Powered by Twitter Tools.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Last time around we learned that AOL’s Politics Daily has fired basically all of the bloggers and kept only professional journalists. Today we found out why. Melinda Henneberger wants it that way. And she says so, in her own words.
90% of the column is dedicated to “How dare anyone think we would bow to corporate pressure or financial linkage to Playboy.” Which leaves a scant few paragraphs to answer the obvious followup question, “If Playboy wasn’t the problem, why were all the bloggers fired?“
The paragraph below is the closest we get to an answer, but it reveals plenty.
Why did I hire these veteran reporters, when the prevailing wisdom is that grown-ups are too expensive and too dull, and that kids hired on the cheap – or else not paid at all – are the way to go? Because experience matters – and it shows on the site every day, from Cannon’s D-Day article putting Obama’s Saturday speech in Normandy into historical context, to Wood’s recent piece on the threat of rogue-state nukes. All of these reporters are old pros who have been at this for decades — and would sooner hang up their press passes than work for an outfit that would cave to corporate pressure. We intend to raise the bar on standards on the web, and this incident reinforces both how important that goal is, and all that we’re up against.
OK let’s get beyond the obvious howler about sooner hanging up their press passes than work for an outfit that would cave to corporate pressure. (Quick! think of an example where a journalist quit for ethical reasons!).
Note the contrast…
Bloggers: Kids, cheap, inexperienced
Journalists: Veterans, grown-ups, experienced.
By the way, cheap inexperienced kid is a real nice way to describe a 39 year old network administrator nearing the top of his profession who, by the way, has been following politics his entire life. Not that I’m bitter.
Tommy Christopher
picks up the glove:
Another Huffington Post blogger, Lee Stranahan, was way ahead of traditional journalists on the John Edwards affair, and got pilloried for his trouble. What did Melinda’s keen journalistic instincts tell her?
I think that’s how a lot of us felt, too, that particularly at a time when resources across the industry are being slashed to the bone, this didn’t seem like a high priority. I still think that’s true—but I also think John Edwards should have known the story would come out and spared his family and his party the embarrassment—and potentially, the loss of the White House.
Ouch!
And then there’s the point, made above and further in the Newsbusters piece that directly challenges Melinda’s direct assertion that she did not delete Tommy’s post about the Playboy article.
Henneberger also claims that she had never read Christopher’s article regarding the Playboy controversy and implied that she was not, in fact, the one who deleted it from Politics Daily:
I never even read the Playboy post I supposedly fired Christopher for writing. It was killed because the editor who handled it said it contained profanity, which Christopher had been asked not to use in his work. (To be perfectly precise, what the editor wrote was, “Hey chief, whole lotta f*** in this Christopher piece; that OK?” And what I replied was: No, it isn’t.)However, NewsBusters has obtained a screen shot (edited to remove unrelated parties’ names) which confirms that it was Melinda Henneberger who deleted Tommy Christopher’s Playboy story from Politics Daily (click to enlarge):
It seems that the internet runs on servers, and these servers have these things called logs…double ouch!! and Uh-oh!
Seems that Melinda might need a veteran old-pro journalist to fact-check her column…
Yeah, yeah lame obvious joke, but so easy I couldn’t resist.

Powered by Twitter Tools.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Did I hit all the key buzzwords in the title? I think so…
Anyway, I’ve been enjoying a self-imposed blog break to move on to other more important things in life, like sell the house, learn to play Bass guitar among other things.
I considered spilling what I knew about the political machine/AOL/politics daily fiasco, since many of my fellow bloggers and netizens would, I’m sure, find it quite interesting.
But that would require posting and since I was more than a little burnt out, I blew it off. In the meantime other political bloggers at AOL have been fired and now Tommy Christopher has as well.
This is quite shocking as Christopher while quite liberal, is also a good blogger and semi, if not fully, professional at it.
I don’t know what AOL was paying Tommy, but unless it was multiple powers of what they were paying me it was way, way too little for the value they were getting.
