Why the coverage on non-story?

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine, late of the Journal Sentinel, asks:

What in the world is going on at the Journal Sentinel?

His online column points out that a Republican news conference to make unproven claims of voter fraud was covered as though it was real news.

He concludes:

The whole thing smacks of McCarthyism, of making reckless and unproven accusations against an innocent party. I suspect[GOP Chair Rick] Graber may already regret having handled the news conference this way. Partisanship often leads to overreaching. But the media is supposed to be our bulwark against such manipulation. How could the Journal Sentinel treat this trumped-up non-event as a news story?

My theory is that it is because the paper is invested in the "voter fraud" story and has the reporter who is also invested in it do the coverage, which results in a rehash every time of everything they have written about before. (The story in question was 37 inches long.)

Someone there still thinks the "voter fraud" coverage is going to win a prize. If column inches count, maybe it will.