Never mind

Last week the Minneapolis Star Tribune had a reporter working on the local angle — putative Minnesota senatorial candidate Al Franken — of the Air Ameriscam story. I reported here that I had heard on the grapevine that the story would come out on Saturday. As the lady said on Saturday Night Live, “Never mind.”
On Saturday, in lieu of a story covering the local angle, the Star Tribune instead chose to run the lame New York Times story on the scandal. (The Star Tribune has apparently removed the Times story from its Web site.) By Friday evening the Times had appended a significant correction to its Air America story (see here). Moreover, the correction affected the local angle that is of interest to Star Tribune readers:

An article yesterday about state and city investigations of a loan made by a Bronx social service agency to the liberal radio network Air America quoted incorrectly from comments made on the air by Al Franken, the host of an Air America program. Referring to Evan M. Cohen, a former official of the network whom Mr. Franken accused of having engineered the loan, from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, Mr. Franken said: “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, which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.” (He did not say: “I don’t know why he did it. 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.”

The Star Tribune has yet to run a correction on the Times story it published on Saturday. The Star Tribune has not published a correction since Saturday’s paper. In Saturday’s corrections, however, the Star Tribune covered some important ground:

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