Ohio Valley Politics

The WVWV is holding a very important election right now to determine just who is the best woman blogger. The initial nominating round of voting has closed and Ohio’s own Jill Miller Zimon has been selected as one of the finalists. Jill’s blog “Writes Like She Talks” was one of the first Ohio blogs I ever read regularly and has long been one of my favorites, but I feel compelled to remain neutral in this important election.

I urge you to take a serious look at the other candidates and base your decision on the facts. Try not to think about how voting for Digby might result in a nuclear war that would surely destroy every single daisy picking child on the face of the Earth. Don’t buy into those filthy rumors that Jill Stanek attended parties at the Playboy Mansion or allegations that Taylor Marsh is just a pawn in Jim Taylor’s political machine. Just base your decision on who you think is best.

You can vote here.

*Take everything you read in this post with a massive grain of salt (except for the part about voting for Jill).

There’s a new post up over at the Wide Open blog, but it’s not really anything that we all didn’t see coming. The Plain Dealer is putting Wide Open on an “indefinite halt” while they consider how to proceed.

Here’s the announcement;

A car can’t run on two wheels, and Wide Open can’t continue with only one side of the political spectrum represented. So we’re going to call an indefinite halt to the project and step back to regroup.

We still believe that newspaper and newspaper Web sites need to engage the new media. Our first effort in that direction obviously didn’t fare well, but it would have been a still greater mistake not to make the attempt.

Over the next few days and weeks we’ll be giving a lot of thought to alternative ways of accomplishing the same end. If you have constructive suggestions to make, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Finally, sincere thanks to Dave, Jeff, Jill and Tom for giving this a try.

Jean Dubail
PD Assistant Managing Editor/Online

Of course the Plain Dealer needs to realize that wheels often do fly off when you forget to put lug nuts on them. Translation: if they wanted to set rules they should have done it before they were off and running.

When I wrote my first post on this I included a picture of a burning bridge. I did this because it was the perfect symbol for what the Plain Dealer had just done with bloggers. I don’t really see how they’ll ever be able to work with blogs until they take some action to fix the damage that’s been done. For now it seems like they’re more interested in sweeping the ashes of their burned bridge under the rug, hot coals and all.

Just to quickly get caught up on the Jeff Coryell/Plain Dealer situation here are some recent developments.

This YouTube video from Jeff and Jerid has been going around the blogs today, it’s definitely worth a watch.

You can donate to Bill O’Neill here.

Jeff also has a detailed article up at the Huffington Post. You can read it here.

The continuing saga of bloggers vs. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a new development. Jill Miller Zimon of Writes Like She Talks has also decided to leave the Wide Open blog following Jeff’s firing.

I really don’t see any way that Wide Open can continue on after all that’s happened. That much was set in stone when RAB got on board with all of this. That’s like Ohio State and Michigan meeting at the 50 yard line for tea during halftime.

Now even Republican bloggers are getting in on the anti-Plain Dealer movement sparked by the firing of a liberal blogger.

There are usually more than 1 side to every issue. But if what Jeff reports here is true, and I’m not missing any details, then he shouldn’t have been fired from the Plain Dealer. I rarely agree with Jeff, but he is a polite liberal who would have held the same positions regardless of who he gave $100 to.

I think the PD has really lost a lot of it’s online credibility with this already and apparently they’re still digging. Here’s their statement on the firing:

As most readers are no doubt aware already, Jeff Coryell is no longer blogging on Wide Open. The reason is simple: When we learned that he had contributed to a particular political candidate, we asked that he refrain from writing about that candidate and his opponent on this blog. Our concern was that since Jeff and the other Wide Open bloggers are paid, his views might be taken as those of the paper, which could raise legitimate questions about our fairness. Jeff was uncomfortable with that restriction, so we felt obligated to end our relationship.

It goes without saying that Jeff did nothing wrong. His contributions to Wide Open were first-rate. But clearly I should have anticipated this potential difficulty when we set up the blog, and avoided putting him and us in this position. In that sense, the fault is mine.

Jean Dubail
Assistant Managing Editor/Online

Now just think about it for a second. Donations are made based on your beliefs, not the other way around.

Ohio Daily Blogger Jeff Coryell was let go from the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Wide Open blog today. The Plain Dealer had been seeking to block Coryell from commenting on a congressional race in which he had donated to a candidate.

Today Dubail called me and asked if I would agree to never write about LaTourette on “Wide Open,” as a condition of my continued participation. He said that the arrangement was sought by Susan Goldberg, Editor of the Plain Dealer. When I declined to agree that I would never write about LaTourette on “Wide Open,” I was terminated by DuBail.

As a political blogger, I am a partisan. My political orientation as a progressive Democrat is an integral part of what I do and is completely transparent to my readers. This is a crucial component of being a political blogger/activist, and sets us apart from journalists in the classic sense. It was understood among the four participants in “Wide Open” that we are political partisans and that we would engage in political debate from our respective political points of view.

– Jeff Coryell

That second paragraph of the excerpt pretty much sums it up. Everyone knew all four of the Wide Open bloggers were partisan, that’s what made it unique. If there’s any surprise here, it’s that the PD can’t find political donations from the other three.

Ironically I finally got around to creating a commenting account at Wide Open today. After this, I doubt I’ll have much use for it.

Source: BREAKING: Congressman LaTourette Gets Blogger Fired From “Wide Open” | Ohio Daily Blog - A Community Blog On Ohio Politics And Public Affairs (via Plunderbund)

Update: Plunderbund is tracking the blog reactions. There’s a lot of them.

Jill at Writes Like She Talks has brought up an excellent point today: why aren’t bloggers allowed in the statehouse? Consider it for a second. There are a lot of good bloggers out there, in fact blogs have already become my primary source of information when it comes to the state government. My local newspaper (of course today would be the exception), in contrast, rarely discusses anything about Ohio legislative branch during a typical week.

Here’s a few more points I’d like to make in support of this idea. I’m not trying to start an entire blogging vs. MSM debate, just pointing out a few advantages that the format has.

1. Blogs often focus on one topic while traditional media has to devote equal attention to several different topics. Because of this a political blogger is more likely to cover political news than a typical news outlet. This is especially true in rural areas covered by smaller news outlets.
2. Blog news is “fresher” than other, offline news sources. Give a blogger a power outlet and a Wi-Fi connection and they’ll have news online within minutes. Other sources must wait to be published or broadcast.
3. Blogging combines the best of all forms of media. You can’t send audio out through the newspaper or send on demand text through the television. A blogger can go back and forth between media types by uploading MP3’s or posting videos to YouTube.

I’m sure I could go on but for right now let’s just leave it at that.