Did Grist beat the New York Times with a story key to the city, state, and region? That David-beats-Goliath tale would only be stretching it slightly. Certainly, Amanda Griscom's "look behind" the issue offered more length, more background, more detail, and more understanding than the somewhat cursory accounts by the Times and other regional and national papers. This is surprising because a bald political "deal" was what allowed the nomination to go forward, and the deal was all about New York. Most other media simply reported that Sen. Hillary Clinton withdrew her "hold" on the nomination because she got White House assurances of further investigation into health problems stemming from the 9/11 World Trade Center collapse and further medical aid for them. Other accounts, from the AP to the Washington Post, ventured little beyond official statements. Other media quoted from Clinton's victory statement; Griscom quoted a little, linked to the text, and called it a "cheery statement." Griscom provides far more of the smell-and-feel of real political dealmaking. She writes, for example, all that wasn't won by the resisters, what they had to bargain away. The story tells more about how the vote fit into presidential politics, and the regional politics of clean air and how the real head of EPA (James Connaughton of the Council on Environmental Quality) is already at his desk in the White House. The episode illuminates an unusual erosion of minority power (the hold) in the Senate. Readers get a glimpse of a demoralized and ineffective community of environmentalists, when one is quoted (anonymously) saying his side "had milked the situation as long and as far as they could." (See http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck102903.asp)