UPDATE: Tkacik tells Fishbowl that she and the City Paper have officially parted ways. Regarding Madden’s comment that Tkacik would still be working as a “contributing writer, Tkacik tells Betsy Rothstein: “We haven’t worked out a contract yet, but it’s possible.”

Pioneering blogger Moe Tkacik’s role at the Washington City Paper is changing, but five months after she took a job writing for the alt-weekly. Rumors that Tkacik was leaving the paper started floating this afternoon, but officially, her status at the publication is not so cut-and-dry: reached via email this morning, City Paper managing editor Mike Madden told DCist that Tkacik will continue to “be a contributing writer for us,” and that the paper “look[s] forward to publishing more of her work soon.” While at City Paper, Tkacik has been mainly penning Das Krapital, a free-form blog of sorts; she also recently wrote a cover story on FishbowlDC gossip blogger Betsy Rothstein.

Most of the knee-jerk speculation regarding Tkacik’s employment status to this point has revolved around a rather public dustup over this post, in which Tkacik wrote about the sexual assault allegations levied against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The post drew immediate and harsh criticism for naming the women who have accused Assange of assaulting them. Shortly after the post went up at 11:14 p.m. last night, Tkacik updated to include the following defense of her decision to name those women:

UPDATE: Their names (and photos) are all over the internet and have been for months, people. Please, there is this thing known as “perspective”; it comes in handy when evil people write things on the internet that offend you and/or commit acts of sexual violence.