Let’s back up a bit. September 2006. Out of the blue, I get an email from a very nice lady at AOL who’s been following my Ohio political blogging and asked if I would like to do it for them and a little $$. Sure, I said, and so began a long and (for me) fruitful side job. I was one of many bloggers nationwide to be so picked.
Late in 2007 the AOL site is relaunched with a focus on presidential politics and a fraction of the bloggers were picked to come over and write for the new site. political machine. I was one of them. Why? I don’t know probably something about consistency, unique viewpoint and non-rabidity. But whatever.
The political machine did a decent job of covering the election and got many hits. I have no idea whether it made money, but I know I did and the checks all cashed so no complaints here anyway.
And then around January we started hearing rumblings about a new direction and site, we also got a new manager, coming over from Comedy Central, a Michael Kraskin. I’ll try to compress the timeline from here to relevant events to provide some context. We also find out that Melinda Henneberg has been hired to revamp the site.
February/March Email goes out saying we’re all going to be more professional, no personal attacks, journalism standards, no partisan unsupported POV. Must be analytical and objective. Fine I can work with that.
March: Kraskin starts busting my stuff for bad english, grammar, etc. I clean it up a little, and actually start proofreading. A little annoyed, because hey it’s blogging, but whatever, I can work with whatever standards are passed down.
April: Launch. We learn that full-timers are hired. Professional journalists, presumably with decent middle income salaries and benefits. About ten of them, including well-knowns such as Walter Shapiro and Carl Cannon, among others. new site is PoliticsDaily.com and aesthetically looks good. Material from full-timers is newspaper column quality.
Also April: oldtime bloggers (like me) are still posting, and trying to match quality with full-timers (albeit without the pay, but with day jobs). Amateur stuff rarely gets posted or fronted.
May 7th. I am fired. Reason: Cutbacks, we like your stuff Dave, just not working out. I’m fine with it, but a little annoyed at the lying. I mean really, cutbacks? You just hire a bunch of full-timers and you’re worried about my $12/post. Riiiggghhht. No I’m sure among other reasons, they felt my stuff wasn’t up to snuff. Note though that I was not replaced, not by any blogger for sure.
May, week later: Mark Impomeni is fired. Apparent reason (from what I know) a disagreement over content in a post.
So two conservative bloggers are fired.
The first week in June, one of the most prolific bloggers, Tommy Christopher is fired, as noted above. Reason, ostensibly the playboy thing.
Also, just learned via twitter that Caleb Howe is fired, another conservative blogger. By my count that’s three conservative bloggers and one liberal gone.
This smells like a purge to me. My hypothesis is that AOL is looking to fire all the bloggers and turn politicsdaily into a pure journalism and editorial shop. Why they don’t just go ahead and do so, I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader.
Whether an online website can actually support the salaries and benefits of 10-15 journalists is another huge question mark. Whatever it is, it’s not the highly successful Jason Calacanis model that AOL originally bought, and it’s not blogging.
It could be that Melinda Henneberger is trying to employ as many journalists as she can (note her background) and dumping the bloggers is just an unfortunate side effect. If that’s the way they want to go, that’s their prerogative. But it seems to me they’re doing it ham-handedly in a way guaranteed to generate a high negative reaction from the blogosphere.
Unless they believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
UPDATE
I certainly don’t agree with the left-leaning Christopher’s politics. But he showed guts blogging about the Playboy “hatef**k” list when few others on his side paid attention or cared. I think U.S. News should trade in tired old Bonnie Erbe and hire Tommy Christopher.

The Columbus Dispatch : Columbus, Ga., seeks federal stimulus money to help NCR move from Dayton
Prompting protests from Ohio officials, a Georgia city has asked the federal government for money from the $787 billion stimulus package to help finance the transfer of NCR Corp. from Dayton to Georgia.
