Greg, thank you for your post... I have had too crazy a week however to understand exactly what the email is saying. Is your friend saying that the birth announcements do not appear in the microfiche versions of the paper, or something else?
In the original release of the “announcements” it is noticed that all the “birth” announcement were identical, both in names and order printed in the two “different” newspapers.
So what my friend did was examine the microfiche that contained the “announcement and found that the only time this identical match occurred was on the day the Obama’s announcement was “printed.”
So the only conclusion would be that somehow the microfiche was tampered with and these announcements were made on one and copied to the other one.
Butter and or Lady can give you links to more in-depth research.