Not every fan of Daily Kos reads the diaries. Take my brother. Very liberal. I introduced him to Daily Kos some years ago. Ever since, he's always telling me about something he's read on the front page of Daily Kos. (Even when he doesn't say he read it on Daily Kos, I know he did, because I'll recognize the article he's referring to.) Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if it's where he gets perhaps the biggest percent of political news.
But he doesn't have an account here. He doesn't read the diaries. The whole right side of the page doesn't exist for him. He's never, ever, participated in political blogs - he's simply a consumer of political news.
Just mentioning this because there were a number of comments in this diary last night, which sort of equated the front-page articles and the side-page diaries; for example, Armando wrote:
You want the FP to be for Bernie. Obviously they're not (cept for MB.)
But the rec list is all Bernie all the time. And that's fine.
Imagine someone btiching about the All Bernie nature of the rec list?
Fact is, the side-page matters a lot to participants and lurkers who frequent it, but you gotta figure there are a lot of regular visitors to this site, like my brother, who never go there. For them, only what's on the front page matters.
So when people question an apparent short-shrifting of Bernie Sanders news on the front page, perhaps that shouldn't simply be dismissed as whining.
Whether or not it ultimately results in caucus and primary victories, the fact that much enthusiasm is being generated and tremendous crowds are being attracted by this very progressive, underdog Democratic primary candidate is newsworthy. Or I should think it would be, on a site that's about progressivism and the Democratic Party.
I really don't suspect there's any purposeful lack of coverage on the front page, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lack of coverage, and the idea that it is somehow "balanced" by the diaries fails to consider that a lot of people, like my brother, look to the front page to stay informed about progressive news and the state of Democratic politics.