Open mic gaffe? What open mic gaffe? (Updated)

"In the know, in the Times" goes the jingle for the St. Petersburg Times.  I don't know if the paper uses the jingle. The paper changed its name to the Tampa Bay Times at the start of this year.

Are Times readers "in the know"?

From time to time I'll plug some search terms into the newspaper's online search feature to see what comes up.  This time I tried "Medvedev Obama mic" to see if Times readers knew about Obama telling Russia's president that he would have more flexibility with respect to cutting a deal on antimissile systems after his election.

I got this from a story about Florida senator Marco Rubio endorsing Mitt Romney:

Rubio defended his endorsement to the Daily Caller this week, saying he was motivated by Obama's open-microphone gaffe with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

That's it.  That's as much description of the incident as this story contains.

Two other search hits came from years past.

Any reader who makes it all the way to the twelfth paragraph of the Rubio story, if relying on the Times for news, apparently has no idea what Obama did to edge Rubio toward endorsing Romney.  It's a hole in the story and perhaps a hole in the newspaper.


Update 4/2/2012:

I sent reporter Drew Harwell a message inquiring whether the Times had published anything to do with the Obama/Medvedev mic incident.  He replied a short time ago, pointing me to a story from The New York Times he says (I have no reason to doubt him) appeared in the March 28 version of the Tampa Times.

I should have remembered, having encountered this issue before, that the Times' website does not include results like those printed from other papers or (iirc) material from the Associated Press.

With that context added, I'd call the hole in Harwell's story minor.  Barely a pockmark.

Note to self: Don't expect comprehensive results from the Times' search feature.