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Nov

4

Sound of Ideas to spend an hour with PD editor, Susan Goldberg, tomorrow

Filed Under Announcements, Blogging, Business, Cleveland+, Media, Ohio, Politics, Tech, Wide Open, Writing | Comments Off

Monday, November 5
An Hour with the Editor
Susan Goldberg took over the helm of The Plain Dealer just five months ago. In that time we’ve seen a front page face-lift, a boost in sports coverage, more content for the web, and a little more of the web in the daily paper itself. Monday morning, Goldberg joins us for the hour to talk about her vision for the newspaper so many of us read every day. We’ll be taking your calls and talking about what you love, hate and want to see changed about the PD. Join us Monday morning at 9 o’clock. Photo courtesy of Cleveland.com

Guests:
Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief, The Plain Dealer.

And if you’re so moved, call or write into the show, from 9-10am:

news@wcpn.org or 216-578-0903

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:24 pm November 4th, 2007 in Announcements, Blogging, Business, Cleveland+, Media, Ohio, Politics, Tech, Wide Open, Writing | Comments Off 

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Nov

4

PD’s Reader Rep, Ted Diadiun, gives print readers inaccurate version of Wide Open demise

Filed Under Blogging, Elections, Government, Media, Ohio, Politics, Wide Open | 9 Comments

Although I can read between the lines of this Plain Dealer Reader Rep piece on the Wide Open debacle and, based on my relationship with Ted Diadiun, will say that I believe he was really trying to be careful, he absolutely made factual errors. Here’s the basics, because I HAVE TO GET MY OTHER WORK DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I say in the headline, “gives print readers” because it’s appearing on a Sunday and the Wide Open blog didn’t average more than 1000 unique online visitors for it’s four-six weeks of existence. I cannot be convinced that there is much overlap between the two readerships and even if there was, it would be statistically insignificant. Thus, the only version most PD readers will ever know will be the one in print (because Ted’s column is very difficult to find online – Ted, please, at least start putting the columns in your blog again??).

1. From the column:

Jean Dubail, the assistant managing editor for online news and the man responsible for the newspaper’s ever-widening Internet presence, decided in August to begin an online project called Wide Open. His idea was to open a politics blog on our affiliate, Cleveland.com, inhabited by four well-established Ohio bloggers, two from the left and two from the right.

The idea for Wide Open came to Jean Dubail long before August. I know because I was there.

2. From the PD – apologies for the long excerpt but we know that the cleveland.com versions only last for six months:

But in general, the blog did what he wanted it to do. Ultimately, Wide Open would attract 600 to 800 visitors a day.

Then, on Oct. 16, reporter Sabrina Eaton wrote a story about how much money Ohio’s congressional candidates had raised, and she named some of the more interesting contributors.

Among the names was one of the Wide Open bloggers — Jeff Coryell of Cleveland Heights (known in the blogosphere as “Yellow Dog Sammy”). Coryell, one of the two liberals, had contributed $100 to the campaign of Bill O’Neill, the Democratic opponent of U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican.

At first, Coryell didn’t understand why this would be news. Eaton explained that because he was a paid contributor to a Plain Dealer-sponsored blog, failure to include his name in the story would be deceptive. Then he became suspicious: How had she learned about the contribution?

As it happens, she had found out from LaTourette.

After she got the list of contributors but before she had looked it over, she had interviewed the congressman for another story. He had seen Coryell’s name on the list and asked about the ethics of such a donation.

It was a fair question. Any reporter knows that giving to a political campaign is prima facie conflict of interest. LaTourette or no LaTourette, Eaton would have used Coryell’s contribution in the story: She knew his name and his connection to The Plain Dealer’s blog, and it was obvious that fairness demanded she tell readers about it.

LaTourette was unhappy that the newspaper would pay someone who financially supported his opponent to write political opinion. He complained to editorial page director Brent Larkin, who referred him to Editor Susan Goldberg, whom he had never met. LaTourette set up an appointment, then thought better of it and canceled.

