More than two weeks after I first complained about the omission — and five days after my complaint was expressed in an op-ed — the Los Angeles Times has finally mentioned Cindy Sheehan’s Vacaville Reporter interview on its news pages:

In 2004, Sheehan was part of a group of military families that met with Bush at Ft. Lewis, Wash., near Seattle. But she has since said that she was offended by how the president handled the meeting and that her opposition to the war had intensified.

Shortly after the 2004 meeting, Patrick Sheehan, her husband, was quoted in the Reporter of Vacaville as saying, “We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for [Bush] because he was sincere and he didn’t have to take the time to meet with us.”

The paper reported that the Sheehans were unhappy with Bush’s conduct of the war and his explanations for invading Iraq, but that they decided not to share those feelings with the president during the meeting.

“I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy Sheehan told the Vacaville paper after the meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”

Finally!

An earlier version of today’s article, published on the newspaper’s web site yesterday, did not mention Sheehan’s Vacaville Reporter interview. After reading that version, I asked yesterday: Is Anybody Reading “Outside the Tent” at the L.A. Times? My answer was “no.”

But now that I see the final version of the article, I’m thinking the answer might be “yes.”

Let’s not overstate things. The decision to finally mention the Vacaville Reporter article hardly demonstrates that the L.A. Times‘s Sheehan coverage is now balanced. There are still quite a few newsworthy statements by Sheehan that have gone unreported by The Times — most notably her recent statement describing Iraqi terrorists as “freedom fighters.”

But it’s something.