HAIR BALLS noticed an interesting piece of investigative journalism from Gary Scharrer of the Hearst Austin bureau (the combined capitol news desk of the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle). The story questions the generous ongoing housing/commuting benefits being doled out to UT-Health Science Center Larry Kaiser.
San Antonio residents got to read the full story, including critical comments from Texas Watchdog‘s Trent Seibert. Chronicle readers, on the other hand, got to read a shorter, dumbed-down story with Seibert’s criticism omitted.
In the old days of print journalism, the story might well have been cut to fit a physical space in the newspaper, but (as Hair Balls notes) that doesn’t really explain why the dumbed-down version appeared on Chron.com. The best we can guess is that Seibert and Texas Watchdog have either been blacklisted blogHOUSTON-style by Chron management (in which case, welcome to the club!) or the Chron really prefers to stick with cheerleading* over that icky critical/skeptical watchdog reporting stuff.
* In all fairness, they do cheerleading perhaps better than any newspaper in America, so that’s something we suppose.
