The Denver Post’s Spot blog gave GOP state chair Dick Wadhams a bullhorn yesterday to bash Vice President, who’s visiting Denver April 30, for being accused of plagiarism in 1987. (I must note that when The Spot last week announced Sarah Palin’s May 22 visit to Denver, State Democratic Chair Pat Waak wasn’t asked to comment. In fact, no Democrat was asked, but that’s the way it goes.)

Anyway, the Spot reported yesterday:

Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams couldn’t resist a jab at Biden, who on the presidential campaign trail in 1987 and in law school was accused of plagiarism.

“I understand Vice President Biden has personally written a special speech for this auspicious occasion and that the opening line is: …Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth. . . . ,'” Wadhams said.

The Spot should have used this opportunity to ask Wadhams what he thought of Republican Jane Norton’s own plagiarism of Gerald Ford. She plagiarized Ford during the announcement of her camaign.

The Spot impressively uncovered Norton’s plagiarism but hasn’t asked Norton about it.

I picked up Eric Boehlert’s new book, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, because I wanted to find out how a journalist like Boehlert shows that bloggers have a real-life impact on politics.
 

I mean, we all know there are who-knows-how-many bloggers out there, posting political opinions, facts, corrections, and errors of their own on the Internet for all to see. But what do they actually achieve, beyond talking to each other? Or should I say, linking to each other? How does their work affect mainstream politics?
 

That’s the beauty of Bloggers on the Bus. It captures the tactics used by blogging activists, who have writing skills but often minimal political experience, to move a lefty notion out of fantasy land and into the mainstream consciousness.
 

One way bloggers do this is by using cyber fundraising tools to steer political donations to promising underdog candidates, like unknown Elwyn Tinklenberg, who came inches away from unseating Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman, a GOP rising star, who stirred the ire of bloggers when she suggested that Obama was anti-American.
 

The book also explains how a “blogswarm” (many blogs focusing on the same topic) creates a wave of actions by blog readers. For example, bloggers mobilized their minions to inform the Democratic presidential candidates that planned debates on the Fox Network would have given undue legitimacy to Fox as a news source. The Democrats eventually agreed, and the debates were canceled.
 

Bloggers are probably best at swarming, and influencing the mainstream media in the process, but they also investigate. Liberal bloggers revealed that right wing pastor John Hagee, who had endorsed the Republican nominee, sermonized that God sent Hitler to “hunt” Jews and force them to go to Israel. After a video was uncovered and promoted by a little-known blogger, John Wilson, McCain denounced the pastor…-to the dismay of right wingers.
 

After reading Bloggers on the Bus, you’ll be able to list substantive political victories that can be attributed fully or mostly to bloggers.
 

As he explains how these political stories unfolded, Boehlert profiles the bloggers involved, illuminating their all-American brand of hard work and entrepreneurialism. The how-I-became-a-blogger stories (e.g., from art gallery manager to famous lefty blogger) are entertaining and inspiring.
 

The credibility of Bloggers on the Bus is enhanced by its willingness to air the nasty disagreements among liberal bloggers…-as well show the erroneous information that promulgated by top blogs (e.g., the false claim that Gov. Sarah Palin was not the real mother of her young son).
 

Boehlert acknowledges that left-leaning bloggers swarm around topics that most voters unfortunately could often care less about. Liberal blogs sink their teeth into wonky issues, like the Bush Administration’s wiretapping or President Obama’s refusal to pursue Bush officials who committed war crimes.
 

The tendency to fixate on fringe issues makes sense when the bloggers are in pure combat mode against the right wing.
 

But now their man, Obama, is in power…-even though, as Boehlert reports, Obama has unfortunately distanced himself from bloggers who helped him get elected.
 

Should these bloggers adjust their tactics to help Obama succeed in the compromised Washington milieu? Or should they continue to slash and burn and demand the President address their off-the-radar-screen screeds?
 

If you’ve read Bloggers on the Bus, you know moderate voices urging compromise will likely encounter a sea of venom online.
 

That’s too bad, because bloggers can clearly get things done when they have a focus, which should now be to dig into Obama’s core agenda (health care, the economy, and energy).
 

If they do this, they’ll be taking advantage of an opportunity for political change unlike any they’ll likely see again in their lifetimes.
 

If you had any doubt that liberal bloggers are a force to be reckoned with in American politics, Bloggers on the Bus will make you a believer.
 

It’s fair enough to cover the news from a conservative perspective, which is what Face the State claims to do, as long as your standards of “fair and balanced” don’t align with Bill O’Reilly’s. But it’s a problem when you develop such tunnel vision that you can’t even see a liberal politician’s name when he’s involved in something conservatives support. Maybe the name “Gov. Ritter” becomes invisible to Face the State’s unnamed reporters when he’s doing stuff conservatives like?

