Online Ugliness

" The museum turned up in the Tribune's pages more than 1,200 times during O'Shea's tenure, sometimes raising eyebrows in the newsroom. . . . In April 2004, for instance, the paper ran two back-to-back Page One stories lauding the museum's efforts to establish a nature preserve in rural Peru. The feel-good nature of the stories, their lack of news hook, their unusual length for a newspaper (more than 8,000 words total), and their prominent placement all had staffers wondering if they were an anniversary present to O'Shea's wife. As one Tribune staffer puts it today, 'Why put this meaningless Field Museum story on Page One?' (Adding to the intrigue over the Peru series was the fact that Jack Fuller, then the president of Tribune Publishing, was dating a Field Museum scientist featured prominently--and favorably--in the stories.)

"My point here is not to pick on O'Shea. I'd bet that, if you looked hard enough, you could find similar examples th[r]oughout the L.A. Times building, of people whose romantic relationships could cause ethical concerns every bit as meaty as Martinez's . . . or O'Shea's."

And the next guest editor was going to be . . . Don Rumsfeld?

Some good digging by the Chicago Tribune, which fact-checked one of Barack Obama's books:

"In his best-selling autobiography, 'Dreams from My Father,' Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, "Ray." The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man. He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race.

" 'Not even close,' he said, adding that Obama was dealing with 'some inner turmoil' in those days. 'But it wasn't a race thing,' he said. 'Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull].' "

Literary license?

"Then there's the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don't exist, say the magazine's own historians."

Five years ago, the Los Angeles Times finds, Mitt Romney was singing a very different tune:

"As an abortion-rights advocate, Deborah Allen did not think she would find much in common with Mitt Romney. Then she heard his pitch. If elected Massachusetts governor, Romney said in an endorsement meeting, he would 'preserve and protect' legal abortion. The judges he picked would probably do the same. And then he said something so unexpected that Allen began to see Romney, a Republican whom she had considered an uncertain ally, as sincere in his search for common ground. 'You need someone like me in Washington,' he said, according to Allen and two other abortion-rights activists, whose group was deciding whether to endorse Romney in the 2002 race for governor.

"Though running for state office, Romney hinted at national ambitions and said he would soften the GOP's position on abortion. The Republians' hard-line stance, he said, was 'killing them.'

"Today, Romney is running for president and promising to pull the Republican Party in the opposite direction, returning it to the conservative principles of Ronald Reagan. He has renounced his support for abortion rights and has shifted his language on gay rights, campaign finance and other issues, bringing him more in step with Republican voters."

That brings his change of rhetoric into sharper focus, doesn't it?

The trial of media mogul Conrad Black is huge news in Canada; here, not so much. But Slate has a wonderful anecdote from the proceedings in Chicago:

"A reporter overheard Black's wife, Barbara Amiel, snarl at a Canadian TV producer who tried to follow her into an elevator, 'You slut. You reporters are all vermin. I'm sick of it. I used to be a reporter and we never doorstepped anyone.' "

And she's married to a man who owned newspapers, which we now know are filled with sluts.