Its Confirmed: Newsday.com Penalized by Google for Selling Links!

Scrolling near the bottom of what your site used to look like, I see the following "Featured Links": Mesothelioma Lawyer Lung Cancer Personal Injury Law Firm Buy Mets Tickets Buy Yankees Tickets Wicked Tickets Hamptons Travel

Please remember that participating in link schemes intended to manipulate search engine rankings, including buying or selling links that pass PageRank, is a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines, and may impact your site's standing in Google: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

Newsday.com is the only site amongst the major Tribune newspaper sites that has a Toolbar PageRank of a 5 versus an 8. I have asked a few Google employees to help me out but they state the standard response of 'ask your question in Google Webmaster Help Group'.

So . . . here I am.

1. Yes, I know TB PR doesn't matter. I've tried to explain this to Newsday but . . . they still want an answer.
2. Yes, I tried #1 above several times. But they still want an answer.
3. I did a site review and I don't see anything materially different than what is on the other Tribune newspaper sites (certainly nothing that would warrant this much of a delta).
4. There are no warnings in G'Webmaster Tools.
5. We are pearly white in regards to paid links (we don't need to buy them and we don't sell them).
6. The registrar information is slightly different than the other domains but I doubt that would have an impact.

What am I missing? I'd prefer a Google Employee response but will take responses from any SEO that can figure this out.

Thanks for your post. I'm glad you're posting here in the Webmaster Help Group, because the discussions here help educate webmasters around the globe. I just checked over newsday.com and compared it to the most recent version of newsday.com that was indexed by Archive.org:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070829225145/http://www.newsday.com/

Scrolling near the bottom of what your site used to look like, I see the following "Featured Links":
Mesothelioma Lawyer Lung Cancer Personal Injury Law Firm Buy Mets Tickets Buy Yankees Tickets Wicked Tickets Hamptons Travel

Please remember that participating in link schemes intended to manipulate search engine rankings, including buying or selling links that pass PageRank, is a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines, and may impact your site's standing in Google:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

If you believe your site was at one point in violation of the
Webmaster Guidelines, and you have since made changes to your site so
that it fits within the guidelines, you can request reconsideration of
your site by following the steps here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843