[SarahW]

The original byline was Tom Hays. Which is confusing, b/c he works out of NYC. Was he even IN Wisconsin?

[flashbunny]

mark belling (milwaukee talk show host, sub for rush) said he believed the reporter was scott lindlaw. He tried calling the milwaukee ap branch and they refused to tell him who actually wrote it.

So he gave out their number and told the listeners to keep calling all the way through the weekend and just ask "what's the name?"

[BigSkyFreeper]

All he had to do was turn a TV on, which I am sure it was, but he injected his Liberal bias into the story. Doesn't matter if you happen to be in WI or NYC, you don't need to be there to report on the crowd reaction in a live shot.

[L.N. Smithee]

Google Search of [AP "Tom Hays"]

[bigbob]

I *thought* I remembered reading "Tom Hays" when I first saw the story this morning but by the time I went back to confirm, AP had pulled it. Thanks for the Lexus-Nexus link, we know now who needs to be fired.

[cyncooper]

At the end of the original story Sarah linked us up to it is indeed bylined Tom Hays, but at the end it says:

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Frank Eltman in New York, David Hammer in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Marc Humbert in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

FWIW

[BigSkyFreeper]

Even if it was a stringer in Wisconsin reporting back to NYC, the bureau chiefs in NYC would see such short snippets as "UPDATE: Bush wishes Clinton speedy recovery", "UPDATE: Crowd reacts with 'ooohs'", etc., etc.

Stringers do not write complete stories, they string it out over the wire for those back at the bureau to take those strings of information and tie together into cognitive sentences and paragraphs suitable for print.