And the Singleton papers, which because of their location (Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Daily News) and demographics should own this story, have relied on the AP almost entirely.

After everything the Readership Institute's research has found about interest in science, the local staffing of this story, other than in the Times, has been pretty questionable.

The NY Times has a solid science section for years, but the LA papers have very little science coverage by comparison. Despite the much stronger concentration of "real science" going on here -- the universities, JPL, Rand, ISI. People repeat other people in talking about film and entertainment, but science is not covered. Despite the fact that discovered reality is regularly more surprising than fiction.

The best exception has been in the LA Weekly -- Quark Soup which sometimes has some good items, plus they have put some science-related stuff on the cover (eg the 10 local scientists they profiled recently).

I think the LA Times does a good job, overall; certainly they have some excellent reporters (KC Cole, in particular), but they could certainly devote more space to the science beat(s).

But I think both Singleton and the Times dropped the ball on the rovers; here's a program that is almost entirely "local" from the engines that put the spacecraft into earth orbit to the landers and rovers themselves.

This could have been an opportunity for a great "Guadalcanal Diary" type series, from inception of the mission at JPL through NASA's vetting process in DC to construction and testing of the engines (Rocketdyne, in Canoga Park) to the boosters (Boeing) to the launch, transit, landings, and exploration.

There have been some other missed opportunities lately as well, including the development of the RS-68/Delta IV engine/booster, the first all-new rocket engine and launch vehicle developed in the US since the shuttle.

Aerospace is the number one manufacturing/heavy industry left in southern California (Boeing is the largest private employer in the state, IIRC, and Northrop-Grumman, TRW, Lockheed-Martin, et al can't be far behind) and the LAT has, I believe, one dedicated aerospace industry reporter (Peter Pae, who does a good job), plus a couple of others who mostly cover defense/NASA.

Likewise, I don't believe the Singleton papers have any dedicated aerospace reporters; I don;t know about the Register.

Regards