The fact that Ambinder -- first with ABC News' atrocious "The American Pravda", now with the Atlantic Monthly -- takes for granted the use of trivia by reporters in order to pursue personal vednettas is instructive in an extremely depressing way.
We all remember what the press did to mark the end of the Dean campaign - wore T-Shirts which had "Establishment Media" on the front and "We Have the Power/ Dean Press Corps 2004" on the back.
Note that the problem isn't that journalists behave this way, the problem is that they behave this way while pretending to operate under some Magical Mystery Code of Journalistic Integritude. As in:
Step 1: Assume we have ethics and norms of behavior.
Step 2: Do any goddamn thing we want because, by assumption, we have integritude.
...here's the reporting for the Dean story.