&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t it be nice to be ahead of the curve, instead of behind it?&rdquo; asked the voice at the other end of my phone line. &ldquo;The talk shows were already over Van Jones before The Kansas City Star finally said he was gone.&rdquo;</p><p>That was the dominant theme last week among readers contacting me. President Barack Obama&rsquo;s &ldquo;green jobs czar&rdquo; resigned last weekend after a barrage of criticism over some of his past actions and statements. His departure got the No. 1 spot in the Sept. 6 &ldquo;Today&rsquo;s Top 5&rdquo; list, and a longer story ran the next day &mdash; but the pressure leading up to it didn&rsquo;t appear in The Star.</p><p>Objections to Jones&rsquo; appointment as special adviser for green jobs with the White House Council on Environmental Quality began on the Web back in April when Obama first named him. The Oakland, Calif., activist was already well known in some circles, having been named one of Time Magazine&rsquo;s &ldquo;Heroes of the Environment 2008&rdquo; and writing &ldquo;The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems,&rdquo; which laid out his plan to ease poverty through environmental enterprise.</p><p>Most controversially, he signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether President George W. Bush had allowed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to occur as justification for war in the Middle East, but he&rsquo;d also been on the record referring to Republicans as &ldquo;assholes,&rdquo; along with other statements that many would consider intemperate. </p><p>The chatter made the rounds most prominently on Sept. 3 and 4 &mdash; eons ago in today&rsquo;s lightning-paced news cycle.</p><p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s curious that the (Sept. 7) article didn&rsquo;t focus on what he said that got him in the hot water in the first place, but instead had to point the finger at (Glenn) Beck and (Sean) Hannity for making this poor, innocent man lose his job,&rdquo; said one sarcastically.</p><p>I think that&rsquo;s overselling the criticism a bit, but I get her overall point. The Star&rsquo;s story referred to the &ldquo;firestorm that raged almost entirely on conservative talk shows and Web sites&rdquo; and named the Fox News Channel commentators &mdash; but that&rsquo;s actually quite true, and an integral part of the story. </p><p>Regardless of anyone&rsquo;s opinions about whether Jones&rsquo; exit was justified or an unfair railroading, I agree that The Star didn&rsquo;t get the news in the paper until the story was essentially over.</p><p>A couple of readers thought the issue demands further, related coverage: Obama has appointed more czars than any other president, and those posts often wield great power without any responsibility to or oversight from Congress or the voters.</p><p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s hear about what any of the czars are doing, no matter who appointed them,&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the newspaper&rsquo;s job, to tell us what&rsquo;s going on that Washington doesn&rsquo;t want us to think about.&rdquo;