Maybe that explains what happened in the coverage below, which completely ignores Gov. Ritter’s involvement with Attorney General John Suthers. But whatever the explanation, it’s a ridiculously gross omission by Face the State, and it proves my point that the Colorado Independent, which covers news from a progressive perspective, does a better job of being fair and accurate than Face the State does. I’ve proven this before, but Face the State Editor Brad Jones stubbornly disputes my quantitative findings.

I don’t want Face the State to close down. I want it to do better.

FACE THE STATE

SUTHERS SIGNS ON TO HELP COMBAT POLLUTION IN SOUTHWEST COLORADO

Attorney General John Suthers has joined state Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, in a joint-effort to combat harmful pollution to southern Colorado caused by emissions from Four Corners Power Plant.

The two penned a letter sent to Interior secretary Ken Salazar (PDF) and the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), asking both to stop the FCPP from further polluting the region.

The FCPP is located across state lines on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, creating complex jurisdictional issues. As Interior secretary, Salazar has authority over these lands, while the state of New Mexico does not. Salazar’s office, however, declined to answer questions Tuesday about the FCPP and punted to the EPA, which did not return phone calls.

Talk about government bureaucracy run amok.

The only things missing from the ozone-busting tag team of Gov. Bill Ritter and Attorney General John Suthers are Mexican wrestling masks to completely shield their partisan identities.

The state’s chief executive and chief lawyer have teamed up to fight the belching coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant and the planned Desert Rock plant located just over the state’s southwestern border with New Mexico.

According to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the dynamic duo is taking two tacks …- push the Environmental Protection Agency to require stronger emission controls on the Four Corners Power Plant on Navajo Nation lands near Farmington, N.M., and halt an operations permit for the nearby Desert Rock Power Plant.

Says CDPHE: “The Four Corners Power Plant is the largest single nitrogen oxide source in the nation, emitting more than 40,000 tons of the ozone-causing pollution annually.”

Our colleagues at the New Mexico Independent get to the real crux of the problem with the so-called “clean coal” Desert Rock project:

Mary Yuhl, Air Quality Bureau Chief at the NM Environment Department, though, told the Independent the primary problem in the Four Corners region isn’t sulfur dioxide, it’s ozone, which the company’s mitigation plans don’t address.

It’s the ozone levels in the region, she said, that are near the maximum when it comes to the National Ambient Air Quality Standard.

Colorado officials are concerned that the northwestern New Mexico power plants, those in operation and planned, will continue to violate EPA ozone and mercury emission limits that affect our own state’s clean air standards …- violations that can come with hefty fines.

In several stories on the Desert Rock EPA permit saga reported by the New Mexico Independent, the health-threatening bottom line for Colorado becomes apparent:

In …econ-o-speak,’ an externality is an external cost or benefit that is not reflected in the market price. Electricity generation from coal-powered power plants is a perfect example of a negative externality; the cost of generating electricity does not reflect the health and environmental impacts that arise from using coal. Thus, these costs are ignored by producers.

–

On the regional level, coal use contributes to acid rain. Where the acid rain occurs is highly dependent on wind and weather patterns. At the local level, coal use can impact communities and ecosytems through increased smog and mercury levels. Thus, when we consume energy from these sources, the external costs can impact very different communities.

If the Rocky closes, media coverage of the state legislature and Colorado politics will take yet another hit–on top of the reduction we’ve already seen. 

Like it or not, online publications and blogs by political junkies will become even more important for airing political debate in public. 

So politicians, even if they are uncomfortable talking to bloggers, should make the exta effort to do so. 

So it was disappointing to hear Cara DeGette, a senior writer at the Colorado Independent, on online news outlet, say at a forum Tuesday that someone in the Republican Party had issued an “edict” that Republicans should not talk to the Colorado Independent. 

I asked Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams if this was true. “Well, actually, it is,” he told me. “When I am asked about these liberal blogs that are financed by scumbags like George Soros, I encourage Republicans not talk to them. I do not believe they are legitimate journalistic entities. And I think it would be the same thing as talking to the Democratic Party newsletter. I mean, why would we do that? So I do not speak to them. I don’t read them. I encourage Republicans who ask me about it to do the same thing. I don’t spend a lot of time initiating conversations like that. No, I think they are scumbags and I don’t think we need to talk to them.”  He said he had a “fairly clear position,” and I agreed.

