And now, the Madhubuti Wars?

Mary Mitchell, the columnist at the Sun Times, is darned mad at Hermene Hartman of N'Digo Magazine . Hartman took Mitchell to task for using her friendship with Madhubuti to support him in print and going against the prevailing populist view that because the man teaches only one class it must mean he does nothing else. Mitchell defends the legitimacy of her position on l'affaire Madhubuti on her blog, but in the midst of this a very interesting fact emerges concerning Hermene Hartman's relationship to the CEO Watson and the Board of Trustees who sign university contracts. Check out Mary Mitchell's blog comments:

Chicago State University unleashes hired gun
I can't understand why N'Digo publisher Hermene Hartman is trying to link me to Haki Madhubuti.

In her column supporting Chicago State University President Wayne Watson's handling of Haki Madhubuti, Hartman accused me of deploying what she dubbed as "friendship journalism."

That's pure bull.

Madhubuti is not a personal friend.

But for whatever reason, Hartman is intentionally trying to mislead people about why I believe it was wrong for Watson to force Madhubuti out at Chicago State University.

If anyone is showing bias, it is Hartman. In fact, she is Watson's hired gun.

She admits to being Watson's friend. And as recently as July, Hartman had a $19,000 no-bid short-term public relations and marketing consulting contract with Chicago State University. Yet nowhere in her April 7th column did she disclose she had been on the University's payroll...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/mitchell/2010/04/chicago_state_university_unlea.html

Hermene Hartman (is she a journalist or CSU's quasi-official publicist?), defended Watson on her Publisher's Page: Mitchell's Manufactured Madhouse: The Watson Controversy at Chicago State University.

See: http://www.ndigo.com/commentary.asp Or, you can find this "free" paper all over CSU, no wonder it has been appearing so regularly on campus this year.

Amazing what $19,000 will buy you.