Here It Is! NYT Air America Story

The New York Times couldn't deny it any more, as heads were rolling and indictments pending in the Air America story. Here it is.

The story gets of to an exceptionally bad start, with the headline, "Bronx Boys Club Finances Investigated." To the few, poor souls who depend on the NYT as their sole source of news, this headline probably wouldn't cause them to slow down to copyreading speed.

The Air America connection is made in the lead paragraph, but check this from paragraph four:

The allegations of financial mismanagement at Gloria Wise came to light in June, when the Department of Investigation announced in a letter to the club that all city agencies were canceling their contracts with Gloria Wise and an affiliate, the Pathways for Youth Boys and Girls Club, because officials at the clubs had "approved significant inappropriate transactions and falsified documents that were submitted to various city agencies."

Nowhere in the story does the NYT explain to its readers what they've been up to since June ... make that early June ... when the paper of record for New York City should have been reporting this.

The article also quotes from today's Alf Ranken show:

"I don't know why he did it," Mr. Franken said, according to a transcript of the broadcast made by the Department of Investigation. "I don't know where the money went. I don't know if it was used for operations. I think he was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul." [Why doesn't he know? Isn't he paid to know things?]

Mr. Franken also said that the network's new owners "don't legally have to pay it back" - referring to the loans - "because we're a different company or something."

"But morally we do," he said.

So, why aren't they doing the moral thing? The answser is obvious: Liberal math. They've put in $50,000 against $875,000; surely Libs can come up with a way to make those two numbers equal each other.

Update: I found the story by putting "air america" into the NYT search engine. Michelle Malkin describes the navigation route from the home page:

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past the featured stories. A ha!

Update: The Politicker found a major misreport in the NYT report:

The NYTimes reports:

"I don't know why he did it," Mr. Franken said, according to a transcript of the broadcast made by the Department of Investigation. "I don't know where the money went. I don't know if it was used for operations. I think he was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul."

Here's what Franken actually said (via audio at Brainster's Blog and transcript at Brian Maloney, who busted this story wide open in the blogosphere the Times sneers at):

I don't know why they did it, and I don't know where the money went, I don't know if it was used for operations (softer, especially fast), which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The omission of those five little words matters because Al Franken's actual statement suggests that the money was in fact stolen from poor kids to pay Air America's bills--a speculation that the Times attributes to "conservative-leaning blogs," but not to the Times' favorite liberal talk show host who said it himself.