Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski has been investigating Archbishop Dolan for a year, and today he gave it his best shot. Dolan has nothing to worry about—Kovaleski failed to lay a glove on him. But it wasn't for lack of trying: unprofessionally, he allowed a professional victims' group, SNAP, to drive his 3784-word story.
No other newspaper in the nation would post a front-page story on a religious leader that led nowhere, save for the Times. In classic fashion, the reader is teased at the beginning with this nugget: the professional victims were disappointed when they learned that Dolan, then the newly installed archbishop of Milwaukee, "had instructed lawyers to seek the dismissal of five lawsuits against the church." Now the only question that really matters is whether Dolan made the right decision—not whether those reflexively inclined to believe the worst about the Catholic Church were disappointed. But the reader searches in vain to find an answer: the story never addresses this issue again. So we know Dolan was right.
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