Shortly after 7 o'clock last night, I made the mistake of glancing at my phone.
It's a bad habit.
I usually take one last look at my email and social media before collapsing into a coma for a couple of hours, then getting up and kickstarting another 24-hour news cycle.
That's one of the problems with this job. We take that 24-hour news cycle pretty seriously.
I should have known better. What I saw when I looked at the phone was pretty much indicative of what I deal with just about every day in this partisan atmosphere I toil in every day.
The social media post was from a frequent critic, a person who believes we tilt the news to favor our liberal bent, that we slant the news.
He pointed out that at 7 p.m. our website was featuring two negative stories about President Trump, while containing no mention of another important story.
He was right.
The website had stories noting the convulsions rolling across Trump world after two men closely allied with the president became convicted felons in the same hour yesterday afternoon.
Paul Manafort, who served for a short time as the president campaign manager, was convicted on eight counts of fraud and tax evasion by a federal jury in Alexandria, Va. The jury was deadlocked and a mistrial was declared on 10 other charges.
At the same time, Michael Cohen, the president's longtime personal lawyer and so-called "fixer," the man who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, instead took a deal. Cohen pleaded guilty in connection to a scheme to pay two women to keep them silent about their relationships with then-candidate Trump.
And even more, Cohen made it clear that this was done at the direction of "the candidate." While not specifically fingering Trump, there is little doubt that is the case.
Those stories did not concern my critic.
Instead, he wanted to point out we had no coverage on the site of the undocumented immigrant - someone who was in the country illegally - in the kidnap and murder of an Iowa coed.
He was right. That story had not been posted.
The truth is we're in the middle of changing platforms for our website. Our new site goes live later this morning. I hope readers like it. Please feel free to let me know your reaction.
While I posted the two Trump stories online before leaving the office, I did not get to the sad story on Mollie Tibbetts, one that no doubt will only pour gasoline on the volatile issue of immigration in this country.
By the way, I might point that none of those three stories is mentioned on the front page of this morning's print edition. I suppose some of the anti-Trump forces might question that decision as well.
But really, I don't think you can equate the importance of the two.
In a manner of speaking, the longtime personal attorney of the president of the United States had essentially indicted his boss - the commander-in-chief- as an unindicted co-conspirator.
I'll leave it to you.
Yes, the Tibbetts story should have been on the site.
It was an omission.
But the bottom line is it was not as important as the other two stories.
Do you agree?
Why do I get the feeling you don't?
Feel free to weigh in.
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