As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.

If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.

It just gets folks riled up.

Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)

The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.

The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.

The paper had a scoop!

Stop the presses?

Nope.

Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.

… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.

The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:

How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?

Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.

Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:


As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.

If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.

It just gets folks riled up.

Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)

The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.

The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.

The paper had a scoop!

Stop the presses?

Nope.

Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.

… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.

The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:

How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?

Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.

Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:


Note that CNN, a national organization, is following up on the story.

Here again, the Arizona Republic had another story of national interest to run with, and it both a) mishandles it at the beginning and b) doesn’t follow up on it.