Although Columbus, Ga., Mayor Jim Wetherington said he does not know if the federal government will approve his request, he wants stimulus money to help refurbish a 340,000 square foot facility and construct a 100,000 square foot building for NCR to make ATMs.
“We have applied for stimulus funding, but we haven’t heard anything whether we’re going to get the money we applied for,” he said. “If we don’t, then local government would have to foot the bill.”
Dayton’s share of new jobs from the Obama stimulus: -2000. And that’s not even counting the dealerships and factories lost from government motors.
Way to go!
Enjoying my blog break because there is always someone else who will notice that Obama is sowing the seeds of his own destruction. Jimmy Carter II, if we’re lucky. If not, There’s always James Buchanan.
Anyway,
Dennis the Peasant:
Well, the first thing that needs be mentioned is that President Obama has shown a spinelessness that in no way can be justified by the facts. Presidents are elected to lead. That often involves making tough decisions and taking political hits. The president hasn’t shown he’s willing to do either. And please, spare me the whole “the Republicans are scaremongering” thingy. Of course they are.But you know what?
If Barack Obama had balls it wouldn’t matter, now would it? He’d stand up, do the right thing, and take the hit like a man. That’s what presidents are supposed to do. And the ugly truth is that’s exactly why Dick Cheney is winning the argument on the issue of torture… He’s shown that he has the balls to stand up for what he believes is right, irrespective of whether he actually is right.

I’m actually not that all concerned about the Unions being given half of Chrysler or GM.
Why? Half of nothing is nothing, and if new GM and new Chrysler are saddled with legacy costs and unions, they will almost certainly have negative equity from the start.
It’s clear that the unions and the executives have been engaging in a classic mafia bust-out of the big three. They’ve been looting it for decades. Just a few years ago, GM had $20 billion dollars in liquid assets. Now they have nothing. Where did that money go?
Ford has a chance, but GM and Chrysler will have to be liquidated. There are brand names, factories, and know-how that are worth something in those messes, but as they stand they are not going concerns.
Oh and I would think that the borrowing costs of any private company with both TBTF status and plenty of union muscle just went through the stratosphere.
Chuck Colson:
In Albuquerque, a same-sex couple asked a Christian wedding photographer to film their commitment ceremony—and sued the photographer when she declined. An online adoption service was forced to stop doing business in California when a same-sex couple sued the service for refusing, on religious grounds, to assist them.Convinced? Clearly, homosexual “marriage” and religious liberty cannot co-exist—because gay activists will not allow them to. As marriage expert Maggie Gallagher puts it, same-sex “marriage” advocates claim that religious faith “itself is a form of bigotry.”
Tune in tomorrow, for I want you to learn how you can help protect both our religious rights and marriage itself. I know this may sound alarmist, but it’s true. If we don’t work to stop this juggernaut, we may soon find ourselves hunted down at work, at school, and even at church—as others have been—by those determined to force us to accept as a moral good what God calls evil.
It is impossible for the government to be values neutral. Someone’s values are going to be enforced. More examples at breakpoint.

In every economic crisis or mushrooming recession, the MSM and the leadership classes always talk up how great things really are, and how great things are going to get in just a little while, putting on a brave face and putting out optimistic talk—and that’s fine: That sort of mild deception is not only acceptable, it is in fact necessary. Putting on the happy mask is not the issue.The issue is, what’s behind the happy mask. In other words, what are the people in power actually doing, and do they have any sense that they know what they’re doing, or where they’re going? Or are they making it up as they go along? Are they on a path—even if it’s the wrong path, or one I don’t agree with—or are they lost in a wilderness and just going around in circles?
That’s my problem. That’s why I’m freaking out.
Sixteen months into this Millennial Depression, and less than a business quarter into Obama’s administration, it is inescapably clear that Team Obama hasn’t the slightest idea what it’s doing. To pretend otherwise is self-deception. The louts and Constitutional traitors of the Bush administration didn’t much know what they were doing either—but they were flat stupid. Team Obama doesn’t have that excuse.
