Politico, one of many news outlets covering the Gen. Stanley McChrystal story in Rolling Stone that has resulted in his resignation from the top Afghanistan post, has explained why it removed part of a story on the issue that related to the writer.

Politico received some criticism Wednesday after it was revealed a story it posted about the incident had initially included the following paragraph about Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings, but later had it removed:

McChrystal, an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal's remarks.

Jay Rosen at PressThink, one of several who weighed in on the subject, today posted a response from Politico Deputy Managing Editor Tim Grieve:

Hey, Jay - I read your post on our McChrystal piece and wanted to circle back --

Having done my share of media criticism at Salon, I know how satisfying it is to score a gotcha on the press. But I can tell you that there's no “there” there on this one.

As we often do on big, breaking stories, we wrote through and reposted our main McChrystal piece many times Tuesday and Wednesday - adding new facts and shedding less relevant ones along the way. At around 5:45 Tuesday evening, I re-worked the piece to add new comments from President Obama and otherwise reflect the latest news. Together with the other adds that had come in during the day, my inserts made the story very long and unwieldy, so I quickly deleted or substantially reworked more than a dozen paragraphs that struck me as either tangential or out-of-date.

The “offending” paragraph about beat reporters vs. freelancers was one of them. No one - no source, no reporter, no editor above or below me - had said a word to me about the paragraph. I removed it solely for the purposes of keeping the story tight and readable. And in fact, I thought so little about doing it that I didn't even remember taking it out when we first got an inquiry from CJR Wednesday.

I love a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, but this ain't one.

Tim Grieve
Deputy Managing Editor
POLITICO