How controversial could a witch be in 2014? Plenty, if you’re in Lancaster, Pa. — where a newspaper ran a feature on a local practitioner, then killed it. At issue is a long, friendly, garden-variety profile on Kim Cabot Consoli of Bainbridge, in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. The May 17 feature, by a former GetReligionista — the Rev. Elizabeth Eisenstadt-Evans — that described Consoli’s “craft,” how she practices it, her relationship with a Mayan teacher and Salem witch Laurie Cabot, etc. There was also a sidebar primer on things like the definition of “Wiccan” and whether witches worship Satan.

Then, as media watcher Jim Romenesko reports, the newspaper learned that Consoli had another record — an arrest on charges of prostitution.

Here is the really interesting journalism hook in this story about a news story. The newspaper’s editors then ran a lengthy mea culpa.