Here's one of journalism's toughest assignments

It's covering anything to do with the boss. I had the thankless job of editing stories about The Arkansas Gazette's circulation reports when the Little Rock paper was in a fierce newspaper war 20 years ago. (USA Today Publisher Craig Moon was the Gazette's publisher at the time; he held the job about two years before Gannett closed the paper in October 1991, amid annual losses as high as $30 million.)

At USA Today, I wrote about high turnover on the board of directors of telecom giant Global Crossing, after its spectacular collapse into bankruptcy, in 2002. Doug McCorkindale, Gannett CEO when I wrote the story, had been one of Global's directors, so I asked him for a comment. He would not return my calls. (It wasn't just me; McCorky wouldn't talk to any journalists about the subject). Ultimately, it took the intervention of top USA Today editors to get him to confirm what I knew to be true. (Department of Hmmmm: Curiously, I can't find the story anywhere on USA Today's website. There is this one, however.)

With that as background, I can only imagine the number of USA Today editors who sweated over the following paragraph in this morning's story about the pricey and controversial Newseum, opening in a week: "The Newseum, developed and funded by the independent and non-partisan Freedom Forum, has a number of ties to USA Today, including a common founder, Al Neuharth. Newseum president Peter Prichard, Newseum executive director Joe Urschel, USA Today Editor Ken Paulson and a number of Newseum executives have worked for both organizations."

Could editors have had any of this in mind?

[Image: this morning's USA Today, Newseum]