Where did John Edwards announce his presidential candidacy? Reading the blogs and opinion sites, it’s easy to get confused. Here’s what different people are saying:

Nancy Scola at MyDD: “the yard of Orelia Tyler’s house in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.”

My colleague Ezra Klein on his LA Weekly site: “the upper 9th Ward.”

My colleague Ben Adler at Tapped: “his choice of location. The Ninth Ward of New Orleans.”

Byron York at The Corner: “Edwards…will make his announcement tomorrow in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward.”

Rich Lowry at Townhall.com: “John Edwards is a Man of the Poor. That is what announcing his presidential candidacy in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans was meant to say.”

And why did they report that? Because Edwards told them that’s where he would be announcing, just as he told the A.P.: “The former North Carolina senator plans to formally announce his candidacy Thursday from New Orleans’ 9th Ward, which was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.” And because the first thing Edwards said during his announcement was: “Good morning. I’m here in New Orleans to — in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to announce that I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States in the election in 2008.”

Yesterday, however, The New York Times reported:

Though Mr. Edwards’s central theme in the 2004 campaign was poverty, that was not the case on Thursday, as he made only a passing reference to the “two Americas,” his slogan two years ago. Instead of choosing to announce from the Lower Ninth Ward, the impoverished neighborhood that has become a symbol for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, opted for middle-class East New Orleans, and an area of solid, single-story tan-brick homes that are salvageable, unlike the flimsy frame buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Sounds like someone’s advance people need to do their homework a bit better.

UPDATE: Actually, Wikipedia says that East New Orleans is part of the Ninth Ward, it’s just not the Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood so famously devastated by the hurricane. So Edwards was technically accurate, even if he was not exactly where people think he was. The Ninth Ward is quite large and even has some wealthy neighborhoods.

UPDATE 2: The Ninth Ward apparently has three main neighborhoods: The Lower Ninth Ward, the Upper Ninth Ward, and Eastern New Orleans/New Orleans East. And New Orleans East was flooded, just like the Lower Ninth Ward. When I first read the Times reporter’s piece I thought he was making a knowledgable geographic point, but now I think he was just being persnickety.