Try The Obits Next Time

(It would be a stretch I guess to say that that's where you can read about the demise of the fourth estate, but not if they keep going like this.)

I picked up this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer to read their coverage on Russ Feingold’s call for censure of Bush over his illegal NSA spying, figuring that I would get in-depth reporting on this laudable show of a spine from a Senate Democrat who, between this and his efforts to hold off approval of The Patriot Act, is standing about fifty feet tall in my book these days.

So I check out Page One, and the story isn’t in the banner headline (though it was for the Bucks County Courier Times, with the erroneous caption stating that Sen. John Warner of VA was a co-sponsor – I thought that was too good to be true, and it was…when you drill down into the story, you find out that Warner ridiculed Feingold’s call for censure; the Courier Times ended up with some major egg on its face, so to speak, which is actually a shame, so I’m sure they’ll be backpedaling like crazy now).

The headline story on Page One is the seeding of the Villanova men’s basketball team as Number One in one of the four “brackets” in the upcoming NCAA tournament (I am hardly a college basketball expert, so I just told you about all that I know). Also on page one is a story about a blood test developed at the University of Pennsylvania that offers early disease detection, along with two opinion columns: one by Dick Polman about how John McCain is sucking up to Dubya and the other right-wing jackbooted Repugs, and a column about Ehud Olmert, the de facto head of Israel with the incapacitation of Ariel Sharon.

(You will NEVER want for stories about Israel and the Palestinians in the Inquirer, by the way. I’m not complaining because I’m sure there’s a good reason for that, but I’m merely stating a fact).

The other front-page story of the purchase of the Inquirer by McClatchy Newspapers is a bit of a stunner to me (I expected Gannett or Media News to take over), and I’m not surprised of the story’s placement.

Still nothing on Feingold’s resolution, so on I go.

Page Two contains in-depth columns on the death of Slobodan Milosevic, which now appears to be shrouded in questionable circumstances since a medication was found in his system that may have led to his heart attack. Also on page two is a story of Afghanistan’s effort to eliminate the opium trade.

Page Three? A huge ad for the Frank Kerbeck Cadillac dealership (God, their radio ads are obnoxious) and a story admitting that death squads are alive and well in Iraq (can you say John Negroponte?)

Hmmm…

Page Four? More “below the fold” opining by Polman on Bush and McCain.

Page Five? A profile of Bushco chief of staff Andrew Card (You remember this guy, right? He’s the one who, when asked whether or not Bush would invade Iraq in 2002 said “You don’t roll out a new product in August” and who said, while the Kerry campaign was trying in vain to sort out the voting shenanigans in Ohio in the 2004 election, said that Bush was offering Kerry “the respect of more time” - i.e., "hurry up and cave so we can start the party" - before waiting for Kerry to concede).

Gee, could the Inquirer have missed the story somehow?

Page Six is devoted exclusively to the sale of Knight Ridder to McClatchy, and Page Seven has news summaries from the U.S. and the world, a story of an explosion that killed four of our troops in Afghanistan, and more below-the-fold coverage of Villanova’s tournament seeding and the U of P blood test.

Wow.

I decided to keep going mainly because I wanted to check out the editorial section, seeing as how I was practically there anyway. Page Eight contains a comprehensive list of lender rates for home mortgages which the paper usually offers on Mondays, though it used to be in the business or local news sections. I don’t know who decided to put this information in a section ostensibly pertaining to U.S. and world news.

However, my search would not be in vain. I FINALLY found the story of Feingold’s censure resolution on Page Nine, the LAST PAGE before the editorials and letters. It’s your standard rip-and-read coverage on this sort of thing from AP reporter Douglass K. Daniel, which makes sure that the phrase “a liberal Democrat” are the first three words of the story. Also, buried – and I mean, BURIED – in the story is Feingold’s quote that the President’s actions were “in the strike zone” in terms of being an impeachable offense. The only good thing I can say about that is that it appears in front of Frist’s typically idiotic response that Feingold’s call hurts Bush, a “leader” with “a bold vision” who is “making our homeland safer,” which is about what you’d expect from someone who kills cats and is potentially guilty of securities fraud.

(And by the way, the online search for this story was equally frustrating given its import; I clicked through about five different screens listing linked content to get to it.)

Do I ever need to point out how this story would have been handled if it had to do with Bill Clinton (I’ll get to the “Real Time” update soon, but Bill Maher said the other night that, “If Clinton had been a Republican, Congress would have made blowjobs legal, and that would have been it.”).

Actually, as I realize that officials of Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. are already talking with “a potential buyer” pending the McClatchy sale (see, McClatchy said that, though the Inquirer and Daily News are good papers in his estimation, they’re in “underperforming markets”), I’d like to put forward this idea so we don’t have to do this whole stupid dance over again:

I don’t know how we can do this, but someone should set up a company composed of subscribers of each newspaper, making them shareholders in the company, in the same model as the Green Bay Packers football team as well as The Vanguard Group. If you’re a subscriber, you’re a part owner. Trade the stock publicly and ride with it. Done.

And then, given that the pressure to kow tow to certain well-moneyed constituencies would be greatly reduced, if not removed altogether, MAYBE we could look forward once more to the sort of coverage that treats dramatic, important news stories appropriately.

Update 3/13: georgia10 at The Daily Kos has more.

Update 1 3/14: And apparently, since the Senate Democrats are all too busy cowering in their corners to decide whether or not they should support Feingold, it seems that I must link to this post again because it is sadly apropos.

Update 2 3/14: GO, RUSS, GO! (and by the way, if you want to contact Colorado Repug senator Wayne Allard and call him out for the bedwetting coward that he is, you can contact him from this link).