The New York Observer’s Ken Kurson finds a source who tells the paper that at least one editor at Rolling Stone, deputy managing editor Sean Woods, has offered his resignation—and that editor-in-chief and owner Jann Wenner has turned it down.

Wenner denies the report, but I suspect that Wenner would deny it regardless of its veracity. (Kurson finds a second source to confirm it.)

According to the source, Rolling Stone is right now planning to assemble a “re-reporting project” akin to the one the New York Times put together in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabulism scandal that will head to UVa both to sort through the errors of the story and to tell readers what actually happened.

Good luck with that—you can’t possibly do accurate reporting given everything that’s happened: It’s like stirring up the muck at the bottom of a crystal clear pond and then trying to see your reflection. And can you imagine going down to the U.Va. campus now and saying, “Hi—I’m a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine…” I mean-do you think Jackie’s going to talk to them? her friends? The fraternity members?

Me neither.

Here’s a section of the article that doesn’t make much sense to me:

What about the fact-checking?

The source knows Rolling Stone Senior Editor/Head Factchecker Coco McPherson well and claims that she is a “stickler who errs on the side of caution,” a claim backed up by Mr. [Matt] Taibbi, who remarked that the process is so intense “it usually takes longer to fact-check a Rolling Stone feature than it does to write it. Each review is like an IRS audit.”

But any fact-checker that good would raise a dozen red flags with this story. Which means that either McPherson isn’t as good as they say, or she raised concerns and they were overruled.

My guess: Coco McPherson was blinded by ideology; like Sabrina Rubin Erdely, she wanted to believe in this story. What makes me say this? McPherson’s tweet of November 20th:

So proud of @SabrinaRErdely and @RollingStone and the incredibly brave young women of UVA for coming forward http://rol.st/11Cs0z8

Never mind that the central woman in the story did not actually “come forward.” That tweet—”so proud”—is the tweet of an advocate and a cheerleader, not a fact checker. If you are so proud of these women merely for speaking anonymously to your magazine, are you really going to look at them with your most critical eye?

The Observer indirectly touches on this point, writing:

The Observer raised an idea that has been mentioned in some corners of the press”—i.e., this blog——”that Rolling Stone was credulous about such an intense story because from factcheckers to editors to writers they are predisposed to believe the worst about fraternity brothers at an elite university. Indeed, Ms. McPherson initially defended the story and its methods, taking to Twitter to point to an example in which other news organizations did not identify or interview alleged campus rapists.

The tweet in question refers to a New York Times story about an alleged sexual assault at Columbia; the description of the assault is vague, and you couldn’t possibly identify an alleged attacker from it. It is not even close to analogous to Rolling Stone’s story.

McPherson also retweeted this (combined) tweet from Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson:

…I’m appalled that people are turning a story about a public institution sitting on an explosive allegation of gang rape on campus into a conversation about ethics in gang-rape journalism.

The Observer’s Kurson adds that his source “wasn’t buying that “predisposition [to believe]….”

Nonsense. You have a deeply compromised fact-checker who’s “proud” of the “incredibly brave young women of UVA;” a fact checker who is “appalled” that anyone would ask legitimate questions about the slipshod reporting of a very sensitive story.

You have editors who have bought into the ideology that you never question a woman who says she’s been raped—an ideology that, while it may be valid for friends and counselors, has nothing to do with the conduct of journalism. And as a result, they compromised the most basic rules of the craft—things you wouldn’t do on your high school paper.

And you have a writer who went searching for just the right campus on which to “upend the patriarchy.” On the same day that CoCo McPherson sent out her pride tweet, Sabrina Rubin Erdely tweeted:

Nov 20
I’ve passed along your msgs of strength to Jackie. I know she appreciates it. Awed by her bravery & that of all the Uva women who spoke out.

It’s just one big lovefest between the women of UVA and the staff of Rolling Stone.

So don’t tell me that there wasn’t a predisposition to believe this story. That is self-delusional bunk, the kind of lazy, uncritical thinking that got Rolling Stone into this mess in the first place.