The timeline as to when LaTourette contacted the PD with a complaint about Jeff and when the Sabrina Eaton article appeared is off by two weeks. LaTourette called Brent Larkin before the Eaton article went up. The four bloggers were informed of LaTourette’s complaints in a telephone conference call, long before Eaton wrote that article.

It might be more accurate but more conspiracy-like to say that the PD looked for a way to legitimize LaTourette’s complaint by getting Eaton to write her story. I don’t suspect Eaton at all. But I would be interested to know how the story evolved – did it come from her editors?

3. From the PD:

“The issue here isn’t blogging, or political pressure,” she [Susan Goldberg, PD editor] said. “The issue is our financial tie to these four bloggers. To allow someone we pay to use our site to, potentially, lobby for a candidate they financially support would put us in a place we can’t go. Had we known that he had contributed to the opponent of a person he might write about, we wouldn’t have put him on the blog in the first place.”

If this rule of no donations or no writing was so usual, normal and expected of political bloggers, why didn’t someone say to Jean, “Now, you know those bloggers can’t have given money or else they have to be told that they can’t write about certain people”?

If this element is so…elemental and basic, how can it be explained away that over literally weeks of negotiating how Wide Open would go, it never came up as a non-negotiable contract term?

Finally, the whole issue of “had we known” is a farce because, if this rule is really applied to every hire at the PD’s newsroom, then human resources should have a conflicts check with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, the FEC website and the Ohio Money Tree website run automatically before the PD even sends out a contract to anyone they are going to pay. As an employer and a business enterprise, “had we known” is absolutely useless as a defense of any type.

4. From the PD:

After some deliberation, Dubail told Coryell he would have to agree to refrain from writing about LaTourette if he wanted to continue with the blog. Coryell declined, and they parted ways. The other liberal blogger quit in sympathy, and with two of his gang of four gone, Dubail reluctantly folded the experiment Friday.

I’ve written about this in other places, but again, for the record, I didn’t quit in sympathy. I resigned and I resigned because I gave money to Sherrod Brown and Marc Dann and was not going to wait to be told I couldn’t write about them or be asked to write a disclosure every time I did.

Political bloggers are political and while disclosure of some type might have been able to be worked out, Susan Goldberg made it clear, via Jean Dubail, that Jeff had to either stop writing about LaTourette and that race, or leave the blog. I had no reason to believe that I would be treated any differently – and the idea that I might be treated differently, in and of itself, would be a reason to leave – and that would have been a resignation “in sympathy.”

People will call it what they want, see it as they do, but for the record: I didn’t quit and I didn’t resign in sympathy. If I’d thought Jeff was being rash or the reasoning being given to him was reasonable and didn’t apply to me, I might have stayed on. We will never know – but that’s not because of my leaving, it’s because I also have made political contributions.

I think Ted may have pulled his punches for me to not say that I’d also made donations, but I don’t know. And I of course would have been fine, and actually would have expected that he would in fact reveal that information about me.

5. The entire piece has a ring of “thou doth protest too much.”

As I wrote at the top of this post, we know that about 1000 unique visitors a day read the Wide Open blog. Of those, how many do you think read the print version? And how many people do we think might have actually written the paper to say that there is an impermissible conflict and bias?

[Remember, there is no bias on the Wide Open blog as to LaTourette because Jeff never wrote about him on it.]

Now, compare that number of possible people to the number of Sunday print version readers.

Then, think about how incredibly difficult it is for an online person to navigate to the reader’s rep column.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The reader rep gets one column a week. Given the incredibly puny number, almost statistically insignificant number, that even knew of Wide Open’s existence, why was it even decided that this is the topic to be addressed this week?

Bottom line fallout, cemented with today’s column: people across the board – including extremely established people in journalism, are finding it very hard to believe the PD’s version of why the end happened the way it did.

