I am highly complimented by this comment from "Sven Haagendaas" in response to Rhetorica's post on the World's attack:

Aside from the stunning ignorance from a newspaper about fair use, what's amazing to me is how the World jumped on the wrong side of a debate about transparency and just keeps digging.

Here's Bates' devastating (and fact-based!) takedown of a World editorial on it's conflict of interest in the airline "scandal." No wonder they don't want him using their own words against them!

If I were the World's owners, I wouldn't be suing Bates, I'd be hiring him. The guy got me interested in Tulsa politics, and I live 1,500 miles away.

If the World's goal were rebuilding credibility and readership, they would hire folks like me to bring some new perspective and energy to the paper. But the folks who run the World are quite happy with the fossilized perspective they already have -- just ask editorial page editor Ken Neal.