This is a confusing story.

The headline says ” ‘backlog’ disputed,” implying there’s not a backlog as previously reported.

The source for disputing the backlog then says there’s enough evidence for the case to move on but with the qualification that the prosecutor, according to the story, “may be waiting for additional reports.”

Later the source (the state cops spokesman) acknowledges there may be a slight backlog.

So, which is it? I guess the primary fault is the headline.

Also, though, the discussion of the “additional reports” possibly being awaited is very confusing. It doesn’t help that the prosecutor wouldn’t talk about that, but someone else would.

I guess, all in all, the story should have had confusing and second-hand discussions pared away, and have been played under a more conservative headline.

I mention this because of minor but ongoing glitches with News stories. A story about cops seeking Clark’s fiancee’s DNA has now run for three weeks without an update, never mind that it’s garnered a veritable saga of comments.

After the arrest, New Haven cops, I think it was, noted that they were secretly watching Clark every minute. So, if “no news is not necessarily no news” in the long-range scheme of things, then what about a follow-up on the fiancee’s DNA? Her Lawyer seemingly was readily forthcoming with one earlier.

The missing 47-year-old “lab technician’s” identity has never been corrected to “sanitation worker.” (Sleuths with a particularly high imagination might wonder if a sanitation person might have more flexible hours (late-night hours) than the presumably “work-day” hours that Clark was limited to.

For that matter, the map of the suspected crime scene in 10 Amistad was never presented in a fully correct version.

I don’t intend to keep the nitpicking up, but I hope there News won’t feel the need to keep the comments stacking while not giving full effort to news.

For example, I was glad to see that a story from about a week ago was quickly changed from describing Clark as a “former” employee to some other wording. That was immediately after I made a comment about the problem sentence.

The problem was that the statement was not only incorrect but careless and obviously lacking an editor’s adequate oversight.

I think maybe the current story in question may suffer from staff feeling the need to get every bit of verbiage out to the public — very admirable — but without boiling down and clarifying the message.

By the way, I can no longer find pdf’s of the warrants on the News or the Courant’s sites. I can image there may well be a reason these different formats can’t readily be archived.