Russo On Ohio's Progressive Bloggers: They Have Fallen Silent And Ignore GOP Right's Racism

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Tim Russo says Ohio's progressive bloggers will write eloquent denouncements of the right's racism after Barack Obama's assassination. For now, he says they don't have the guts to stand up and battle the hate.

But why does he think Obama will be murdered? And why does he think anybody in the Ohiosphere -- right or left -- would favor, or be inclined to induce, such a horrendous act? Does surfing political blogs lead to violence? That seems a stretch. Sports fans who read about baseball don't suddenly become second basemen with .305 averages.

[UPDATE: Plunderbund's Eric Vessels asks Russo, "Please don't say the "A" word."]

Ohio Righties In A Mattfight: With Claws Out, Matt Naugle Scratches Matt Hurley Off His List

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Matt Naugle, who was Ken Blackwell's official campaign blogger during the Cincinnati Republican's ill-fated 2006 run for governor, is on the warpath against another GOP blog. Naugle says folks should tune out Matt Hurley's Weapons of Mass Discussion -- "let's ignore these vulgar basement dwellers." Both Naugle and Hurley are fixtures in the Ohiosphere, and they endlessly hammer liberals and Democrats. But it seems some of the partisan vitriol may be spilling into an internecine turf battle.

So far, there's been no response from Hurley, who has been gaining prestige in the world of conservative bloggers as a voice from Ohio. Hurley operates out of Butler County in the state's SW corner. Naugle says Hurley's blog is for dunderheads:

"If there are any conservatives in Ohio who are seriously interested in blogging about state politics, please shoot me an email (matt-at-naugblog.com) and I'd be happy to help you set up your blog."

Is it jealousy -- or self-promotion -- at the heart of it all? Feuds can be good for business, as Olbermann's swipes at O'Reilly have shown. Hurley is rated the most influential blogger in Ohio this week on BlogNet News while Naugle is No. 5. (The Daily Bellwether is usually somewhere in the mix on the same Top 20 list. But not this week because there were no posts for nine days during a Bellwether sabbatical.) Suspicion here is that the feud between the GOP bloggers is genuine. Naugle probably breaks more news than Hurley -- Naugle broke the story about former Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann's problems la femme last November, long before anyone else. He appears to believe that Hurley's blog is dependent on press releases more than any independent reporting.

[UPDATE: 9:45 pm -- The alert folks at Democratic-left Plunderbund (No. 6 on the BlogNet News influence list) have more on the back story. And it is an entertaining yarn about the blogspat's evolution throughout the day.]

The World's 50 Most Influential Blogs: By Mistake They Skipped Over Ohio

COLUMBUS (TDB) -- The big egos and self-promoters in the Ohiosphere (and you know who you are) didn't make the cut. Nor did any of the state's newspapers, despite their frantic efforts to escape print and find a presence on the Web. About those big egos . . . got you wondering?

Ohio Democratic Activist Paul Ackerman: Alleges Buckeye State Blog Inflated Readership Stats

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- There's little question that Buckeye State Blog has a national reputation as the most influential and important Democratic voice in the Ohiosphere. Now there's an ugly allegation that falsified readership data was posted online by BSB last year in an effort to boost its significance and denigrate As Ohio Goes, another progressive blog based in Ohio.

Some might be tempted to write the tempest off as pointless. Who cares if a blog inflates its readership with bogus numbers? But the truth is, honesty is an important quality. It is about character. It is about not cheating. It is about not being corrupt. It is about not being a deceiver or a fraud. It is about not saying one thing and hiding another. It is about not being a political voice who points out the ethical flaws in others while dismissing one's own. It is about not practicing what one preaches. It's about not being part and parcel of the truth-stretching political crowd.

This is what appeared in a comment from a BSB founder last year:

""Submitted by staff on Thu, 08/03/2006 - 9:03pm.
You're hilarious.
I think we are done. Enjoy hickman and whacky andy.
ps - thats 1 million visitors, not views - i have over 3 million views. Keep dreamin'"

But this week the claim of one million visitors and over three million views has been described as a falsehood by Ohio Democratic political consultant Paul Ackerman, a BSB insider who has been booted after a falling out with the blog's administrator. A disagreement about the vacancy in Ohio's 5th Congressional District escalated into rancor. It started over a minor point -- a discussion about who might be among the likely candidates to succeed Republican Paul Gillmor, who died earlier this week after falling down the stairs in his suburban Washington apartment.

