It was a parody of an old journalistic joke.

“You’re fired!” the publisher thunders.

“You can’t fire me — I quit!” responds the intrepid reporter.

Russel Pergament — the publisher in question — was angry. Pergament runs AM New York, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 210,000. For months, I had written a weekly media opinion column for him. But when I wrote about New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks (Good News, Bad News) — and his bizarre contention that an Israeli incursion into Gaza that left dozens of Palestinians dead and hundreds homeless was somehow “Good News” — Pergament censored me.

It was all about Pergament’s perception that my opinions were anti-Israeli.

My subsequent decision to write about his censorship (Censored) and to post the article on the Web, occasioned Pergament’s call.

“I hope you realize that by writing that article on the Internet, you’ve resigned from the newspaper,” he began.

“To the contrary,” I said. “In fact I’ve already submitted my next column.”

“I can tell you right now there’s a very small likelihood that it will ever run in the paper,” Pergament snapped.

“If you choose to fire me, that’s certainly your right,” I responded. “But make no mistake - I’m not resigning.”

“Oh yes, you are,” he said adamantly.

Details and egos aside, one thing remains clear - my relationship with the newspaper is at an end. A cardinal rule of journalistic career advancement has once again been hammered home: Never report the truth too soon!

Do I regret being fired . . . er, “resigning” from AM New York?

Frankly, yes. It’s always unpleasant to lose revenue and readership. In addition, I had been working with Pergament — who often told me my column was “the best thing in the paper” — to syndicate the column. As publisher of the Tribune-owned AM New York, he had been trying to persuade Tribune Media Services — one of the largest syndicators in the business — to begin distributing it, which obviously would mean more revenue and more readers.

But when Pergament summarily killed my column — after refusing to consider any editorial changes — it was clear I had to do something. My knee-jerk reaction, of course, was to resign in disgust. Upon reflection, however, I decided that detailing the affair on the MediaChannel, and inviting comments and suggestions from readers, would be a more creative and democratic response.

Dozens of you did respond (Citizen’s Media Watch) — intelligently, passionately, and with a lot of wisdom — and I thank you for doing so.

But Russel Pergament doesn’t. Instead he has begun spinning the entire episode so as to justify first his censorship and then his removal of my opinions and me from his newspaper.

Pergament now contends that “Content was not the issue.”

Instead he claims the reason for my firing was. . . writing about his censorship!

“The catalyst for deciding not to run your copy was your decision to communicate to me through the web. . . this isn’t how people on the same newspaper communicate.”

(For those of you who care to communicate directly, Pergament can be reached via email:Rpergament@am-ny.com.)

Pergament also objected to what he termed my “decision to include my personal email to you in that same open and infinite online forum told me it was a good time to end the column.”

But I had left out the ‘personal’ part of his message, wherein he apologized to me for his actions and suggested we meet for a drink in my “part of town by way of homage.”

The part of the email originally quoted dealt specifically with Pergament’s BUSINESS decision to censor my column — even after I had made changes in response to his concerns. As noted, his email said “I appreciate the trouble you went to respond to my comments. You did as I asked and, despite that, I had an uncomfortable instinct.”

Sounds to me like “content’ WAS the issue. What do you think?

(Post your comments here or in MediaChannel.org’s Citizens’ Media Watch)