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[Commentary] Newspaper people make decisions about what to cover and what to emphasize every day. They have finite resources — only so much space in the paper, only so many reporters — and they have to choose. In this context, one question I’ve been thinking about for several months is this: How well does The New York Times cover those who live in poverty and the news that affects them?

No one can say that The Times ignores poverty. But is it enough? Is it the right kind of coverage? Where are the gaps, and what is the big picture? These questions are important, particularly because there is an undeniable moral dimension. Within America’s great affluence, nearly 50 million people live in poverty, defined as income below $23,550 for a family of four. Surely, the mission of the nation’s greatest newspaper ought to include a deep concern about those 50 million. Based on reading, interviewing and simply paying more attention, I’ve made some observations.

When The Times does write about poverty — whether in a special series or a long feature article — it usually does so with depth and intelligence. The amount and intensity of the coverage, however, may not be in proportion to the size of the problem. One in six Americans live in poverty, and it’s worse for children: one in five. In New York City, it is commonplace to see men and women sleeping on the street. Among the city’s 8 million residents, 1.5 million don’t have enough to eat; a third of those are children. Occasional coverage — no matter how excellent — doesn’t get the job done. Some advocates for the poor see another problem: News organizations, including The Times, tend to treat those in poverty as “the other,” a problem that is “over there.”

House Republicans are launching a new website aimed at engaging citizens in the legislative process by allowing them to “co-sponsor” bills introduced in Congress.

The site will allow users to track legislation as it goes through committee and to the floor, and it could give lawmakers an idea of which proposals are gaining traction outside the Beltway. “This is a program and a website designed to engender a national conversation online about legislation that we’re considering here in Congress,” said Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). “It is yet another example of our trying to live up to the commitment of transparency, the fact that this is a government that belongs to the people, and they ought to know what’s going on.”

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government e-mail accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses. The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved. The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

A District Court dismissed over-the-top video provider Sky Angel's antitrust suit against C-SPAN, the cable industry funded public affairs network, but it did so without prejudice and signaled that Sky Angel could re-file its complaint.

"We are delighted with the District Court's dismissal of Sky Angel's antitrust lawsuit against C-SPAN," said Bruce Collins, C-SPAN VP and general counsel. "As we said from the beginning, and the judge has obviously agreed, Sky Angel did not have any facts to back up its fanciful claims. C-SPAN now looks forward to continuing its public service mission without this distraction." Sky Angel filed an antitrust suit against C-SPAN in November 2012, saying the public affairs net improperly withdrew its programming from the program distributor in 2009 at the direction of a board made up of cable operators who dominated the video distribution market and colluded to competitively disadvantage competitor Sky Angel. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed that charge, saying Sky Angel had provided no factual context for the alleged board member agreement.