Just curious - why did The Washington Post link to Ottawa Sun columnist Don Brennan's column on Brian Pothier's recovery, but not to The Washington Times' Corey Masisak's far more thorough and engaging column on the same topic two days earlier?

It's a rhetorical question, of course, but what it really is is an example of how the WaPo fails to fully "get it" with respect to new media - a hyperlink to a meatspace competitor (or a much smaller online rival, for that matter) is not the same as running an ad for that competitor.

Web chats and blogs are nice, and to that extent, the WaPo's online presence augments the dead tree version of the paper's Caps coverage. But don't pretend that a colleague who's doing great work doesn't exist, then serve up a second-rate version of that same material days later. People notice. And it does more harm to your product than any link to a competitor ever could.