by Tanta on 7/22/2008 09:26:00 AM

Yes, boys and girls, I wish to say something complimentary about a media outlet. The WSJ, no less. Dog bites man.

Housing Wire directed my attention to this very interesting article about the FDIC and the crappy, fraudulent, and occasionally predatory loans it allowed Sterling Superior Bank [Duh! --ed.] to continue to originate and sell on the secondary market even after the FDIC took control of the institution and had FDIC staff at the bank supposedly providing grown-up supervision. It's an important story.

But look! On the online version of the story, there's this little box several paragraphs down, titled "From the Case Filings." And it in are links to the various court filings and internal FDIC documents on which the story is based. You can click on one of those links, if you feel the urge, and read the same primary written sources that the reporter used to write the story! If all you want is the short version, you can just read the article. But for once, we see the online media using the powers granted by the Internet to create a situation in which we're not forced to settle for just the short, breathless, over-simplified version! Not that I think this particular article is an offender in that regard. But I have spent a lot of blogging time on breathless, over-simplified articles--Hi, Gretchen!--based on great long complicated court filings that I had to go look up myself to get a clearer picture, if they were even available online.

I therefore drop a deep and graceful curtsy to the WSJ's online editor and the reporter, Mark Maremont. You probably don't want to get used to this yet, but it is still quite sincere.