He said he’ll talk to free-market-oriented sites, like FaceTheState.com, and other bloggers. To Wadhams, size doesn’t matter when it comes to blogs, but their source of funding does. Plus he thinks FaceTheState practices better journalism than the Colorado Independent–a view I’ve shown to be wrong previously. 

DeGette explained to those at the forum, sponsored by Colorado Media Matters, that she doesn’t understand why some Republicans wouldn’t talk to her. She defended her reputation as a journalist who aims to be fair and accurate, and she pointed out that Republicans like former Gov. Bill Owens will speak with her. (Even Wadhams did in the past.) She pointed out that public discourse is degraded if politicians try to pick and choose which journalists to grant interviews to. And besides not talking to her makes Republicans look bad, she said. 

I’m waiting for the day that a local TV station leads its late-night “newscast” with the weather segment. Yes, I know, this already happens whenever a small storm can possibly be hyped into a big-sounding one. But I think someday we’ll see the weather segment appear first on a regular basis. Think of the marketing: Weather Comes before News on Channel 20!

For those of you who like to know about the weather, but wish it were reduced to a 12-second summary on the local newscasts, you can get weather information all over the web, of course.

But there’s a local guy, who goes by “Weatherby,” who sends almost-daily emails about the upcoming weather. He lets his right-leaning politics slip out in his emails, he likes to dig at the local weather anchors, and his weather writing is blunt and fun.

I’ve been getting his emails for about a year. You also might like them.

His email earlier this week, with the subject line “yuck is on the way,” read:

Looks like there’s a decent chance for a crummy to partly crummy Thanksgiving weekend on the way with the yuk arriving about the same time the bird is done…..

To try him out, email him at SKGC77@aol.com and ask to be added to his weather list.  

In my Rocky column Saturday, I discussed recent changes at Westword, Denver’s alternative weekly owned by Village Voice Media. Staff writer Mike Roberts is now the lead blogger for Westword’s news blog, The Latest Word. For nine years, he’d been writing, among other things, a weekly media column called “The Message.” He’s now writing the print column about once a month, and posting lots of short media items on the blog–as well as items about lots of other topics. (The media posts are archived on the blog in the “More Messages” category on the right side of The Latest Word home page.) Here are excerpts from my discussion with Roberts on Tuesday, Nov. 18.

Jason: Was the change printed in the paper?

Roberts: No, there hasn’t been a change announced because, as I mentioned to you in my note yesterday, the column continues to exist. It’s just that it will be appearing less frequently as a result me overseeing our online news blog, The Latest Word-.

The model for this is one of the papers in our Village-Voice chain, the Dallas Observer. They have a blog called Unfair Park. It’s been really successful. And the powers-that-be here have been trying to figure out why it’s been successful, with an interest towards replicating it at the other Village Voice Media papers.

Jason: Successful by what measure?

Roberts: By simply the measure of page views and unique visits.

Jason: Is it profitable?

Roberts: When you talk about online and profit, you have to use air quotes. Someday it might be profitable. Fortunately all that dollars and cents stuff is way above my pay grade. The idea is to increase the number of folks visiting our website and other Village Voice Media websites. And they’ve done really well. And one of the theories about why is that they have assigned someone to oversee that blog. His name is Robert Wilonsky-. He is overseeing that on a daily basis, and he is making sure there is a lot of content on that site, over at least 10 items every day.

And the idea is simply by creating content they will come, to use a Field of Dreams paraphrase. The more content you put up there, the more people seem to be coming to the site.

So the idea was, and we were the first paper to try to replicate the success that the Observer has had, let’s assign somebody on very close to a full-time basis and make sure we have 10 posts a day on our news blog, and I was chosen for this mission.

So since we started it [June 23] every day that I have been here, we have had a minimum of 10 blogs, and our numbers are indeed way up.

So it seems like the theory has at least some credence to it…-that the more content we put out there, the more blogs, the more items, the more people are finding them and coming to our site. So that’s the idea-.

The corporate folks have been very happy with the numbers [at Westword]. I don’t know if this is a formal term used corporately or just a term we use jokingly around here, but the term we’ve been using is uber blogger. I’m the uber blogger. They have uber bloggers now assigned at other Village Voice Media papers-. I think the idea is that all the Village Voice papers will end up with someone in a role like mine-.

My column is about media, and I have a big interest in media and so a lot of the items I write are media-related.

Seven or eight years ago, my column was much longer in print than it became after the downturn started. I was getting 2,500 words per column, which is unbelievable. And because I has do much space I was able to write a really big hefty main item, and then I was able to write often three of four smaller items after that. As the page-count began to shrink, those other items often went away-.It went down to 1400 words, still very generous-.

