What Happened to Christine Daniels' Blog?

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An enduring mystery in the Mike Penner/Christine Daniels story is why the L.A. Times no longer has any trace of "Woman in Progress," Daniels' groundbreaking blog. It was removed from the newspaper's Web site after Mike Penner returned to the paper in 2008, and has since disappeared from the Times' internal archive, putting the newspaper in an awkward position of trying to explain what happened to a piece of history.

The Times says the blog vanished, but the paper did not intentionally destroy it.

An article in the June 2010 issue of GQ seemed to resolve the matter. The magazine reported that editors at the Times Web site removed the blog at Penner's request. GQ reported that when sports editor Randy Harvey learned of the decision, he "wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of altering the record, but the guy's mental health was at stake, he told himself."

But the Times says GQ got it wrong. Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said in a statement: "Mike Penner asked editors to erase the archives of the 'Woman in Progress' blog, and they refused, citing the Times' policy of preserving its records. However, at some point the archives vanished. We have been unable to retrieve the posts or determine who deleted them."