I should be clear about the below post: Andy Donohue broke the story about the 2002 city pension arrangement while working for The San Diego Daily Transcript. The voiceofsandiego.org was, of course, not in existence until February 2005.
It was an oversight not to make that completely clear. The Transcript deserves commendation for its coverage of the pension issue and its support of the reporters there who covered it – as does the U-T. I meant only to point out that the U-T doesn’t deserve all the credit for “why the city’s pension fund crisis is getting so much attention” as it claims in its new ads.
And I don’t think the U-T’s news reporters will cover the federal court proceedings of the “Pension Five” with any kind of bias. I just think it’s inappropriate – and it would make me feel uncomfortable – if I were trying to cover the case fairly while my newspaper ran an ad in its news section about uncovering the defendants’ “corruption” before they’ve gone to trial.