Now online I essentially get to write those smaller items that I had to forgo a number of years ago. That’s one of the nice things, and I get to write a whole variety of different things, not only for the news blogs. I also used to be the music editor here and I continue to write a lot about music-.

The music stuff is probably easier to fit into my schedule than the full media column.

The way I did the media column it was very very time intensive with lots of interviews and lots of research. The music stuff is usually one interview or a review where I can write my opinion. That just fits in easier now-.

We also have a food blog called “Café Society.” One of my sad obsessions is cold cereal. I’m allergic to eggs, and as a result I grew up fetishizing Quisp and Quake and Count Chocula. I am getting to write a weekly cold cereal review…-a beautiful thing….

On The Latest Word blog, I have an interest in film as well. I actually have a Master’s Degree in screen writing from UCLA and love movies…-and this week being film festival week I’ve gotten to write film reviews and you-were-there kinds of things. I write about a wide variety of news beyond media, the stuff that’s in the headlines. So that’s the good stuff-.
 

There are cons as well as pros.  And one of the cons for me was I loved writing my column, and I loved doing long-form media writing.

I’ve gotten a chance to do several columns over the last few months. Certainly not every week. And I never missed a week unless I was on vacation, generally.

I do miss that weekly opportunity to flex my muscles in a long-form kind of way. There is the possibility that as this evolves that I will be able to get back to that.

Jason: When you say it’s not gone, what does that mean for now?

Roberts: If I have a story that comes up that I want to be able to do in a column form, I have been assured and it has been proven to be the case quite a few times that they will find space for me. That has been shown to be the case.

The problem is squeezing it all in.

I am supposed to do no more than six blogs a day, with the other four blogs being contributed by staff writers and editors, as well as the occasional freelancers. Sometimes those other four blogs have been easier to come by than others. Last week, for example, there were two days when I wrote 10 blogs and one day when I wrote nine.

And so, as a result of that output, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do the column the way I would like to. If we end up having more contributions from other staff writers, and I’m able to cut back on the sheer number of the ones I’m writing myself and I’m more in the mode of processing other people’s…-I read over, post the art, edit, embed videos, all of that stuff, for everybody else’s blog. I’m sort of the producer of it, in a sense. I hope to be able to get the column into the paper more often than I have in recent months. With luck this is a transitional stage and I will be able get back to that kind of long-form writing in addition to the shorter-form blog writing-.

There could be some story that comes up, that’s so good that we can make arrangements to shift my workload long enough for me to be able to write the column. That option is always there.

At this point, I’m literally writing on average 2,000 words per day and 10,000 per week. So it’s a lot to squeeze in more.

Jason: That’s amazing. It really is-.

Roberts: What I was lucky enough to do on a weekly basis for nine years was valuable, and I hope to get back to it.

In the meantime, I’m able to write about media matters in shorter form and in a more timely way. And that’s one thing that we, throughout our history at Westword, always sort of rued, was that we got only one time a week to get our point of view out there, essentially one bullet in the chamber, whereas the dailies had one every day. Now we have as many as we want ever day. We can be as timely and beat them on stories-.

Everything is so fluid right now. Not just for this concept but for the industry in general. Every day, I walk into the office, and I’m happy when the lights got on-.

I have complete freedom on what I’m writing for The Latest Word, so if there is a day where there are 10 media items that I want to write, and it gets us to ten, great. So I will continue to be writing about it just as much as I can.

Frankly, when this first started, I had unrealistic ideas about how much I could do on a daily basis. It became clear after a while that if I were to try to write as many blogs per day as I need to and write the column that my head would look like David Cronenberg scanners. It would explode.

Last week, I called Brad Jones, the Editor of the online news site FaceTheState.org, to discuss the impact on the election of stories published on blogs and online news sites, like his publication.

Face the State broke some interesting stories this election cycle, like this one. But the biggest election story from an online publication was Colorado Independent’s report that Republican Scott McInnis believes he could have beaten Democrat Mark Udall for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat. I discussed this in my column Saturday,

While I had Jones on the phone, I asked him why the url ColoradoIndependent.org leads to the landing page of FaceTheState.com. How did that happen?

Jones: They forgot to register all their domains. (laughter)

Jason: And so, are planning on keeping it forever? (laughter)

Jones: Oh, it is what it is. (laughter)

Jason: I mean, have they asked you for it?

Jones: No, you know, everything has a price. We are an independent Colorado news organization.

Jason: Do you think in the spirit of, what’s the word, you know, encouraging online journalism, that you would…-and a sense of professionalism…-be inclined to give it back to them?

