Asleep at the Switch

No wonder newspapers are going broke and losing readership.

The State newspaper in South Carolina says it had emails between Gov. Mark Sanford and his girl friend since December. And NOW they are releasing them.

Based on the story in editions for Thursday (June 25, 2009), it really doesn't sound like the newspaper put all that much effort into verifying the emails until yesterday.

The story about the emails says:

"E-mails obtained by The State newspaper in December detailed an affair between Gov. Mark Sanford and Maria, a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"However, attempts to verify the e-mails — from an anonymous source — were fruitless, until Wednesday. Then, acting on another anonymous tip that Sanford would be on a plane returning from Argentina, the paper sent a reporter to Atlanta.

"When Sanford got off a plane from Buenos Aires, he stopped an interview with The State when asked if he had been with anyone in Argentina.

"The State then contacted Sanford’s office and a former aide, explicitly saying it had e-mails between the governor’s personal e-mail address and an Argentine woman and thought them to be genuine."

Sure makes it sound like they never even asked the governor's office about the emails between December and yesterday.

The State Newspaper reporter who met Sanford at the Atlanta airport when he got off a plane from Argentina said on the Rachel Maddow show last night that it was good, old-fashioned reporting that broke the story and not the "new media." I'm sorry, but sitting on emails for six months is not exactly prize-winning journalism in my book.