No Air America: Our Three Week Anniversary

Since I started checking on Aug. 4, there has not been a single story in the pages of the Washington Post on the Air America funding scandal.

Funny thing is, references to Air America that did appear on washingtonpost.com are slowly disappearing from the search engine. Yesterday it was a live chat with Nancy we're-looking-into-it McKeon; today, a live chat with Marc Fisher no longer turns up.

One hopes the disappearing thing does not apply to bloggers.

UPDATE: Of course--it's just a matter of the items slipping into the archives after they age past two weeks. The two chats mentioned above took place on Aug. 10 and Aug 11.

UPDATE DEUX: Stephen Spruiell rightly notes that there's no finer way to celebrate the occasion than by checking the latest installment of  groundbreaking coverage by Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney, (if I recall correctly, Maloney broke this story in the first place). I honestly don't remember if it was Malkin or Ed Morrissey whom I first noticed on this issue--my first Air America post on Aug. 4 came after reading Ed at Captain's Quarters-- --but Malkin and Maloney are obviously distinguishing themselves on this story with original reporting.

UPDATE DEUX, PART B: Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.

To recap:

1. The Air America funding scandal still has not appeared in the pages of the Washington Post.

2. Washingtonpost.com, the website that serves up both newspaper stories and online-only content, made available an AP story on the scandal by David Caruso on Aug. 13. I never saw it on the hompage that Saturday, but it may have been there during the day. It's still available as of today from the search engine, which is how I found it after a Michelle Malkin post. The engine serves up two stories by Caruso with two different timestamps, but they appear the same to me (I haven't compared them word-for-word, but an automated word count showed they have precisely the same length).

3. I assumed the lack of coverage was partly the result of media reporter Howard Kurtz being on vacation, but now that he's back there's still nothing. Nor has Kurtz addressed the issue in recent live chats. I know he's been asked the question, because I asked it.

4. Two Posties have answered questions in live chats: Business features editor Nancy McKeon said she was told by someone in the Style Section they were looking into it; and Paul Farhi in a subsequent chat said it did not have a "compelling"  local interest  (Anchorman alert!) due to low ratings.

5. Despite this lack of compelling local interest, the Post has written many stories about Air America before the scandal, including one on June 13 by Kurtz when Al Franken accepted an award. There are two or three others this year, but like the June 13 file they're in the pay-only archives and predate the scandal.

6. A few other stories that pop up with an "Air America" search in recent weeks have only passing references to non-scandal developments, such as a Mom who heard Cindy Sheehan being talked about on the network.

7. I need a drink.