Can a city use its power of eminent domain in order to seize property and then turn it over to a private developer? In Kelo vs. New London the Supreme Court ruled that it could, but by the time the case was finally decided in 2005 the private development project in question had already started to run out of steam. 
Last week, in an ironic coda to the story, Pfizer, which the city of New London had hoped would build a headquarters building on the land, pulled out of New London completely.
Over at CJR, Ryan Chittum says this is a great story that the press completely whiffed on:
The Hartford Courant, fifty miles up the road, wrote a 900-word story the next day on Pfizer’s moves and barely mentioned the whole Supreme Court controversy that roiled the city and country for months. Neither did the Associated Press in a brief. The Wall Street Journal ran with 600-plus words on C3 and didn’t mention Kelo.
….Finally, today, the fourth day of the story, we have major papers covering the Kelo angle. The Daily News hits it, while The New York Times admirably puts its story —and it’s a good effort—on page one.
What took so long and why have other papers been missing on this? Are our institutional memories that short? Are we staffed that thin? Are we that disconnected from our readers?
Believe me, they remember Kelo.
I wonder about that. Sure, lots of political junkies remember Kelo, but I’ll bet that something like 99% of the country couldn’t distinguish it from a brand of corn syrup. Nor do they care about the town of New London, or about Pfizer, or even about the eminent domain issue in question. The facts of the case make it an interesting topic for a feature story — hubris, irony, hard times, etc. — but in a straight news piece of a few hundred words I’m not really surprised the Supreme Court case didn’t get much of a mention. After all, Suzette Kelo is no Michael Jackson.
