On July 2 of last year, Politico broke a startling story: The Washington Post was planning to host off-the-record salons at which sponsors would pay to mingle with D.C. eminences and Post writers. The dinners--the first of which had been advertised in Post fliers as an “exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done”--were to take place at the home of Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher.

Today's New York Times includes a "post-script" to the paper's Sept.12 piece that reported on the resignation of Charles Pelton, the former Washington Post executive at the center of the salon-gate controversy. In July, Politico broke news that the Post planned to host private dinners at the home of Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth, where corporate sponsors could mingle with Post journalists and senior Obama administration officials and policy-makers in an off-the-record setting.

In the original Sept. 12 article on Pelton’s departure from the Post, the Times' media reporter, Richard Perez-Pena, wrote that Pelton hadn't informed Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli that the dinners would be "off the record." Pena's piece was based on an interview he had done in July, when Brauchli claimed he did not know about the dinner's off-the-record status. The Times piece, along with Brauchli's prior public statements, left many with the impression that Pelton was a rogue operative inside the Post who orchestrated the cozy confabs without explaining the terms to Brauchli or publisher Katharine Weymouth. When Politico first broke the scandal on July 2, Brauchli and Weymouth were able to create distance between them and the brouhaha: it was the off-the-record nature of the dinners, and the appearance that the Post was selling access to its newsroom and top Obama officials, that became the flashpoint. Pelton took the fall as the guy charged with planning the whole thing.