KJAM Doing TOMA for JDSC?

KJAM runs a blurb on Joel Dykstra's campaign for Tim Johnson's Senate seat. The headline: "Dykstra Travels the State in Pursuit of Senate Nomination." The full text:

Republican Joel Dykstra is working his way around the state, as he pursues the US Senate nomination next June.

He says right now he is listening to what voters have on their minds

Dykstra says while it might seem to be a big jump from the South Dakota Legislature to the US Senate, the experiences are very similar.

Dykstra says he hopes voters realize how much access they have to their candidates and representatives.

Dykstra is competing with Sam Kephart of Spearfish for the republican nomination.

This article has a few problems:

1. Nowhere does it say where Dykstra is in his travels around the state. Did he stop in Madison? Chester? Anywhere in the KJAM listening area? If not, why is KJAM running the story?
2. If he's listening to what voters have on their minds, what has he heard? Has he taken a look at what Lake County voters have on their minds (and will he keep that in mind when he heads back to the SD Legislature in January?)
3. "Access to their candidates and representatives" -- like what? Is Dykstra referring to super-awesome campaign websites that he and Kephart have set up? (Well, no, he can't mean his own campaign website, which is currently under construction and offers no contact links at all.) Is he referring to all of his public meetings with Lake County voters (none of which meetings are mentioned specifically in this article)? Or is this just a jab at his incommunicado incumbent opponent?
4. Did Dykstra actually visit with anyone at KJAM, or is this just a stock press release from the candidate?
5. Most importantly, didn't KJAM run an identical blurb for Dykstra last month? I tried to search through the KJAM archives... but KJAM doesn't appear to have any. Their local news goes back (at this moment) to July 24. (But hey, web space costs money, and the good folks at KJAM have plenty to do besides massive web administration.) I Googled and Yahoo'd, and nothing came up. But I have a distinct recollection of reading a very similar article about Dykstra on the KJAM website not long after his candidacy announcement on July 5: no big details, no Lake-County-specific information, just a few vague lines. Perhaps my friends at KJAM can help me with some back records here.

I look at these factors and am led to wonder: is the Dykstra Senate campaign just putting out the same old press releases to the smaller media outlets and hoping the repetition (even without new details or position statements) will build some Top-of-Mind-Awareness among the electorate? Three little blips suggesting he's a good candidate, and that's it? Boy, if I were running for office, I'd sure like free and easy coverage like that.

I'll stop short of claiming that KJAM is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy -- after all, conspiracy theorists are kind of kooky. Reality is usually less interesting than conspiracy theorists wish it were.

Nonetheless, I remain curious, KJAM -- is today's Dykstra blurb a repeat? And if he is "working his way around the state," when will he be coming to town so Madison's brave teachers can ask Dykstra why he helped kill a big boost in education funding in the 2007 legislature. I'd also like to quiz this Zaniya Project Task Force member on his comment about how all the money we're spending on health care "still isn’t buying us the best health care in the world," [thanks to Bob Ellis, "Dykstra's Hat in the Ring for Senate," Rapid City Journal, no date posted online, but referenced as 2007.07.24 elsewhere online] and why he thinks a bureaucracy of 300+ profiteering insurance companies can manage health care more justly than a single-payer system accountable to the voters.

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Update 2007.08.03 10:12 CDT: This morning, I find the Dykstra story gone from the KJAM news page. The story that followed it, on the Minneapolis bridge collapse, is still there, without a date. I did notice that the date on the Dykstra article yesterday was 8/5/07. I wondered if maybe the old article that I seem to recall from July had just gotten reposted by accident, but it seemed odd that it would get an August date. Again, I'd love to see some mysterious conspiracy at work, but there's probably a simpler, more mundane explanation... right?