After firing reporter and blogger Teri Buhl, the Greenwich Time -- a Hearst newspaper in suburban Connecticut -- has come under fire from several sources, mostly fellow bloggers and reporters, who claimed her dismissal might have been retribution for reporting on some higher-end subjects.

Felix Salmon, a Reuters reporter who blogged about the incident, claims Buhl was let go for angering Fox Business Channel biggie Charles Gasparino and Trader Monthly Publisher Randall Lane: “What's worse, the reporter in question, Teri Buhl, hasn't just been fired from her job at Greenwich Time, a Hearst newspaper in Connecticut; her entire archive of blog entries there has disappeared, leaving only a message saying 'This blog has been archived or suspended'. It's as though Hearst wanted not only to fire her, but to make it seem as though they'd never hired her - although there is still an archive of stories she wrote for the newspaper itself."

Salmon adds later: “In the wake of writing the story about Lane, Buhl says that she started fielding some very weird accusations from higher ups, saying that she was stalking Lane, or that she had written things in her blog entry which simply weren't there. Shortly thereafter, she was fired, and although the stalking accusations were brought up, they weren't cited as the main grounds for dismissal. Needless to say, a single blog entry on a person hardly constitutes stalking, and nobody ever came up with any evidence to support the stalking accusations.”

Also weighing in is local Greenwich blogger Chris Fountain at For What it's Worth: "Every time I hear some paean to the main stream media about the importance of maintaining its independent voice, its courage in speaking truth to power and all that rot, I snicker. My own experience and now Teri's shows that so long as newspapers are dependent on advertisers, they will deep six anyone who offends. A newspaper without advertising is hardly a commercially viable model, of course, but so what? These folks are well past their expiration date - it passed the very first time they caved to an angry, powerful person and they can never get it back.

Then there is Talking Biz News, whose bloggers repeated many of the previous reports cited above.

Greenwich Time Editor David McCumber declined comment to those who reportd on the issue. He could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.