As things grew more heated, Ackerman wrote:

"And as for Russell? Yes, he did lie about statistics on BSB. The thread where he bragged about hitting 1 million visitors and 3 million views is here. [Ed Note: It appears above]. At the time he posted that, I still had full access to the sitemeter account that I had created for this place and I knew it was complete bullshit. I must admit I wasn't all that concerned at the time, and when in a private moment I mentioned it to him, he laughed and said something like it made BSB look better. No surprise that he changed the password to the sitemeter account right after that."

Ackerman's post is troubling. He says BSB published the false claim about its statistics during the same point in time when Ohio Democrats, and the blog, were actively denouncing the culture of corruption that led to Tom Noe and the BWC scandal. Did the blog have its own culture of corruption?

I sincerely hope that there were no falsehoods about statistics, no inflated numbers, no disgrace or fall from grace. But the episode -- from what is known so far -- appears distressing at least, dishonest at most. Was somebody in the Ohiosphere so ethically challenged they could utter an untrue statement and think nothing of it at all? In other words, does lying come that easy? And one more question: Aren't Democrats supposed to be better than that?

Bizzyblog's Tom Blumer And A New York Times Writer Go Mano a Mano: Timesman Posts Comment On Blumer's Blog

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Ohio's Bizzyblogger Tom Blumer ripped The New York Times for underplaying personal income data to make the Bush years seem dismal. New York Times staff writer David Cay Johnston promptly fired right back with a long comment on Blumer's Website that defended the attack on his economic analytical skills. It wasn't so long ago that journalists ignored blogs, or deemed them too unimportant to dive in with comments. Now a sea change: They appear ready to duke it out. Kudos to Mr. Blumer for attracting such attention. And kudos to Mr. Johnston for punching back. Everyone benefits from the dialogue.

Click the link (above) to Blumer's post, then eyeball Johnson's response, which appears verbatim below. The Timesman says he didn't get into the news biz to make things up:

"You make interesting points — and also some unfair ones, especially leaping to the conclusion that I am dishonest.
"The idea that in the most scrutinized news report in the world I could twist facts for some venal purpose is laughable. We fire reporters who do that and we should.
I have been active in exposing dishonest reporting since 1973. I am the only reporter whose expose of news manipulations and blackouts lead to a broadcast station being sold to avoid losing their licenses (six stations were sold). I have many other published articles on such issues over the decades in both newspapers and journalism publications.
"Readers and reporters can reasonably disagree on what is significant and the choices in the limited space and time I had.
"I did not get into this line of work more than 40 years ago to make things up or twist them. If I wanted to I would have become a novelist or a screenwriter.
I got into it to tell people things they did not know and would not know but for my work. That’s the joy of it. And throughout my career I have found things were not at all as I imagined, including in the world of tax that I have covered for more than a dozen years.
"Given your jaundice it may surprise you to know that I was the reporter — the only reporter — to do the calculations revealing that the very highest income America got a much bigger tax cut from a law signed by Clinton than they did from Bush, reporting this several times in articles and with detailed graphics.
"That is to say, I report the numbers the same way regardless of who is in the White House or any other position of power. My focus is on what happens after the politicians speak and enact laws, not on what they say.
"When I write about one-year changes bloggers criticize me for not taking a longer look at the data. In this article I focused on the peak of the previous economic expansion (and compare it to results going back to 1945) and you accuse me of being dishonest for not cherry picking data from the late 90s.
"It is reasonable to disagree about whether using the high point of the last economic expansion is the most informing measure. It is certainly common to use this measure. Making that choice is neither dishonest nor absurd.
"Behind my article today are extensive spreadsheets I did analyzing the data by income group, components of income (wages, dividends, etc.) and other factors. I then took care to not cherry pick the data, but to select those data points that exemplified what careful checking and cross checking showed. There are problems with using this analysis because of what might be called income bracket creep, which cannot be backed out from the data I relied on.
"EITC is not in the IRS data, which you use as a cudgel against my work. This money totals less than a half of one percent of all income (and is not market income). There are other forms of income not counted as well that you do not mention. For example, this administration and has said that there is widespread and significant understating of non-wage incomes at the top, as did the last.
"That is to say, there is no perfect measure and my article identified the measure I used — income tax data.
"Not in my report today was this finding from my analysis, which in light of your closing comments you may want to ponder:
"Among the under $100,000 income group, comparing 2005 to 2004, the number of taxpayers rose 0.5%, total real AGI fell by -$73 billion, or -1.9 percent, and average AGI incomes declined by -$801 from $33,847 to $33,046.
"In the year 2000 the average AGI (in 2005$) of those making under $100,000 was $35,286. That means, compared to 2005, that average incomes in this group are down -$2,240 or -6.3 percent from the peak year of the economic expansion.
"The figures are not directly comparable because some people moved up and out of that bracket. However, in 2000 this group comprised 90.7% of all taxpayers and it is now 88% of all taxpayers.But that is also not a large change in share of taxpayers.
I cite this to show the care I take to analyze the data fully before I wrote about it and to make sure anomalies are not treated as substance.
"The fact is that average incomes remain below their peak and when you look at groups below $1 million of AGI, which 99.77 percent of all taxpayers in 2005, the declines are clear. It suggests that my reportorial observation about many people feeling economic stress (of which there is plenty of evidence from polls and other sources) is not absurd and does not lack a reasonable basis for mentioning.
"The growth in incomes from 2002 to 2003 is statistically insignificant at 0.2 percent or $99, contrary to your assertions about how many years we have had growth in average incomes.
"Whatever the data show is what I report. If, for example, the data showed that the incomes of those at the bottom were rising I would report that. Oh, gosh, I did report this morning that the number of Americans reporting very low incomes declined by more than 5 percent. That could have been the lede, but average incomes provides a broader measure of greater interest so I lead with that. Reasonable people can disagree without resorting to attacking the reporter’s integrity.
"Comment by David Cay Johnston — August"

