Occasionally, I read something in the newspaper that leaves me wondering why it was even published. Sunday was one of those days, when I read a story in the News & Observer headlined, “For tabloids, Edwards saga was tailor-made.”

The article was a first-person account by political columnist Rob Christensen of the difficulty he and his colleagues faced in confirming the particulars of the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal. It’s not a mea culpa, exactly, nor does it truly pull back the curtain on the reporting process. What’s more, I don’t get the timing: Why does the N&O offer, in February 2010, a quasi-explanation of how it got beat by the National Enquirer in 2008?

The unintended result of the piece is to offer up Christensen as a punching bag to a certain segment of readers. Lots of them availed themselves of the opportunity. The article has sparked a healthy number of comments, almost all of which pile scorn on the paper in general and Christensen in particular. OK, the Edwards saga wasn’t the N&O’s finest moment, but Christensen deserves better than this. I’ve known Rob for a long time, and call him a friend. He’s a fine reporter, scrupulously fair and nonpartisan, well-mannered in a profession where social grace is rare, generous in his judgments of others, and a guy more interested in understanding issues than adding a scalp to his belt. (Again, a rare quality in the news business.)

In short, the notion that Christensen was in the tank for Edwards is absurdly, totally wrong. But as I read his piece Sunday, I realized there is something conspicuously missing from the article. What do you notice, for instance, about this passage:

As early as 2003, I asked Edwards about a rumored affair from his days as a big-time trial lawyer. Edwards denied it. His campaign spokeswoman called my boss to complain that in all of the years of working in the Clinton White House she had never heard such off-base questions. One of his chief political advisers threw me out of his office the next day.

Or this one:

The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer pursued the story from the beginning, sending reporters to New Jersey and California to follow leads. But the story was a dead end because no one was talking, and Edwards and his staff were denying everything.

I’ll tell you what I notice: None of Edwards’ staffers and advisers — who either knew their boss was philandering or strongly suspected it — is named. That’s a mistake. Whoever those people are, they aided or tolerated a coverup. Why do they now get the courtesy of anonymity?

I never take anything with me to read when I go to the gym for my thrice-weekly session with the stationary bike. Instead, the gym’s magazine rack serves as a kind of reading lottery — I take whatever it offers on any particular morning. One day last week, my best choice was a dog-eared copy of the June 29, 2009  issue of The New Yorker, which contained a profile of James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a leading climate-change activist. This passage from the article stood out:

Speaking before a congressional special committee last year, Hansen asserted that fossil-fuel companies were knowingly spreading misinformation about global warming and that their chairmen “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” He has compared freight trains carrying coal to “death trains,” and wrote to the head of the National Mining Association, who sent him a letter of complaint, that if the comparison “makes you uncomfortable, well, perhaps it should.”

What a difference eight months makes. Now that we know a significant amount of misinformation about global warming originated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I wonder if Hansen believes his fellow activist, IPCC chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri, should likewise be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature? If that thought disturbs Hansen, well, perhaps it should.

The McClatchy Co., owner of the News & Observer, is no longer on a death watch, having been upgraded to the status of “profoundly troubled” from “circling the drain” (my categories, by the way, not official ones). The result of that slight improvement in economic health is that the company’s financial statements don’t get the same scrutiny as they did just a year ago. At least by me.

That’s a long way of saying that I have only now gotten around to reading the particulars of McClatchy’s $875 million bond deal, which was announced earlier this month. But before I share the details, a quick summary of recent history is in order: Last year, McClatchy sought to reduce its debt burden — then at $2 billion — by seeking a bond swap, in which holders of $1.15 billion in bonds would trade them in for new ones with a higher interest rate. Sound like a good deal? Well, it wasn’t, for reasons I explained in this column for Business North Carolina magazine. (Basically, McClatchy offered as little as 18 cents on the dollar for the outstanding notes, and told bondholders that if they didn’t accept they’d be moved to the back of the line for reimbursement if the company went into bankruptcy — as seemed possible at the time.) Despite that strong-arm tactic, the overwhelming majority of bondholders declined the offer.

Then a funny thing happened. McClatchy’s financial fortunes improved, and bankruptcy no longer seemed likely. Problem was, a big bond payment was coming due in 2011 and McClatchy still didn’t have the cash to cover it. Even worse, it couldn’t try the settle-for-pennies threat again because if nobody caved in back when bankruptcy seemed possible, they sure weren’t going to cave in now. So McClatchy came up with a new scheme plan a few weeks ago: It would issue $875 million in new bonds, and use the money to not only pay off the debt due in 2011, but also pay back $567 million owed to the bank.

The new bonds come due in 2017, and they do nothing to relieve McClatchy’s debt obligation, which is still stuck at $1.9 billion. What that means, of course, is that the company simply kicked the problem down the road. But there was one significant fact buried deep in McClatchy’s announcement of the bond deal:

The notes are senior obligations of McClatchy that are guaranteed by each of McClatchy’s subsidiaries that guarantee indebtedness under McClatchy’s credit agreement.  The notes and guarantees are secured by a first-priority lien on certain of McClatchy’s and the subsidiary guarantors’ assets, and will rank pari passu with liens granted under McClatchy’s credit agreement.

Confused? Hell, who but a financial geek wouldn’t be? But what that paragraph says is that the new bonds, unlike the previous ones, are backed by McClatchy’s assets. Bondholders will be on equal footing with the banks. (That’s what “pari passu” means.) And one of those assets, of course, is the News & Observer.

Here’s my advice: Pray for a default, because that’s about the only way anybody is ever going to pry the N&O from McClatchy’s life-sucking grip.