Another case of ‘Spo-can’t’?

Late-night deadline issues complicated our coverage of the death of “The Crocodile Hunter,” Steve Irwin , which otherwise might have made the front page. Unconfirmed reports of Irwin’s death started moving on the wire at around 10 p.m., but it wasn’t until later that a confirmed, useable story was available. The desk was able to get a story inside the A section for Monday’s paper, and by Tuesday, the story was too old to justify a page one presence.

Of course, the last time something like this happened , it was a considerably more politically volatile issue, and the lack of a page one story was immediately cited by some readers as indisputable proof of our pro-/anti-whatever bias.

Hang on, comment posters - I’m not suggesting that Irwin’s death is as important a story as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s. The point here is that the exact same timing issues kept the story off the front page. And yet, we haven’t had a single phone call or e-mail from “Crocodile Hunter” fans accusing us of conspiring to suppress the story.

On a related note…

We did, however, get an earful from the 9/11 conspiracy theorists after I posted an article from Popular Mechanics debunking some of the more popular myths in our “Just Browsing” box on the home page.

A bit of background - the “Just Browsing” box is nothing more than links we’ve run across and find fun and/or interesting. One of the first links we posted was a video of William Shatner singing “Rocket Man.”

So, the 9/11 conspiracies had been in the news lately. I saw something in an article about the Popular Mechanics piece, which I hadn’t heard of before, so I posted it up.

At least one caller complained to at least three different editors, including Steve Smith, about the link’s presence. He asked one of the editorial assistants how much we were being paid to post it. He suggested to Smith we also link to one of the many sites debunking the debunking of their conspiracy theories.

Smith politely declined. “Their concept of equal time means you’re lending credibility to nonsense,” he said. If the government were really behind the deaths of thousands of people, Smith said, reporters would be all over the story. “It would be the scoop of the new century.”

Of course, for some, this is just additional proof of our pro-Bush bias. Or, maybe, the fact that we would cover it if it were true is proof of our anti- Bush bias.

I can’t even keep them straight anymore.

Sowing the seeds of confusion

Smith said that a letter to the editor today complaining about the judicial voter guide should have been accompanied by an editor’s note explaining that the voter’s guide was published by the state , not us. The letter writer should take comfort in the knowledge that his tax dollars, not his newspaper subscription, are supporting publication of non-English voter information.