Remember back in the “good old days” of journalism when multiple news organizations tried to beat each other to stories (some major, some not-so-major)?
We’ve grown accustomed to newsroom cutbacks, newspaper closings, and less competition in general to break news.
What we aren’t quite used to are blog posts like this one, essentially explaining why the Chronicle apparently* didn’t feel the need to cover audit report irregularities in a city department, a story picked up by two television stations:
Television reports late last week might have left the impression that Houston’s federally funded housing programs were immersed in scandal. But compared with previous audits of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development, the latest federal monitoring report was rather mild.
The April 6 report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development included 40 “findings” — violations of federal rules — and a smaller number of “concerns,” which are to findings what tadpoles are to frogs. The findings and concerns focused on problems with record-keeping, procedures and administration of the complicated federal programs, rather than on any misuse of funds.
No big deal! Er, wait, someone can’t make up his mind:
That’s not to suggest that the report is unimportant.
What? Isn’t that pretty much what it suggested?
Compared to past problems, maybe the current problems truly are no big deal. But was the (not-“unimportant”) audit report really such a little deal that it merited no coverage from the city’s newspaper of record?
This seems peculiar, but perhaps someone can explain it to us in the comments or via email**.
* We don’t recall seeing any such story online, in the e-edition, or from searching, but sometimes Chron.com searching can be finicky.
** We do consider emails to the blog on the record and fair game for publication.
