WATCHDOG WATCHES HIMSELF: Via Romenesko comes this story of a newspaper hiring a city council member to cover the city council and the subsequent resignation of two of the paper's three full-time employees. It's a serious conflict-of-interest story, but one of the publishers is MAYOR of a neighboring town:

Barbara Bobo, who is in her fifth term as Millport mayor, said politics and journalism often "dovetail" at small weeklies such as the Northport and West Alabama newspapers. She said she believed Allison could remain unbiased in his coverage of town business. She cited herself as an example. "I write the town’s news. I don’t have a reporter there," she said of Millport. As a mayor-reporter, she said, "you have to use common sense in your coverage. It’s not like there’s a whole lot going on."

Readers are right to worry about examples of bias in the "New York Times" or the "Washington Post." But remember, there's a huge swath of the country that gets its news from podunk papers such as these, and they are absolutely loaded with their own bizarre biases. In the early days of this blog, I wrote about my how the powers that be at my first newspaper deemed the monthly meeting of a small civic club to be front-page news. Now, this wasn't a tiny weekly paper. This was a daily with a circulation of about 25,000 that had a heavy wire-service presence on its front page. However, every month, stripped across the top, would be that club's meeting, right above the latest news from the Middle East and the president's speech to Congress. And why? Because the publisher was a member. Unbelievable, but far too common.