The ownership can do as it pleases when it comes to showing bias whether in print or with money. The employees cannot. That’s ethics in modern journalism. That’s ethics in the modern corporate system. The two are one.

Jill – you don’t have to apologize for anything here. Keep preaching sister, we’re reading it.

But I’m not you and you aren’t me and you don’t know what has happened since June and earlier in regard to this effort. I’m not kidding that it should be written up as material for a class and sold.

There were many points at which this ethics issue could have cropped up and be managed. And it wasn’t. But Susan Goldberg showed absolutely cowardice by going the route of either living under the same strictures as newsroom journalists (which would have obviated the need for Wide Open completely) or not writing at all.

I don’t know if or when we’ll ever know how her plan became THE plan, but it didn’t have to be.

I’m happy to watch my already nearly non-existence traffic sink lower as a result of continuing to write about Wide Open, but I will write about it until I have nothing else left to say.

Readers of this blog can place bets on how many more posts that might be. But remember, 57 Reasons to Vote No on Casinos.

And I didn’t have to spend $25,000 like Michael Curtin, the assoc. publisher of the Columbus Dispatch.

I STILL have no explanation for that ethically unsound contribution.

JUST KIDDING.

But please, stop insinuating that I’m a hysterical blogger. You have much better words in your vocabulary to describe me, based on actually knowing me somewhat, than that one.

Be fair.

John: oh, the poor, poor, PD. My heart bleeds for having to withstand the “hysterical conspiracy-mongering reaction.” As far as I’m concerned they deserved every bit of it and more. You cannot tell me that the PD didn’t understand from the very beginning that political people do political things – like donate money to political candidates. Jill emphasizes over and over that she doesn’t believe the PD staffers were that naive and dumb.

As I wrote in my response to Jay Rosen’s post at MediaShift Idea Lab there is no question in my mind that this was a political hit first and foremost with the whole ‘ethics’ argument being used as a rear guard smokescreen. Believe me, I’ve seen up close and personal just how malleable ‘ethics’ are at a newspaper. There is no doubt in my mind from more than a preponderance of the evidence that this looked, waddled and quacked like the duck it was – political pressure.

Its really high time for the robed scribes in the ivory tower of Holy Journalism to come off their perches and admit what most people already know – the ethics of any media outlet are first, foremost and always, the ethics of the owner. There are more slants published each day in the PD and newspapers all over the country than in the Browns playbook.

In the end what happened at the PD was really no surprise – it happens all the time at papers around the country. As I said in my MediaShift lab post the only difference here is that we got to see the inside baseball of how it went down. In most cases the reporter keeps their mouth shut if they ever want to work in the business again.

And Danny, you really should have done more leg work before writing your post, especially accepting much of the PD’s version of events at face value. Its pretty easy to get the four blogger’s e-mails, isn’t it? A few questions to them could have easily saved you a little heartburn.

And as to your column, let me reiterate what Jill said – this is a David and Goliath issue. The fault is clearly and wholly with the Plain Dealer, again, unless you believe they were being honestly stupid. In that case, the paper is run by a preponderance of dolts. I don’t believe it either.

Why oh why oh why is it so hard for some people who really know better to simply admit the truth?

Political. Hit. Job.

The burden on the PD was to have a conversation about its ethical lines before launch in order to avoid the scenario that unfolded after launch — and not to overreact as it did once the perceived conflict became apparent (whenever that happened). And yes, the greater burden was on the PD; it was the newspaper’s idea after all.

This whole experiment would have gone much better if both sides had communicated their ethical viewpoints in advance. The result might have been the PD changing its mind about the whole idea … but that would have been better than launching it and then killing it.

But I still believe (or maybe I should say “hope”) that some paper eventually will learn from Wide Open’s experience and implement the idea more effectively. The PD could do it if it wanted to, but I don’t expect that to happen. Too much pride appears to be in the way of that.

If you’re saying that Wide Open is a set up, or blogs are a setup, I’m going to disagree with that. It depends on the blog and the blog author. I mean, you and I know that you read Wide Open and commented there frequently.

Look how commenters set me up constantly. I didn’t stop blogging because of that – I didn’t like it and I lobbied my co-bloggers to think about how we could foster better conversations. But I kept pushing the kind of content that I felt would foster dialogue and offer information not otherwise available about topics too infrequently covered.

If a candidate can’t respond to a blogger, they’ve got some pretty lousy skills of persuasion or communication.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what else you wanted to imply in your comment.

I disagree with this 100%: “Wide Open was an ill-fated experiment into an area that inherently biased and overtly opinionated.”

Btw, when I spoke at the AAPC conference in Akron last month, several attendees wanted to know what candidates should do about blogs. LaTourette’s path wasn’t one of the options I offered – and it never would be.