It’s pretty obvious why the guy was fired, but an employer in Louisianna or many other states can fire someone and not have to give reason—which is what happened here. The employer didn’t give reason, because no law says they must, and therefore the terminated reporter has no case—on the surface.
If the reporter wants to spend a lot of money and build a civil case based on circumstantial evidence, fine, but he should be prepared to mortgage his home in the process and then still lose. Sometimes, a civil rights law group might take up the case pro bono if they can see any way to win, but that hasn’t happened for Mr. Meyers.
This happens a lot. It’s basically a management/employee disagreement and management makes the rules. In this case, the managing editor decided that it would be impractical to the tune of $275,000 advertizing dollars to piss Mr. Vitter off. Management was well withing their rights, it seems. Reporters are told by their managing editors to bury stories all the time—it doesn’t mean they won’t ever get published, it just means that the editorial staff doesn’t want it at that time.
The highest profile case of this kind in recent years was FOX vs Jon Wilson, where Wilson was told by FOX management to bury a story about hormones in cow’s milk at a large Florida dairy. This is the case that is often interpreted as the Supreme Court making it legal for FOX to fabricate or lie in order to sell the news to the public.