Thursday, December 20, 2007

More Don Young Bipolar Disorder at the ADN?

Tuesday, under her McClatchy handle and e-mail address, Erika Bolstad filed a report from Washington, D.C. about Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn's request for Congress to form a select committee to look into the legality of Don Young's changes to the 2005 Federal Transportation bill, after the bill had been passed by both houses of Congress. I posted a more comprehensive story here about 45 minutes later.

Bolstad's story appeared too late to make it into Tuesday's print edition of the ADN, but it was posted on their web page, where it ran all day, gathering 22 comments over Tuesday.

Wednesday's print edition of the Daily News carried an expanded version of Bolstad's story, incorporating some of my Coburn-Ted Stevens background, on Wednesday. The ADN ran it on page B-1, above the fold. This time, it gave Erika's ADN e-mail address. The story was prominently carried on the ADN web site, where it gathered a few comments. Then the comments were turned off. Not just on that article, but on all new articles. They remain off. No explanation.

Meanwhile, the expanded Young-Coburn story was moved to the Alaska News niche, but has now apparently disappeared from easy access. Try to find it by going to the ADN web site. The only way you'll find this one-day-old article is to go to the archive search page. Yet, older, far more trivial articles are on the Alaska News list.

As juicy as this story is - read my Tuesday article if you don't think so - why did it never make it to the ADN Politics Blog? Do I detect a Don Young telephone tantrum to the ADN editors we may never find out about?

No comments: