Patterico continues to pester the LA Times about the "now you see it now you don't" John Edwards item. There's now an explanatory editors' note that's longer than the original item:

(UPDATE: Since some have asked for more details on this post, here they are. Better late than never: Thursday evening John Edwards spoke to a group of reporters, denying an alleged affair, initially reported in the National Enquirer, which had become the subject of intense speculation on the web. The Associated Press moved a story on the denial, and our blogger posted an item on the Edwards denial, including some details of the Enquirer story. It also mentioned a Huffington Post item that identified a woman who worked for Edwards and a feature on that woman from Newsweek last winter.

Shortly after, editors trimmed the post to delete the Huffington and Newsweek material, believing it also had not been verified. About 10 hours later a Times editor, concerned about an item now entirely focusing on the Enquirer allegations, removed the entire post and comments, some of which expressed similar concerns.

After web editors discovered the deletion, they launched an internal discussion about the importance of not deleting items from the site without explanation. That resulted in the item being reposted Saturday evening, minus three more paragraphs of Enquirer allegations but retaining the link to the Enquirer story. A brief explanation for the one-day deletion was also posted. Since the reposted item no longer carried the blogger's name, he felt it inappropriate to be responding online to past reader comments, so he removed his responses.

Other than that, things went very smoothly with this item.)

Who says the paper's not in touch with LA? (And didja notice the nice big Paquita Machris obituary, complete with photo--just like we wanted? Thanks, Dennis McClellan!)

Earlier
LA Times Censoring Andrew Malcolm on Alleged Edwards Affair