Blog P.I.

I’m no fan of oversimplifying the decision-making process that guides news coverage or promotion thereof, let alone promulgating conspiracy theories, but I have to ask about this:

Why wasn’t Michael Isikoff’s investigative piece outlining the lobbying connections of Barack Obama’s lead strategist, David Axelrod, promoted in Newsweek’s Sunday e-mail to subscribers?

Below right, I’ve cropped the article descriptions from this list for purposes of formatting this post, but I have not removed any of the articles. Although Isikoff’s report appears in the same June 2 issue of Newsweek as the stories, it is nowhere to be found here. And it should be, especially considering that the first four articles listed are all generally pro-Obama in their tilt and three are explicitly framed as advice for candidate Obama. The other four articles cover minor issues such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John McCain.

What happened? One slim possibility is that the article is online-only and thus not eligible for inclusion in a round-up of magazine stories. But this seems not to be the case, as the screen capture indicates, both types of stories are included.

Another may be that Isikoff’s story was put to bed late, and not yet finalized when the feature-heavy e-mail was compiled. Possible, but if so not an adequate defense. Like last November, when WashingtonPost.com erroneously reported positive developments in the condition of Redskins safety Sean Taylor after he was already deceased, there is no excuse for not making e-mail alerts as timely as possible.

One more reason could be that Isikoff’s article is short, perhaps taken from the front of book section that is also home to Perspectives and the up-down-sideways Periscope arrows (if you can’t guess, this week Obama is up, Hillary is down and McCain is sideways). But that doesn’t make any sense, either. As the e-mail alert says,

Dear NEWSWEEK Subscriber,

Welcome to another edition of Political Perspectives, the subscriber-only e-mail newsletter previewing and highlighting NEWSWEEK’s coverage of the political world, in print and online. This week, Evan Thomas writes what an Obama adviser might say to the candidate about how to address the issue of race on the campaign trail. Elsewhere, Holly Bailey pores through John McCain’s just-released health records and Jonathan Alter looks at the lessons we can learn from Hamilton Jordan and Ted Kennedy.

It goes on like that, but there’s no mention of Isikoff or Axelrod. As the e-mail announces, it is not merely a list of their top features but the magazine’s “coverage of the political world, in print and online.” How does Isikoff’s reporting not fall into that category?

Surely there’s an explanation I haven’t ridiculed, and surely that will be their justification. I’m not the first to suggest that Newsweek specifically is in the tank for Obama, but I think I am the first to suggest that Newsweek is burying scoops that are problematic for him.

No matter, the Isikoff story still made it into the blogosphere. But as far as I can tell, only conservative blogs mentioned it. Even TalkLeft, which remains Clinton supporter central, hasn’t picked it up. One wonders how much further it might have traveled if the magazine had deployed its considerable PR assets on the story’s behalf.