4 Ohio Bloggers Courted By Plain Dealer: Possible Deal In The Works

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Quiet talks are underway between four independent Ohio bloggers -- two on the left, and two on the right -- and The Plain Dealer, which is courting them to become featured commentators of a sort on its branded Website, Cleveland.com. The indys are popular, have followings in the state and outside, and could bring fresh and sometimes audacious perspectives to a traditionally stolid MSM outlet. There is no question that the newspaper came courting because of a need to somehow preserve its role as a key source of information in a media business environment that is rapidly changing.

According to whispers The Daily Bellwether has overheard, the bloggers who are in talks with the PeeDee are Writes Like She Talks, Ohio Daily, NixGuy, and Bizzyblog. An editor from the PeeDee, Jean Dubail, approached Jill Miller Zimon of Writes Like She Talks recently with a proposal that set in motion the discussions. Nothing has been structured yet, and Dubail reportedly plans to place something on the negotiating table this week with more details. Dubail was the editor who put together the newspaper's OPENERS blog, which went online in early 2006. This could be the first marriage between the MSM and the indy Ohiosphere, which is newly ascendant and barely three years old.

[UPDATE: 7:29 am -- Cincy Newsache intelligently discussed the difficult situation that metro daily newspapers are finding themselves in these days as they attempt to remain relevant for readers and advertisers while producing revenue streams for their owners. (I, too, wrote about the Harvard study last week, but Newsache did a superior job.) Newsache's report probably explains why the MSM is now looking at the indy bloggers -- people who were once dismissed as amateurs in newsrooms -- with unfeigned interest. Change is definitely in the wind.]

[UPDATE: 8:00 am -- Rasmussen Reports had a poll out last Thursday that said hardly anybody who is not a senior citizen gets their news from newspapers. For Americans under 40, they turn to the 'net.]

So far, there is no financial package, nor have any compensation arrangements been offered -- and there may never be. Instead, the bloggers might simply choose to be affiliated with Cleveland.com for prestige and leverage that would increase their influence as members of the digital commentariat. It also could give them a leg up as voices to pay attention to while the 2008 presidential race unfolds. As bloggers associated with Ohio's largest news gathering organization in a critical state, they would probably be viewed as players on the political stage.

For the PeeDee, the deal has other upsides. Newspaper Websites have not been growing, according to recent academic research. Indy bloggers would offer a new approach, especially since the four voices sought would be non-professional journalists who kicked off their careers by writing about things on their own agendas, things that interested themselves. They found audiences through their work and writing.

If the arrangement jells, it could be a tipping point in the Ohiosphere. Other MSM outlets may have to start looking for indy bloggers to compete, or to freshen themselves, or to join the paradigm shift, which is trending away from MSM outlets rooted in print. They are losing audience. The bloggers may be able to show them how to find an audience, or new audiences.

Bizzyblog and NixGuy are located in Cincinnati's suburbs and lean Republican and right. Write Like She Talks and Ohio Daily are Cleveland area blogs and lean left. The authors, Jill Miller Zimon and Jeff Coryell respectively, make no bones about hiding their politics. They proudly call themselves Democrats.

Anyhow, the match hasn't yet been made with the PeeDee. It could come to naught. Or the indy bloggers could soon be getting ready for their star turn on the MSM stage.