Talk about burying the lead. Paul Flavin, the attorney for suspended Probation Commissioner John J. O’Brien, sent out a press release at about 2:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. The release went on for 1 1/2 pages about how O’Brien was being used as a scapegoat for hiring practices that are “systemic in the culture of state government” before announcing, in the final sentence, that O’Brien was resigning his post immedidately.

CommonWealth editor Bruce Mohl was stunned. He quickly wrote a story that was posted on CommonWealth’s website by 5:30 p.m. Several hours later other news outlets began to post their own stories online and the resignation was the lead story in both the Globe and the Herald this morning. CommonWealth has been following the patronage scandal at probation since early this year, sometimes breaking news, as it did yesterday, and at other times providing angles on the story that can’t be found anywhere else. To see the magazine’s complete coverage of probation, click here.