Comments on: OPENERS now does a political blog round-up

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:37:54 +0000

Village – thanks – I completely understand why you would hesitate to or not visit Wide Open – much clearer.

Yes – one of the goals was to expose people who hadn’t been reading blogs to the format. And yes it was to present four different views in one place.

Interestingly, you may know this already from reading this blog, but the words “Plain Dealer” don’t appear anywhere on the blog except at the bottom of the page! When you google and get a news results from Wide Open, I believe Plain Dealer is in the line somewhere, but otherwise, if someone bookmarked Wide Open and just went to it to see what was going on at any time, they’d never see any official PD moniker – just Cleveland.com.

But I hear you – the PD/cleveland.com website is not so user-friendly – it requires a lot of investment in getting around, though they have tried and tried to improve it – and they’ve succeeded in some places but you do have to know how to use it.

I’ve actually suggested that they provide some kind of tutorial or place where people can go to get media literate – I hope that happens because even print is going to rely more, not less, on online platforms, whether blogs or whatever.

Thanks again – I do get your perspective – I probably do the same thing re: blogs coming from other cities’ home papers etc.

By: Village Green

Village Green — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:01:57 +0000

Jill, I’m sure you were trustworthy and so on at Wide Open, but I’ve never been a fan of the Plain Dealer. I read the Beacon because I need to know what’s going on in my home town. The Beacon is a shadow of its former self and maybe I read it more as a habit. I read it online rather than buy it. The PD’s editorial stance has never matched my own and I’m not particularly interested in supporting it.

But your purpose was to what? Expose people who didn’t read blogs to blogs? Present four different views in one place? Perhaps I didn’t get the whole idea of it enough to be attracted to it, at least enough to overcome my antipathy to the PD online.

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:06:40 +0000

Ben – totally agree.

I think it’s good that they do it – I emailed Chris Jindra to say, this is a great step in getting PD print readers media literate – I hope they do more to push that.

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:06:03 +0000

Thanks, Village, I appreciate that. But let me prod just a bit more – so – you trust me to be independent and only constrained by my own kookiness here – but you aren’t sure that was/would be the same at Wide Open? yes?

If that’s the case, that is really interesting since what we were fighting for, really, was to in fact be able to be just as unrestricted there. So – I think, what you say, indicates that we were right to want to have the same freedoms there, if we were to provide something different and independent – yet – you aren’t quite sure if you could trust it, not me or the others, necessarily, but the whole setup?

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:59:14 +0000

Their roundup is certianly no Carnival of Ohio Politics.

By: Village Green

Village Green — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:28:26 +0000

Jill, I haven’t said anything about the Wide Open affair yet. I guess it is time to confess that although I think they “done you wrong” (and Jeff too), I never read your blog postings at Wide Open. I just wasn’t attracted to reading stuff at the Plain Dealer. I read more blogs and alternative news sites these days than the main stream corporate news machines. Why should I trust them? They sold the public Bush’s war.

I much prefer reading your posts here and knowing I’m reading a truly independent voice.