On Tuesday, Gene Weingarten, perhaps the leading brain at the paper, applauded the anger: "The first thing I want to say is, hooray. Hooray that there is still enough passion left somewhere in a newsroom in America for violence to break out between colorful characters in disagreement over the quality of a story."

As Post staff writer Hank Stuever wrote in his personal blog, the incident "embroiders [Allen's] legend." One commenter on this blog put it this way: "As someone who recently canceled his subscription to the Post after more than 30 years, I wish all the best to Henry Allen. I only wish he had slugged more of those nitwits on his way out."

All this Allen talk is headed in a pretty predictable direction, fitting neatly into a narrative best labeled as demise-of-the-Post nostalgia. The contours are familiar to anyone who's ever had a beer with a beneficiary of one of the paper's newsroom buyouts: Back in the old days, the Post was a real newspaper, a place where real stories were written and real journalists like Allen were free to do their thing. But now the Post is crumbling, its standards falling, a process punctuated by Allen's burst of violent anger.

There's some evidence to support the interpretation. By all indications, Allen isn't pleased with the direction of the Post. He was pissed when the regime of Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli pretty much ended the Style tradition of writing "Appreciations" following the deaths of major cultural figures. He's reportedly not too happy about the new look of the paper, about the smaller number of stories that are featured on the front of the Style section. He can't stand the memos about the new Multi-Platform Editing Desk.

So, yeah, there was a 68-year-old legend patrolling the Style assignment desk nursing some ambient anger about his workplace. That anger, of late, had become a much-commented-upon topic among Style staffers, at least one of whom wondered when the veteran would snap.

He'd yell a lot from his desk, inveighing against this management decree or that debasement of the news product. The words would carry over into the Style landscape and beyond. Recent months have been serendipitous for Allen's open-air broadsides at management: Ever since the main newsroom on the fifth floor of the Post building cleared out for renovations, Brauchli and his fellow honchos have been camping out with the Style people. Administrative assistants for Brauchli and other ranking editors got particularly unfiltered blasts. This multiplatform shit!

Onto this hot, rancorous griddle flopped Roig-Franzia. As I wrote in a previous post, Allen and Roig-Franzia had earlier exchanged words over a piece that the latter was writing about a woman who'd undergone multiple abortions—actually, 15 in 15 years.

Allen wasn't buying it. He asked what sort of proof the writer had that this woman, Irene Vilar, was telling the truth. A prominent law firm had corroborated the story, came the response. Whatever Allen's concerns, the Post reportedly vetted the story extensively.

The tension over the Vilar piece carried over into the "charticle" that Style co-boss Ned Martel had dialed up for the Saturday edition, written by Monica Hesse and Roig-Franzia. It was to be an historical tour through episodes in which sensitive information was unwittingly leaked—a riff off the hot news of the day, which was the wide-ranging congressional ethics investigation that had recently slithered into the public domain.

Allen hated the draft that he'd reviewed, calling it the "second-worst" piece that'd landed on his desk over 43 years. After Roig-Franzia heard that spiel, he called Allen a "cocksucker." Allen responded by popping him.

Freeze the frame right there. Henry Allen punches Manuel Roig-Franzia: Is this moment really laden with symbolism about the demise of the Post, about the decay of long-form narrative journalism, about sticking up for a bygone era?

Who knows what symbolism Allen may have intended to convey here. (He declined an interview about his take on the contemporary Post.) Yet the fight works poorly in the nostalgic slot where many have placed it and slides more neatly into what one staffer called the Woody Hayes mold of a graying icon going out in a fit of rage.

Here's why the old guard v. new guard interpretation falls flat:

*Roig-Franzia makes for an illogical symbol/punching bag for the "new" Washington Post. This guy predates the Brauchli ascension by many years. Nor is he the buzzword-spouting tool that Allen so despises. No, he's a practitioner of long-form journalism, just like anyone who aspires to write for the Style section. And a point about "cocksucker": Use of profanity in Style is the rule, thanks in part to the serial foul mouth of Allen himself. Yet more: The charticle wasn't Roig-Franzia's idea; it was the idea of Martel, who brought a magaziney sensibility to the section.

*There's nothing contemptible about a charticle. Style has long experimented with the breaking of formats and templates and molds—whatever you call them. Executing a charticle often takes way more work than upchucking some lame essay off the news. You gotta get the writers with the art people and the layout people, come up with all kinds of catchy headlines and subheads, and then put it all together. With all that effort, out the window goes the notion that the charticle is some pimpled incarnation of a new, cowardly, corporate Washington Post. Style editors going back many years have always been proud of their charticles. And I happened to have enjoyed this charticle quite a bit.

*Long-form narrative lives on in Style! If you've been monitoring your Style section this week, you may have noticed a two-part series on the youth-heroin ring in Centreville. I'm not saying this is a great model of reportage: After all, it tries to tell the story of kids abusing heroin through interviews with adults. But it is impeccably structured and long—just north of 6,000 words. Roig-Franzia's abortion piece, meanwhile, clocked in at a healthy 2,715 words.

Speaking of compelling narratives, what about Stuever's comparison of the Wawa and Sheetz convenience-store chains? At 2,453 words, the story married killer concept with smooth, highly reported execution. It was printed in late August, nearly a year into the Brauchli tenure. And I guarantee this: Had it been published five or ten years ago, it would have been cited by nostalgists as an exemplar of how great the Post used to be.

*Style is on the upswing. Brauchli has sustained a goodly amount of justified criticism for various instances of silliness and hypocrisy, with the Brauchli Doctrine serving as a premier example of the latter. Yet this executive editor cannot be slimed with neglecting the Style section. On the contrary, he has invested in it, transferring talent from the shuttered Sunday Source and other spots in the newsroom, not to mention bringing in Martel. Dividends have come in the form of improved long-form stuff, attractive layouts, and fewer self-indulgent essays (at least by my count). In recent months, I've found myself squirreling away the section at home in the hope that another individual won't dump it in the recycling bin before I can read all the way through it.

