Matt Sanchez

Sorry for taking 50 hours off. My mind went into overdrive spring break mode. I swear, I'm here now.
I said at the beginning that this would be a blog about what makes it to the front page of Spectator but what is just as important as that is what doesn't make it to the front page.
A year ago, our front page included an article on
Marine Corporal Matt Sanchez, GS and a member of Columbia University MilVets who has served in Iraq. Sanchez had lodged a formal complaint with the University, claiming that during an activities fair, he had been harassed by three members of the International Socialist Organization.
Since then, Sanchez has become a relatively well-known player in the conservative media, appearing regularly on Fox News, publishing pieces in the New York Post and generally telling his story. Two weeks ago, he was awarded the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom award by the Conservative Political Action Conference.
And if you're plugged-in enough that you're reading this, you probably also know that several blogs have since reported that he acted in various gay pornography films under the name of Rod Majors. Sanchez has since written an op-ed discussing the matter.
In the instance of every story that shows up in Spectator, there is a conversation about what makes it newsworthy, why we should care enough to give it valuable column inches in our paper. There are no hard-and-fast rules regarding what we publish and what we don't, but there are guidelines. In cases of disclosing personal information, we look at a number of things, specifically dealing with whether the person in question is a so-called "public figure," whether the information we would disclose has to do with his public persona, how controversial or mundane the information is, whether we can verify its accuracy, and other.
When the story broke, we had no fewer than 23 internal e-mails discussing whether or not to pursue it, and we came to the decision that publishing a story would constitute a non-newsworthy disclosure or private, personal information, even if it had already been reported in dozens of other outlets.
More spring break updates on the way.