Print This Post
Nov
1
I was checking around this morning in a couple of databases that show donations, to see what goes on at other Ohio newspapers, as far as the prohibition on journalists being able to contribute to political candidates and issues.
According to Ohio Money Tree, the COO and Vice Chair of the Dispatch Printing Co. (the umbrella entity for the Columbus Dispatch, among other media entities) and associate publisher of the Columbus Dispatch, Michael F. Curtin, appears to have contributed $25,000 last year to the Vote No Casinos issue (go to Ohio Money Tree, and do a “search data” with Employer/occ for the “column” and “columbus dispatch” as the employer term). After further research on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, I’ve concluded that a donation which goes from a Michael Curtin to “Team Coughlin” is not related to the Curtin associated with the Dispatch.
Because suggesting that someone who is as senior as Curtin is at a journalistic endeavor has given so much money to a political issue is a pretty major suggestion, I put out a couple of feelers to see if anyone could tell me that I have the wrong person and the wrong donation. I haven’t heard back from anyone. So, this evening, I also emailed Mr. Curtin directly.
Baasically, what I want to know is – did Curtin actually make that donation? And if so, how can Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg’s explanation about why she felt compelled to have Ohio Daily Blogger Jeff Coryell, formerly of Wide Open, either be restrained in what he wrote on Wide Open, or leave, be okay?
I don’t want to hear about how it’s different from paper to paper. I want someone to tell me that either Goldberg and Curtin are wrong, Goldberg and Curtin are fine, or whatever. But not that it varies from paper to paper.
Why isn’t that acceptable in this case?
Because we are talking about the possibility that our state’s capital city’s paper of record is fine with one of its top executives to make an enormous donation and continue on, while the Plain Dealer editor feels that her paper’s reputation is so threatened by a $100 donation made by a political blogger, who has an independent contract to write on a political blog about…politics, that she must demand that he either not write about certain political figures or leave the gig.
I find absolutely zero logic here, so I’m assuming I need to be taught about what I’m missing. OR – maybe I have it all wrong about Curtin and the money.
Btw, the Dispatch opposed Issue 3/Ohio Learn and Earn.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:00 am November 1st, 2007 in Blogging, Government, Media, Ohio, Politics
Comments
6 Responses to “Did Dispatch assoc. publisher give $25k to Vote No Casinos & keep job, while paper opposed Issue 3?”
Leave a Reply
2010 WE Magazine 101 Women Bloggers to Watch
Category Specific RSS
Pepper Pike Cleveland+ Politics Women Ohio Elections Law Jewish
by Tips and TricksNews Now
It is all ok until somebody complains,
Paper are political, the PD is a conservative paper.
They endorse LaTourette, they can make whatever rules they want and when you say no, it is insubordination, correct.
Paper are biased, news shows are biased…subtle about it but biased just the same.
Nobody in the PD would or could write about LaTourette negatively, they covered Ney, Abramoff and Delay but they would rather have not, they are admittedly conservative.
Somebody in the PD said that is enough, we are at odds with our own!
They run AP pieces all the time…but they are not going to run ones that are overtly Liberal. People contributing to campaigns, for sure, write those articles but it does not conflict with the paper agenda.
They set up a rule after the fact, you contributed to campaigns and the others did not, how convenient liberal on one side and conservatives on the other.
Funny how the network works, it serves itself. It makes it look like something else.
You try to get people to look at thing from all angles, then make a decision…some do not they want to tell people how to think.
Everything is wrong with the good old boy network…unless you are in it.
Shalom Jill,
Short form: separation of church and state.
Long form: Editors and Publishers live in different worlds — editors in the world of their readers; publishers in the world of their advertisers.
The world of publishers is a world of money. You wine, dine (and engage in other adult activities) with your advertisers in order to convince them to give up advertising dollars.
And, you have to spend money to make money.
Sadly, as competition for ad dollars has increased, the dead-tree media has systematically removed bricks from the wall.
A journalist at the helm of the newspaper-where-editors-go-to-retire is looking toward that pension check and not a Pulitzer Prize..
(Speaking of Pulitzers, why is that our own Pulitzer winning journalist remained on staff, and, if I recall correctly, continued to write matters directly related to her husband’s senate race?)
The bottom line for me is that as long as editorial decisions are governed by advertisers, or people who influence advertisers, the concept of a free and vigorous is a fairy tale.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] Did Dispatch assoc. publisher give $25k to Vote No Casinos & keep job? digg_url=”http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=5346″; digg_skin = [...]
Jill,
I have worked around or for newspapers for about 15 years as well as covering state and federal campaign finance issues.
It has always been my understanding that political donations by business side staff is fine because they don’t write the stories or determine the newspapers agenda.
I don’t know the details of this case, but it is likely that an associate publisher doesn’t even have anything to do with the editorial page. I agree it is unseemly at that level, but that has always been the rule.
Curtin came up through the editorial side. He used to be the paper’s statehouse political reporter and later editor. He’s even written a book on Ohio politics, The Ohio Politics Almanac. He’s very much an editorial product. He may be on the business side now, but I still think this is questionable and should be answered.
The Columbus Dispatch has been owned by the Wolfe family for over 100 years. During that time they have been part of the inner circle that has controlled much of how Columbus developed.
Since Columbus never had the kind of big-money industrialists that ruled things in cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, the economic power here has always been with land developers and retailers, and the big names in those industries were the power brokers. One of them is the Wolfe family.
The Dispatch can be thought of as one of the retail businesses in the Wolfe family portfolio. Hard hitting investigative reporting is much less important than running a profitable business and promoting consumer confidence.
PL