And to continue sucking the cock of the Washington Post, let's not fall into facile banter about its descent into corporate, soulless behavior, as have many Internet commenters. Throughout this decade, the Post's newspaper division has seen nothing short of a revenue crisis. Like other newspapers, it has responded in part by cutting staff. Unlike other newspapers, it has cut staff with a visible reluctance and agony, choosing to leverage its huge pension fund to offer voluntary buyouts to elder Posties. Hundreds of buyoutees have left the paper with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash plus other goodies that no "corporate" newspaper would ever extend.

The Post newsroom has dropped from around 900 employees to around 600-700 employees. It may not be what it was. But what remains is far bigger than what's gone.

Let's mark the start of hostilities as mid-week. That's when, according to an informed source, Allen raised questions about a Roig-Franzia story about a woman who had undergone multiple abortions. In the back and forth, Roig-Franzia allegedly called Allen a "dick." No punches were thrown.

Peace prevailed until Friday morning, when Style staffers convened to discuss their journalism. According to sources, Roig-Franzia at one point in the meeting reached across the table and grabbed Allen's notepad, tearing a page from it. Allen barked, "Give me my fucking notebook." Roig-Franzia complied, pushing it back across the table.

After that incident, not much went according to the Post Stylebook. Allen, an assignment editor for Style, learned that one of his reporters, Monica Hesse, had been tasked by Style co-boss Ned Martel to do a funny-type story coming off the big news on the congressional ethics investigation. Allen wasn't apprised that Hesse had been so assigned and let Martel have it. "Next time you want to assign a story to one of my writers, you come talk to me. I'm right here," Allen said to Martel, according to a Post source. They discussed the matter and came to an amiable conclusion.

The story then moves from errors of protocol to errors of journalism. Allen eventually got his hands on the copy that Hesse and Roig-Franzia had been dispatched to generate. It was a "charticle" on famous incidents in which key actors in history have unwittingly coughed up sensitive information to the wrong people.

One of the headlining incidents in the charticle was how a Confederate solider had lost some military plans of Robert E. Lee in a field that later found their way into Union hands. The original story reportedly said that the offense occurred in Virginia. Wrong–Maryland.

There were other errors as well.

Allen made clear his displeasure with the integrity of the piece, proclaiming that it was the "second-worst piece I've ever had handed to me in 43 years," according to a source. The first-worst was a mistake-ridden profile of Paul Robeson that never saw the printed page. Those 43 years include Allen's 39 years of service at the Post along with a tenure at the New Haven Register.

The veteran editor gave pretty much the same sharp-elbowed spiel to both Hesse and Roig-Franzia. Hesse responded by asking for the story back so that she could iron out some of the wrinkles.

Roig-Franzia responded by saying, “Henry, don’t be such a cocksucker.”

At that, Allen leapt into action, shoving Roig-Franzia. He then popped him in the cheek. According to an eyewitness account, Roig-Franzia didn't try to match the 5-11, 200-pound Allen punch for punch, instead opting for more of a civil-rights-movementy kind of stance.

Into the one-sided faceoff jumped Chris Richards, the Post's pop-music critic. One of the first responders, Richards stood between the hostile parties. Brauchli reportedly intervened as well.

After the set-to, Allen spent some time behind closed doors with managers. Brauchli told him that the Post just can't have this sort of conduct in the newsroom. Allen agreed. They left it at that.

Then it was on to the office of Style co-boss Lynn Medford, who was apparently briefed by Brauchli on what to say to Allen. Medford told Allen that Brauchli had said that this was a new era at the Post and we can't have violence in the newsroom. (What, did the smelling-salts lady take a buyout?) Another message from Brauchli to Allen via Medford: You can't come into the newsroom again for your entire career.

That sanction is not as harsh as it sounds: Allen's last day was to be Nov. 20. He is 68, had already accepted a buyout, was working on contract at the time of his lunge, and had already announced his retirement.

Of his swing, Allen says, "The last time I threw a punch at anybody was in the spring of 1963 in Parris Island, S.C., in Marine Corps recruit training." Allen served in Vietnam for four months. Roig-Franzia hung up when called on this matter.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out City Paper's exclusive reenactment of this historic event: Allen v. Roig-Franzia ~ The Movie!

Though it's unclear exactly what they were arguing about, it is clear that the mood was testy. Testy enough, that is, for Roig-Franzia to quip to Allen, "Henry, don't be such a cocksucker."

Allen didn't take kindly to the suggestion and went after Roig-Franzia, in the testimony of an eyewitness. Limited combat then broke out, though, again, it's not terribly clear how many punches landed.

The mayhem broke out not far from the temporary office of Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. A lean man, Brauchli reportedly was among the first Post males on the scene to perform the time-honored "break it up" duties. A few others helped out, too.

We have calls out to both principals and will keep prosecuting the story as the day progresses.

Update 11:28 am: Attempts to get Brauchli on the line regarding his alpha-male heroics have proven futile thus far. The executive editor is apparently on travel today. However, WaPo spokesperson Kris Coratti issued this statement in response to questions about the matter: "I can't discuss private personnel matters but that doesn't mean we haven't taken this incident seriously and addressed it appropriately."

Just what "appropriately" means here isn't quite clear yet. Before taking on that question, we're looking to speak with Allen and Roig-Franzia, not to mention other individuals.

Update 12:25 pm: Reached Roig-Franzia on his cell phone. After I identified myself, his phone hung up.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out City Paper's exclusive reenactment of this historic event: Allen v. Roig-Franzia ~ The Movie!