In a community forum down in Stockton Tuesday, College of the Redwoods President Jeff Marsee (right) sought to convince the public that he should be hired as the next president of San Joaquin Delta College, and his pitch included a dig at the North Coast Journal.

Marsee suggested that last year's cover story on the turmoil at CR, College in Revolt, was unfair.

Today's Stockton Record quotes Marsee as saying, "They [the NCJ] like to assassinate community leaders on a regular basis. That's why people pick it up."

We're not sure which part of the story qualifies as assassination. Might it be the quotes taken verbatim from an employee satisfaction survey, saying things like, "Many of us sincerely believe that the President will destroy this institution"? Those weren't our words.

Could it be that we reported on the Public Employee Relations Board ruling that CR administrators "failed and refused to bargain in good faith" with faculty? [PERB agreed to hear this matter in March 2010 but issued no ruling. The case was settled last month.] Nah, that's silly. We had nothing to do with that decision. 

Maybe he objected to the fact-checking we did to reveal that while he was provost/vice president of operations at the Katharine Gibbs School in New York the college was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, and 60 Minutes for allegedly defrauding students, investors and the federal government. (The DOJ declined to prosecute; the school closed in 2009.)

Or perhaps Marsee didn't like that we called him out for his, er, misleading account of being given his "walking papers" (his words!) from the Ventura Community College District in 1996.

We'd look into it further, but we're awfully busy plotting our next sales-boosting journalistic manslaughter.