Three years ago, in response to a critique from Media Matters, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris wrote:

Gang, when we started Politico, we said we'd try to be more transparent about how we do our work than is typically the case at the traditional news organizations where we used to work. Transparency should mean being less defensive about criticism, and/but also more candid in saying what we really think.

Something must have happened in the intervening years, because it seems Politico is no longer interested in being transparent about their work. The Columbia Journalism Review made an inquiry about a pair of paragraphs that Politico removed from a story without any sort of notation explaining the decision. Their response?

Politico managing editor Bill Nichols declined to discuss the deletion with me or to send on a version of the article as it was originally published--making it quite difficult to tell how extensively the article was revised or “updated” beyond this excision.

"[W]e don't get into why we make editing decisions," Nichols wrote in a brief email.

That's a far cry from the Politico's previous stance on transparency from a few years ago and definitely more defensive than Harris promised.