Doesn’t sound like a partisan to me! And yet is completely freaked out by team Obama.

I have been formally relieved of my services at AOL. www.politicsdaily.com has gone in a completely different direction with hired full-time professional journalists and such and just a small smattering of us regular folks. We’ll see how that works out for them. I have my doubts, but who knows? I am, after all, not a professional.
Don’t worry I’m not crying much and will probably take a well-deserved break from politics for awhile.
Remember that while it sounds insanely cool to get paid for blogging, it also turns a fun hobby into a second job. And all that that entails. Think about it. More on that later, maybe. I’m going to go enjoy the rest of the Saturday now.
Filed under: Senate, Primaries
Read up on the latest in the Specter saga at Matt Lewis’ post here. First Specter backstabs Republicans with the stimulus, then he backstabs them again by switching parties, only to find a knife protruding from his own back. The fingerprints on that knife clearly belong to one Harry Reid, senate majority leader.
“Sen. Reid assured me that I would keep my committee assignments and that I would have the same seniority as if I had been elected as a Democrat in 1980,” Specter said. “It was understood that the issue of subcommittee chairmanships would not be decided until after the 2010 election. Some members of the caucus have raised concerns about my seniority, so the caucus will vote on my seniority at the same time subcommittee chairmanships are confirmed after the 2010 election. I am confident my seniority will be maintained under the arrangement I worked out with Sen. Reid.”…
By Tuesday night, Reid had no option but to strip Specter of his seniority, staffers with knowledge of the situation say. Reid preserved a vestige of his original promise to Specter by vowing to revisit the matter after the 2010 midterms.
…
Other Democrats, including Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) all said they were kept in the dark about Reid’s decision. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he was in the loop but referred all questions to the leader.
It would be fun to focus on the karmatic aspect of this, and no doubt others will. But take a look at the excerpts above and it’s clear that either Harry Reid is one of the most deceiving manipulating SOB’s in the senate, to match good ‘ol snarlin’ Arlen himself…
Or Reid is extremely incompetent. At this point senator Specter is likely putting out feelers to McConnell about coming back. To which my preferred response would be, “stay over there, we’ll beat you with Toomey or Ridge, if it even gets that far.”
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Gaffes, Obama Administration
The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday.…
The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.
So the administration freaks out New York, and we won’t even get an updated stock photo of Air Force One around the Statue of Liberty! I guess we’ll have to make do with the old stock photography.
This is a sad day for America.
The photos have not technically been “classified,” a White House aide said, but they are being kept from public view.
Well then I would think that technically, the photos might be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request.
But don’t worry, just because the brilliant minds behind this fiasco are also taking control of the financial system plus AIG, GM, and Chrysler doesn’t mean they will screw that up as well!
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Senate, Republicans
via
NRO,
The Courier-Journal has the latest from Senator Bunning, likely the most vulnerable Republican in the senate.
“Do you know Arlen Specter will be 80, has had four bouts with cancer and he still wants to run for the U.S. Senate?” Bunning continued. “And I’m being criticized at 77 and healthy for wanting to run for the U.S. Senate by certain leadership people in my party. Give me a break.”Asked if the leadership he was referring to was McConnell, Bunning answered: “Obviously. Do you want me to spell it out for you?”
He said: “Do you realize that under our dynamic leadership of our leader, we have gone from 55 and probably to 40 (Senate seats) in two election cycles, and if the tea leaves that I read are correct, we will wind up with about 36 after this election cycle.
So if leadership means anything, it means you don’t lose … approximately 19 seats in three election cycles with good leadership.”
Hmmm… that’s a pretty accurate and lucid account of recent history and current events. He doesn’t seem too senile to me! But wow that is a harsh blow against a fellow senator from the same state and the minority leader to boot. That’s another piece of evidence that Bunning is done. He’s starting to say stuff as if he doesn’t care anymore. But then again, he’s been a little loose on the saying things front for awhile now.
