Al Gore's Fans in the Tennessee Press

A big Tennessee newspaper has egg on its face because of favorite son Al Gore (from Political Diary):

Remember the revelation that Oscar-winner Al Gore burned through twice as much electricity at his Nashville home each month as the average American family uses in an entire year? The story was broken by a small local think tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, on the Drudge Report where it quickly spread throughout the world.

Now it transpires that the local Nashville daily paper, the Tennessean, had the story of the huge Gore carbon footprint about a month earlier. The Tennessean has been backpedaling trying to explain how it lost its own scoop. "We weren't in a great rush because we figured no one else had it," was the lame explanation Tennessean reporter Anne Paine offered to the local Nashville Scene alternative weekly. Editor Mark Silverman gave an even more bizarre explanation: "It got put on the back burner simply because people were working on other stories."

In fact, the paper has long had a cozy relationship with the Gore family, starting in 1948 when it carried the story of young Al's birth on its front page. Mr. Gore's father was a prominent congressman from the state at the time. Later, Mr. Gore worked as an editorialist at the newspaper after graduating from college. The story of Mr. Gore's energy consumption finally made the paper in truncated form after it had spread on the Internet. Newspapers make judgment calls all the time on what is newsworthy, and the Tennessean’s credibility has clearly taken a hit. Even the New York Times this week ran a story questioning the factual claims made in Mr. Gore's global warming documentary. Perhaps the Tennessean should redeem itself and better inform its readers at the same time by reprinting the Times story.

It's hard to hide stories in a day and age when there are so many outlets for news. These guys were a little slow to learn that.