On August 8, Marc Raimondi and Ivan Pereira, reporters for the Times Ledger, the Queens weekly that was purchased last fall by Rupert Murdoch, thought their editors were doing their corporate big brother the New York Post a favor. The reporters had located Matt Murphy, who caught Barry Bonds’s 756th home run, through their high-school alumni Website and gotten the first interview with him, which the weekly posted on the Internet. But the Post didn’t appreciate the tip. “The Post basically had a fit and demanded the story come down off the site,” apparently to keep the Daily News from seeing it, says a source close to the weekly. The Times Ledger complied, and the Post published its own version later that night. “They were the ones who called the Post, and the Post knew it was a great scoop,” said Post spokesman Steven Rubenstein. Said the Times Ledger source, “Everything always comes down to the Post’s war with the Daily News, and we got screwed in the process.”
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