"Gary Webb's legacy"

Essay in the Sacramento News & Review today re new anthology of Gary Webb's reporting:

Gary Webb's legacy

by Kel Munger

It’s important to remember that he was right.

Gary Webb, who occupied a cubicle just a few feet from mine in 2004, during the last year of his life, took a lot of grief from big press outlets over his amazing work tracking drug sales in South Central Los Angeles back to the CIA, but ultimately, he was right—as noted in a condolence message sent to this paper by Sen. John Kerry.

A new anthology of some of Gary’s other, lesser-known work—including two stories he wrote for SN&R—serves as a big reminder of just how good he was at what he did. “The Killing Game”: Selected Writings by the Author of Dark Alliance demonstrates that what he did, all the time, was investigative reporting. He did it like other people walk or breathe. Gary corralled facts, sniffed out leads, tracked down documents and then put them into a story that wasn’t just coherent, it was interesting and important.

Read at the Sacramento News & Review: Gary Webb's legacy

The Murky News originally defended and heavily promoted Webb's series. But when the big East Coast papers engaged in what seemed like an orchestrated attack on the piece, the Merc changed course and hung Webb out to dry.