Friday, April 08, 2005

Light Coverage of Thursday's Meeting

One of the more interesting things to come out of Thursday's meeting of the California stem cell agency is the apparent lack of media coverage.

A quick check showed only two major newspapers with their own stories and no story from The Associated Press, which feeds coverage to thousands of outlets worldwide.

The San Diego Union Tribune (Terri Somers) and The Sacramento Bee (Laura Mecoy) had staff written stories on the approval of the conflict of interest codes. The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News carried none, based on a look at their web sites. A search of the Internet turned up no other stories in California newspapers, although there may have been some.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One could be deadline problems. Reporters may have been there but filed stories too late to be placed in the paper. The other may be that the novelty is wearing thin. Newspapers only skim the top of most events. They turn away from issues that seem to be getting old, even if they are fundamentally important. And the conflict of interest flap has been written about repeatedly since the agency's first meeting in December.

We may yet see additional stories from this week's meeting, perhaps on Saturday or Sunday.

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