“Just like that, Mr. Aubrey fell into reputation’s ditch, and the Christie administration piled dirt atop him. Except — and this is not incidental to our story — Mr. Aubrey did nothing wrong.”

This is an excerpt from Michael Powell’s January 28 column in the New York Times entitled “A Lieutenant Governor, An Artist, and the Portrait of a Smear.”

It was written in response to the January 15 U.S. 1 cover story, Bully Pulpit, written by my colleague, Dan Aubrey. As editor Rich Rein says in his column today, Aubrey wasn’t eager to revisit an unjust lawsuit. “Then Aubrey and I both realized that his story might not connect the dots between Christie and Guadagno, but it would provide another dot that might help paint the full picture of this administration.”

Following that cover story in U.S. 1, economic guru Paul Krugman, a Princeton resident, wrote about it in his blog post ,  pointing out that though print media struggles, print media reporters are important, and that a mere transportation reporter broke the “Bridgegate” story.

Powell credits the Star Ledger with investigating and clearing Aubrey of any evidence of wrong doing. Powell looked further and found — Lo! — Guadagno’s attacks on the New Jersey State Council on the Arts were attacks on herself. “The lieutenant governor and Department of State, it turns out, had control of the Arts Council’s spending all along. Her divisions signed off on every payment.”