The Strib’s Web site had nothing about the story until midday Monday, when a video and slide show appeared. UPDATE: The full story has been posted. But the article remains inaccessible on the Internet, even for a price. And that’s a considerable comfort for the men behind the bad business that the article exposes.  

The Star Tribune kept its story — about an unregulated lender to a dozen half-finished projects across the exurban landscape — offline in order to bolster solid Sunday sales, according to MinnPost’s David Brauer. But if the move made the paper’s display-ad sales staff happy, it surely made Robert Machacek ecstatic.

Machacek is the chief villain in the piece, an ex-con who led Lakeland Contruction Finance LLC on a hell-bent, post-bubble, no-money-down rush to build up the metro’s hinterlands. Reporter Chris Serres went to some lengths (and exotic-sounding locales) to track Machacek down, even leaving notes “at a house listed under his name on Safari Heights Trail in Eagan.” Machacek comes off as a bad guy, but only if you see the article.

The online video and slideshow — effective if a bit odd as a package without Serres’ sizable reporting — don’t name names at Lakeland Construction Finance. Machacek doesn’t appear at all and investor Ted Waitt is pictured with only his name as a caption, leaving the Strib considerable online readership clueless. By withholding the story from the Web the Strib gave Machacek (and others behind the mess) a huge reprieve from Internet infamy.