Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli found himself in the middle of an altercation Friday evening between Style reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia and editor Henry Allen, but will not say whether the two have been reprimanded by the paper.

“We take this incident seriously and will address it appropriately,” Brauchli told POLITICO, declining to comment further.

Reports that Allen punched Roig-Franzia surfaced Monday morning on FishbowlDC, Washingtonian and City Paper (which reported Brauchli was traveling).

Multiple Post sources independently confirmed to POLITICO that Roig-Franzia got hit while defending colleague Monica Hesse from harsh criticism leveled by her editor, Allen.

Allen, according to the Washingtonian, had told Hesse that a piece she had written was “the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years."

Roig-Franzia, also working a story with Hesse that ran Saturday, told Allen not to be such a “c—sucker."

Allen swung twice, with one punch hitting Roig-Franzi, according to sources. Next, staffers on the 4th floor —including Brauchli, whose office is temporarily across from the Style section — jumped in to break up the altercation.

Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who already took a buyout, has just three weeks left on his contract, and was not in the office Monday. Roig-Franzia is in the office.

A Post spokesperson declined to discuss “private personnel matters.”

UPDATE: Allen, following news reports that he punched Roiz-Franzia on Friday night, told POLITICO that he was surprised by the huge reaction in the media world.

In the old days, said the 68-year-old, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, the press wouldn't have been so shocked by an expletive-filled, newsroom scuffle.

In D.C., reporters and bloggers from Washingtonian, Washington City Paper and FishbowlDC swarmed around the story, while top aggregators like Drudge Report, Huffington Post called attention to the news.

(HuffPo went with a bloodied Brad Pitt pic from Fight Club splashed across the media page, with the headline: "Brawl at the Washington Post").

"Back when I got into journalism, the idea that a fistfight in a newsroom would turn into a news story was unthinkable," Allen said when reached Monday evening. "The guys in the sports department at the New York Daily News, they had so many, you wouldn’t even look up."

But Post staffers definitely looked up, and several people in the newsroom — including Brauchli — helped break things up after Allen threw a punch. (Allen's first thrown, he said, since 1963.)

Following early reports, City Paper's Eric Wemple has more details, including some back-and-forth between Roiz-Franzia and Allen that took place before Friday. While there was chatter in the Post newsroom that Roiz-Franzia had been defending a colleague, the two apparently had issues days before that led up to the altercation.

Allen isn't expected to work out of the newsroom for the remainder of his time at the Post.