyouts notwithstanding, the back bench was stronger. On Wednesday, David Stout pitched in on the death penalty case while the Times used AP's report on Exxon, leaving the outgoing (Linda Greenhouse) and incoming (Adam Liptak) beat reporters to work on the pair of stories that top this morning's front page. Jess Bravin at The Wall Street Journal had similar help on the day of, and the day after.Bob, it's not too late to call for reinforcements to cover today's remaining blockbusters.I'll have more thoughts about staffing these end-of-term decision days, and the role of SCOTUSblog, after today's fireworks.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).