Reading all the way to the end

Lest anyone accuse Steve Walters or his newspaper, the Journal Sentinel, of being part of the liberal media conspiracy, today's story on Republican complaints about a donation to Gov. Jim Doyle should take care of that.

The story, about contributions to Doyle from principals in a firm which won a state travel contract, gets prominent play and goes on with suggestions of wrongdoing for 20 paragraphs before you get to this, buried at the end of the story [Adelman is the firm that got the contract, Omega the loser]:

A Journal Sentinel review of more than 1,000 pages of state documents and follow-up interviews found that:

• When final bids from Adelman and Omega were opened, Adelman had cut its prices, and beat Omega in five of seven categories of services, including the fee charged to book domestic and international tickets. For example, Adelman's final quote was a per-ticket fee of $24 for domestic travel - $3 less than Omega's final quote for the same service. And on international tickets, Adelman's new quote was $24 - $7 less than the quote of Omega.

• Omega didn't protest the bid to Adelman. "We thought the process was fair," said Diane Bozicevich,Omega vice president for the Midwest.

• Next week, Bablitch will announce a change that will let state workers who find out-of-state travel prices that are less than those quoted by Adelman's agency book them without using the company.