And you know what? They are right to not believe that it happened that way. Because it didn’t.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:24 am November 4th, 2007 in Blogging, Elections, Government, Media, Ohio, Politics, Wide Open | 9 Comments 

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Nov

4

Surprise! Traditional media makes factual error that could lead to perception of bias

Filed Under Government, Media, Ohio, Politics, Statehouse, Utilities | 3 Comments

You know, it is just such a drag to find this kind of thing. From the News-Herald.com site (out of Willoughby, OH):

Lake, Geauga and eastern Cuyahoga counties will be affected by upcoming actions of area state Reps. Matt Dolan, R-Russell Township; Lorraine Fende, D-Willowick; and Carol-Ann Schindel, R-Leroy Township.
State Sens. Tim Grendell, R-Chester Township; and Lance Mason, a Cleveland Democrat whose district includes Euclid, voted for Substitute Senate Bill 221 bill last week.
Most legislators want to be optimistic about the bill’s effect on consumers, but will be asking questions this and next year.
The bill will go before the Ohio House Energy Public Utilities Committee.
State Rep. John Hagan, R-Alliance, is committee chairman, and Rep. Josh Mandel, R-Lyndhurst, is vice chairman. Ranking minority member is Rep. L. George Distel, D-Conneaut.

Now, you would think that the paper, being somewhat local compared to the major urban dailies like the Plain Dealer, the Columbus Dispatch, the Youngstown Vindicator, Toledo Blade and Akron Beacon-Journal, would be local enough, even if not hyper enough, to know that State Rep. Josh Mandel has been removed as Vice Chair of the House Public Utilities Committee while he’s volunteering for a second tour of duty in the military. All you have to do is go here – it is a very, very, very easy search. Especially if you are, you know, a “real” journalist who doesn’t give money to anyone and only reports the truth.

Why do I suggest it’s a “perception of bias” error? Because it gives Mandel ink and stature for something that isn’t true. This fact drives me nuts because I don’t like that I don’t have a house rep in the statehouse while he is abroad. I don’t think that he isn’t a patriot so don’t even go there. This is about how district residents might be cool with Mandel’s feeling an obligation to go back to the military, but not be cool with not having the person elected to represent us actually in Columbus to work and vote.

Before people tell me I am being too hard because it’s a simple error, don’t try that either.

I’m in Mandel’s district. I checked the status of his position on that committee as soon as that energy bill was introduced because I wanted to know what the deal was – would he be weighing in, would that get someone else to pull the VC weight – whatever that is. I even posted about money he’s received from Crandon Canyon mining figure and Pepper Pike resident, Robert Murray.
I knew.

The News-Herald reporter could know too, and should know far more than me.

The other thing is, when the Plain Dealer is getting down on an experimental project because it pays the authors a pittance but stillgets all hot and bothered because a sitting congressman complains and so the paper worries about the perception of it possibly being considered to hold the views its authors espouse?

Well – to hold the view that a journalist should check the House committee website to double-check the Vice Chair assignment, when every journalist reporting on the Ohio statehouse should know that Mandel is not stateside, does not seem very radical or burdensome, to me.

But then, I’m just hyper. Local that is.

PS. Keith, this is for you, since we are having a friendly nudge-nudge on this:

[State Rep. Matt] Dolan will play a major role as the House Finance Committee chairman, now designated to be House speaker next year in the GOP-majority chamber.
“My bet is there will be both an open market and competition that begins at a down price,” Dolan said. “It has to be essential that there is not a spike in utility costs to drive the owner of a business out of business, and to make consumers work even harder to pay their bill. The most crucial thing to do this year and next is to have a long-term containment of costs. We have to make sure lights don’t become a disproportionate share of the homeowner’s budget.”

Keith – I sure hope he reads and follows the energy bill more than he did that one about wine. :)

PPS. I tried to leave a comment on the News-Herald website before writing this post but every time I tried to type in the “flashing numbers,” the system wouldn’t accept them – told me I’d failed.  How miserable is that to have a system tell you that you’ve failed when you’re putting in the right thing.  Argh.  So I did email the News-Herald newsroom and hopefully they will make the correction.  And if they don’t…?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:07 am November 4th, 2007 in Government, Media, Ohio, Politics, Statehouse, Utilities | 3 Comments 

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