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Last December when the Washington Post hired reporter John Solomon away from the Associated Press, a question addressed to Post reporter Peter Baker appeared on a Poynter online chat site, a site mostly used by journalists.

This was the question: "Is anyone in the newsroom concerned about the fact that the Post is hiring John Solomon (formerly of the AP), whose pieces on Harry Reid were widely criticized, not only in the blogosphere but also by media critics (such as your own Howard Kurtz)?"

Baker responded, "But the serious answer to your question is everyone I've talked with in the newsroom is absolutely thrilled that John Solomon is joining us from the Associated Press."

If that was the case, the thrill was short-lived. Solomon's first front page story appeared in the Post on January 19. Dripping with emotionally loaded terms and innuendo, it reported that former U.S. senator John Edwards had sold his Georgetown house (or "mansion," as Solomon put it) for $5.2 million to a couple who "are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid."

The Post's ombudsman (a sort of in-house inspector general) Deborah Howell said there had been objections to the story within the Post newsroom. Howell herself called it a "gotcha" story without the gotcha: "I kept waiting to read about the connection between the [buyers] and Edwards that would make this sale unseemly; it wasn't there. Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said Edwards 'has never met or spoken with them; nor have they contributed to his campaign'."

If you're wondering why this trip down a minor journalism memory lane, it's because John Solomon is the source of most of the negative ethics stories about Nevada's U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. And they stand up about as well as his Edward story.

Solomon did most of his Reid stories when he was still at the Associated Press. A couple of them sought to link Reid to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, though once a reader got past the headline, the link was actually between Reid and tribes who also happened to be Abramoff clients. That is a pattern in Solomon stories - juicy headlines with much less stories under them.

A second part of the Solomon pattern is excluding information from stories that might undermine those juicy headlines. For instance, Solomon once wrote a piece that suggested all kinds of salacious doings between Reid and Abramoff over the minimum wage in the Northern Mariana Islands. Solomon neglected to report that Reid co-sponsored a bill that OPPOSED the stance of Abramoff's Marianas clients.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the nation's leading journal of media criticism, has twice taken Solomon to task. In 2004 CJR noted the suspicious similarities between a Solomon story and research material issued by the Republican National Committee.

This year, CJR returned to the subject: "Like NFL coaches who always seem to land with another team no matter how many bad decisions they make, some reporters are able to churn out a steady stream of mediocrity, with little consequence. For whatever reason, Washington Post scribe John Solomon appears to have achieved this status, and has been milking it for years. ... Solomon tried to tie [Harry] Reid to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, suggest that a land deal in Nevada was shady, and made a big deal over Reid's accepting passes to a boxing match from the Nevada Gaming Commission. These stories omitted critical details that directly affected how seriously the charges should be taken..."

There are plenty of grounds for criticizing Harry Reid, but Nevadans are entitled to know that when such criticism comes under the Solomon byline it comes without credibility. In 1996 when he was still a free-lancer, Solomon wrote an article (for CJR!) that was headlined "Playing God in the newsroom." I couldn't put it better myself.