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The bottom of last Sunday's front page featured side-by-side stories about U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' accomplishments on the first anniversary of her taking office and state Senate President Tim Bee formally announcing that he will be her opponent in the fall.

Both continued inside, where the Giffords story, which was slightly larger on Page One, took up four times the space as the Bee continuation.

On the surface, it looked like bias: that the Star had written about two opponents and given much more space to the Democratic candidate. A handful of readers did their own measuring and that was their understandable conclusion.

Executive Editor Bobbie Jo Buel gave the following explanation and background: An anniversary story on Giffords' first year in office had been in the planning since Halloween. The story is similar to ones written on other officials' first year on the job, including Republican Mayor Bob Walkup.

Editors thought the Giffords anniversary story would attract readers to buy the paper, so it was promoted on the front page the Tuesday prior.

Buel continued:

During the time between the promo on Giffords' first year in office and the Sunday of publication, it became clear that Bee would announce that he would officially run against Giffords. Because of election laws, Bee has been exploring a run for office and talking like he might run for office, but hadn't officially announced .

With the new year — and Bee's last in that office because of term limits — that exploration and fund-raising could became official.

The day after the promo — Wednesday — Bee told the Star that he would officially say he was a candidate for the U.S. House Saturday morning. That story ran on Thursday's front page. Bee's planned Saturday morning announcement would mean that Star, of course, would publish a story the next day, on B1 as it usually does for candidate announcements.

But what about the Giffords story? Giffords is a sitting congresswoman, an examination of her work makes sense on her first anniversary. The story could have run a week earlier, but running it a week later would be odd, Buel said. The other factor to consider was that candidate announcements run on B1, which is what editors' did for the mayor, the governor and for Giffords in earlier races. And Bee, no matter how promising a candidate, is still just that.

Buel said editors questioned the timing of Bee's planned announcement — on a Saturday — which is not a prime day for TV or radio or the Citizen like weekdays are, but a day that would force the Star to re-examine its announced plans for the Giffords story. Buel said editors did that and decided to run the Giffords story as announced and bump Bee to Page One instead of Tucson & Region to mitigate what would surely be suspicions of bias. And if Bee hadn't wanted to go up against the Giffords story, he could have announced on another day.

Ernesto Portillo Jr.'s duties have changed, Assistant Managing Editor Jill Jorden Spitz wrote in an e-mail to staff last week. Rather than write three opinion columns a week, Portillo will write a news column on Sundays with a focus on Tucson's culture and people. He also will start an Internet blog on Latin jazz. The blog will allow Portillo, who hosts a weekly radio show on KXCI-FM, to share his expertise and passion on the topic with readers. In addition to that, Portillo will write news stories about Tucson's ethnic communities. And he will continue his public duties as a speaker and master of ceremonies at public events.