Consider the Source: Boring Into BOR

Readers will make their own judgments, of course, about the Brigid Shea/WTP4 issue, detailed above, but it's worth noting that the Burnt Orange Report – the political consultancy masquerading as a news source that "broke" the story shortly after Mayor Lee Leffingwell used it in a campaign appearance at the Real Estate Council of Austin – has both an ongoing feud with the local enviro/progressive community and direct ties to the Leffingwell campaign. Editor-in-Chief Katherine Haen­schen was hired on directly from being campaign manager for Randi Shade in the very bitter race against Kathie Tovo, Publisher Karl-Thomas Mus­sel­man, who wrote the blog post about Shea, has worked for a number of political campaigns while holding his position at BOR, and this year's BOR company holiday party was sponsored by Mike Martinez, Chris Riley, and, oh, oops, Leffingwell.

In the press release announcing that party, Musselman promised that BOR was looking at "a number of changes" to their Community Guidelines "dealing with disclosure and transparency. We intend to make these guidelines official on December 15." As of press time, there are no such guidelines, and that section of the site remains dated Jan. 24, 2008.