Yesterday, Rep. Tom DeLay (R) was reappointed to the House Appropriations Committee. He was assigned to two subcommittees (Science, State, Justice & Commerce and Homeland Security) that should allow him to exert significant influence on matters important to his district (including NASA, as pointed out on DeLay vs. World yesterday). They are plum assignments.
Various media outlets provided original reporting on DeLay’s assignment, including the Associated Press, The Hill, Roll Call, and Fort Bend Now.
The Houston Chronicle — the area’s newspaper of record — chose to run coverage from the Associated Press.
Maybe the Chronicle‘s vaunted D.C. bureau was too tied up with other news of importance to this area (more important than NASA and ship channel security even!). Let’s see….
Nope, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Here are three recent D.C. bureau stories posted to Chron.com:
USDA may keep authority over horse slaughter (Samantha Levine)
Lobbying reform turning into an uphill battle on the Hill (Bennett Roth)
Texas officials seek border help (Samantha Levine).
Apparently in the minds of the Chronicle D.C. bureau’s editors, a generic story on lobbying reform (with the usual errors that should have been caught by line editors, but weren’t) and a story on turf fights over horse slaughter (!?) are more important stories for bureau reporters than the potential impact that the local Congressman might have on space policy and homeland security from his new perch. And while there is a Texas angle to the border issue, the local angle (Rep. DeLay’s ability to help with funding) goes completely unexplored.
It would probably be too much to expect an intelligent interview about the Congressman’s funding priorities by the D.C. bureau — it is the Chronicle‘s D.C. bureau after all — but would original coverage of the (re)appointment be too much to ask? Especially given recent hot topics like horse slaughter? Horse slaughter!
The ability of the Chronicle‘s D.C. bureau consistently to miss/ignore the local angle when it comes to D.C. happenings is astounding. The newspaper would be well-served to shut the bureau down and reallocate the resources to local news coverage (and line editing).
