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Freep's mayoral scandal gears up

By Mark Obbie

The Detroit Free Press' months-long coverage of the financial and sex scandal involving Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick yields indictments. Does it yield anything surprising in the Freep's pages? Not really. But today's package is admirably complete, if nothing else, covering scads of angles with seemingly solid, careful coverage. It adds to the "mayor in crisis" index page that catalogs a huge volume of reporting on allegations that Kilpatrick used millions in public money to settle litigation in a failed attempt to keep a romantic affair secret. The paper's open-records requests and litigation played a key role in bringing the scandal into full view -- thanks to the mayor's archived text messages -- a journalistic a commitment to open government that deserves accolades. One minor quibble: Why can't I find the stories that kicked this all off on the Freep's Web site? No matter how deeply I dig into the "related links" pile and page back through searches, I either hit a tollgate or dead ends. Seems like the paper would want to put its groundbreaking stories front and center at a time like this.Classy move by the competing Detroit News to credit the Free Press' role in the scandal prominently in its lead story on the indictment.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).