"Where's the money, Lebowski?!" 200 union workers, reminiscent of the European nihilists in the Coen brother's classic film, "The Big Lebowski", stormed into a private Mortgage Bankers Association conference in DC last Wednesday demanding answers, not from "The Dude", but from PulteGroup, one of America's largest homebuilding companies. Their question: "Where is the $900 million?"

Huffington Post blogger, Mike Elk, was dismissed on Thursday for his role as the culprit behind this stunt, having shared his media accreditation with a union leader in order to provide him, and subsequently 200 workers, access to the event.

Elk, a young freelance labor journalist, justifies his risky decision, writing, "I had seen labor struggles get ignored by the mainstream media. Recently, a publication canceled a story I wrote about a town that tried unsuccessfully to use eminent domain to save a factory from closing. The editor said that 'it was simply not that interesting of a story if the workers couldn't save the factory.'"

In a move that led to the sacrific of his own job, regardless of the fact that his position with the Huffington Post was unpaid, Elk catalyzed the protest, which was videotaped by CNBC, and written about by the Wall Street Journal, and ironically, the Huffington Post.

Although unconventional and arguably unethical, Elk writes, "my primary role as a labor journalist at the event was to help expose the misuse of over $900 million in funds. Had we not interrupted this event in dramatic fashion, the Pulte Group's unethical practices would not have become news." He backs up this claim with the fact that the Huffington Post does not staff a full-time labor journalist.

Pulte's "unethical practices" consist of accepting almost $900 million of public bailout money last year, provided through the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which was primarily enacted to create jobs. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) reports that last year, rather than creating jobs, Pulte "cut hundreds of jobs and close[d] a plant in Tolleson, Ariz."

While many make take the side of Huffington Post executive business editor, Peter Goodman, who fired Elk for abusing his media privileges, it is harder to agree with Goodman's comparison of Elk to the infamously shameful reporter, Jayson Blair, who was fired by The New York Times in 2003 for "widespread fabrication and plagiarism."

Some previous examples of Huffington Post bloggers' and staff's challenge of conventional journalistic ethics have been more than welcomed by the editors. For example, unpaid blogger Mayhill Fowler, recorded and published a shocking quote by Obama during an event that was closed to the press. Under false pretenses, Fowler caught Obama's rhetoric regarding the results of unemployment on small town, blue collar Pennsylvanians: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," the soon-to-be president told a crowd of wealthy Californians during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Huffington Post had no problem posting this story, which accumulated an impressive 6000 comments.

Elk also cites the example of the Huffington Post's posting of staff reporter Arthur Delaney's series of "party crasher stories" where the reporter unsuccessfully attempted to cover lobbyist events. Although Elk does concede that Delaney didn't go as far as to help 200 overall-wearing, bullhorn-wielding construction workers into a restricted banker meeting, Delaney still used unconventional journalism as a method of exposing a scandal.

One thing appears certain - the Huffington Post's decision seems to be a move closer to mainstream journalism. The question that's still left unanswered is, is this the right move?

Sources: PBS, AFL-CIO NOW BLOG, The New York Times, Huffington Post