Other WW 'Cover-Ups'

[April 12th, 2006] The letter submitted by Angela Oswalt's lawyer that included Police Chief Derrick Foxworth's steamy emails included another tidbit: the statement attributed to Foxworth that his affair wouldn't be publicized by WW because he had a source who would protect him.

On April 8, WW responded to the notion that this paper would protect him, calling it "laughable."

On April 13, the Portland Mercury took up a full page to publish a story suggesting that it wasn't laughable, while offering no evidence to the contrary.

But in the interest of the fullest possible disclosure demanded by one of Portland's most rigorous investigative outlets, we've conducted a deep-cavity search.

And we've found that WW has been engaged in a massive cover-up for many years. In fact, it's our corporate motto: "To cover up news that others want to see in print."

Nostra culpa, yo. And while we're at it, here are other cover-ups we've been involved in.

• Our travel writer has had 247 uncounted ballots in her desk drawer from the 2000 election in Broward County, Fla., that she picked up during a two-handed canasta tournament. Sorry 'bout that, Al.

• We have a series of recorded phone conversations we've buried that implicate the Mafia and the town of Punxsutawney, Pa., in a decade-long groundhog fixing conspiracy. We were going to run this, but haven't we lost enough of our innocence?

• We've intentionally failed to tell the real story about 2004 mayoral candidate "Extremo the Clown." According to a suppressed internal memo, he is not, in fact, all that extreme. "Eccentric" is more the word.

• We've got the secret location of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (hint: It rhymes with "Shmikrit"). Sure we've been concealing this, but you have to ask, is it really newsworthy?

• After moving out of our old digs on Southwest 10th Avenue, it turns out that well, we also have the Ark of the Covenant. We would have printed this before, but this one really wasn't our fault. Who knew that asp-filled vault next to the copy room would hold anything valuable?

• Sadly, we must also confess to covering up the smallest item in our arsenal: a lint-size piece of the Mercury's journalistic IQ that we found in our most super-secret vault in Chicago along with Al Capone's Prohibition-era hooch.

We could go on, but we've got a busy schedule of not covering the news.