Jones: Give it back to them? Look, if Cara or Wendy want to give me a call about the domain name, they can give me a call. I’m not a hard person to reach.

Jason: How’d you happen to notice that? Was it you?

Jones: Yes. You know, I own all the variants on mine. It’s basic brand protection.

In a column last year, I looked the 10 most recent news stories in the Colorado Independent and Face the State to see which online publication more often engaged in perhaps the most basic of professional journalistic practices: seeking a response from the person criticized or scrutinized in an article.

I found the Colorado Independent was much more likely to include opposing views in its articles.

Jones says that since I did my analysis, Face the State has “changed and grown and evolved,” and the Independent has also “reinvented itself” and its “staff has grown.”

“If you revisit that issue of how often we contact both parties of the story, as compared to what they do, I think hands down we are much more aggressive in our efforts to bring in opposing view points. We’re not always perfect, and I disagree with your initial analysis on that too, but, I mean, more of what we do is journalism. A lot of what they are doing now is blogging with quotes sprinkled in.”

I told Jones that I’d like to do the analysis again, and I asked him if he would join me in evaluating the stories over a given time period. Jones said, “Sure.”

I had hoped to hear back from Colorado Independent Editor Cara DeGette about whether she’d be willing to participate in a similar review of her stories. But, unfortunately, as I was completing this blog post, Westword confirmed that the Independent had laid off six employees on Monday.

So I’ll have to report on DeGette’s answer another time. But I’ll let you know, maybe in a few months, how my joint undertaking with Jones goes.

For my last column, I interviewed Brad Jones, Managing Editor of FaceTheState.com. Here are some excerpts from my interview with him.

Jason: You say you produce credible journalism, and you deserve credit for some of your investigations and articles, but then you do strange things, like you don’t have bylines. Why?

Brad: That’s not strange at all. As a media observer, as you are, you’d know it’s standard practice for insider publications, and I’m thinking of industries like politics, entertainment, trade magazines, it’s standard practice to have staff reports for a number of reasons. One, we think the story is the story. It’s not the writer. And second, a lot of those stories are a product of a team of writers and an editor. This is a standard practice employed by plenty of other publications.

Jason: If you make the statement that you’re practicing high standards of journalism, you’d want to have bylines. I think that’s pretty much indisputable. You may be right that that’s the way they do it in some industry publications, but why wouldn’t you do that? Is it that hard to list three or four people if they contributed?

Brad: Well, the left has gone after me personally as the public face and managing editor of Facethestate.com. Vicious attacks on my professional behavior, which I am happy to have people be critical of, but also on my personal character, my past, and my professional endeavors. And I don’t wish that on my staff.

Jason: That comes with the territory.

Brad: Ahh. Ad hominem on reporters and staff? That absolutely does not come with the territory. I’ve been very dismayed at the behavior of some of our critics. Most of the criticism of Face the State has been about our structure, our funding, me, you know, it’s innuendo. It’s exaggeration. It has nothing to do with journalism. I think people should judge our news content on its merits.

I should add, Jason, that our staff reporters identify themselves as staff reporters for Face the State. Our staff makes it very clear as far as sourcing a publication that they are writing for.

Jason: The headlines you put above links to stories in the Rocky and Post and elsewhere can be misleading. Like the one about “Wacko environmentalists.”

Brad: Quite frankly, we’re having fun. Politics is fun. Political news is fun. The news aggregation is a great place where we can bring people the important stories from around Colorado, and it’s informative but also humorous in a light-hearted way sometimes. I don’t put, “This is a news report” on the top of the news aggregation- Our audience is very sophisticated. They get what we’re doing.

Jason: Why don’t you pursue journalism awards, like from the Society of Professional Jouralists. Colorado Confidential got some of these.

Brad: Quite honestly, I would think the SPJ’s political agenda and judges are more in line with Colorado Confidential’s agenda than with ours-.We are helping to shape this new medium. I think we put out a quality product. We’re always happy to hear from our critics. We’re continuing to improve. Legitimate criticism doesn’t fall on deaf ears with us. We’re not here to please the Bill Menezeses [of Colorado Media Matters] of the world. I’m not. To be honest, a nasty rant from Colorado Media Matters reinforces that we’re doing the right thing. (In an earlier interview, Brad said, “If the Bill Menezes of the world are up in arms about me, I’m glad. I think Bill Menezes has a man crush on me, the way he obsesses on Face the State.”) 

Jason: That’s an extreme statement. I think you should hear what they have to say. Sometimes they have a legitimate criticism and sometimes they may not. You should try to have an open mind. Why not?