HOWARD KURTZ WRITES about how Big Media nearly missed the Trent Lott story, and why:

By Monday, with the mainstream press still largely snoozing, Web writers were leading the charge. Andrew Sullivan: “Either they get rid of Lott as majority leader or they should come out formally as a party that regrets desegregation and civil rights for African-Americans.” Joshua Micah Marshall: “The real question is why this incident is still being treated as no more than a minor embarrassment or a simple gaffe.” National Review Online’s David Frum: “What came out of his mouth was the most emphatic repudiation of desegregation to be heard from a national political figure since George Wallace’s first presidential campaign.” . . .

Now the press is digging into Lott’s history of opposing civil rights measures — a public record that was barely mentioned when he became majority leader six years ago. Time’s Karen Tumulty wrote that Lott told her in the early 1980s that he had helped prevent blacks from integrating his Ole Miss fraternity. Tumulty says she didn’t report it at the time because Lott was an obscure Mississippi congressman — who was trying to needle her Los Angeles Times boss (and future CNN chairman) Tom Johnson for also opposing integration at his own fraternity chapter.

Read the whole thing.