So is he running or not running? In this interview he wouldn’t say, only that he encouraged Trey Grayson, The Republican KY Sec of State, to set up an exploratory committee. That would lean pretty heavily on the “not running” side of things. But this interview, well let’s just say Bunning doesn’t seem too happy with the situation.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Senate, Primaries
Courtesy of Cilizza at the
washingtonpost.com, three good paragraphs. First, in response to the polling reported by DK yesterday.
“This is a statement of the obvious fact that Pat Toomey is not yet well known by statewide general-election voters,” Toomey communications director Nachama Soloveichik said about the Quinnipiac numbers. “Where he is well known, by general-election voters in the swing 15th District and by statewide Republicans, he is overwhelmingly popular.”
I think that’s the right take on it, but unfortunately it’s going to be hard selling that to keep another big name from coming in.
Speaking of… Tom Ridge is now serious.
Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge (R) is seriously considering a 2010 bid for the Senate seat held by Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter and will make his decision in the next two weeks, according to several sources familiar with his thinking.
And on the other side, Arlen Specter may have had the Democratic establishment clearing the decks for him, but not everyone is playing along. Joe Sestak wants some senate Democratic primary action and he’s set to go.
Sestak, who was elected in 2006, has more than $3 million in his House campaign account, all of which could be transferred to a Senate bid. Those familiar with Sestak’s thinking said yesterday that the congressman will wait to see how Specter votes over the next few months before making a final decision about the race.
So if Specter doesn’t vote like a Democrat he faces a Democratic primary that could be very, very tough. If he does vote like a Democrat he will further underscore the GOP line that he’s just a cowardly sellout. This guarantees a closer election as he loses any Republican support and are independents motivated to vote for cowardly sellouts? This is going to be interesting.
I wonder if Specter would like a do over on that stimulus vote.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Republicans, Sarah Palin, 2012 President
Sources in the office of GOP Rep Eric Cantor, who’s leading the new effort, tell me that Palin and her staff still have yet to respond to their invitation that she join their effort, which is called the National Council for a New America.No less a GOP luminary than John McCain confirmed last week that the group had reached out to Palin. The new GOP effort was launched on Thursday, and had its first big event on Saturday. That means Palin has had four days to respond to the group’s entreaties.
A spokesperson for Palin hasn’t responded to emails I sent last Thursday and today asking if she’d be joining. There are no signs she has responded to Ben Smith, who asked the same.
Is it that she is absolutely deluged with invitations and requests? Is it that McCain and Romney are part of this? Or does it mean she doesn’t see much value here (she did make it to that Right to Life event in Indiana after all).
Or is it simply that McCain has, as a minority party senator, plenty of free time now and Romney even more, while Palin has a state to run.
I’m open. I could buy any of this.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Media, Obama Administration
AP looks at a two studies that evaluated exactly how much the media is in the tank for Obama by comparing the press coverage with that of Bush and Clinton. Answer: big time.
The tone of comments by reporters and sources on the three networks reflected positively on Obama in roughly the same proportions, 57 percent on ABC, 58 percent on CBS and 61 percent on NBC. Bush faced a two-thirds negative reaction, and Clinton 44 percent in the same period.…
Another independent think tank, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, did a more extensive look at media outlets and judged 42 percent of news stories, editorials and columns were pro-Obama. Clinton was 27 percent positive and Bush 22 percent positive in a similar evaluation.
Their defense?
The newscasts reflect reality, said Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the “CBS Evening News.” He said he believed that the president has done extraordinarily well. “Everybody, including Republicans, would have to say that his first 100 days have been great,” he said.
Yeah it’s been peachy. Unemployment is reaching towards double digits, GM and Chrysler are being nationalized. half the administration appointments are tax cheats, government receipts are falling off a cliff, we’ve spent a trillion dollars on bailouts and stimulus above and beyond the usual Federal madness. Oh and meanwhile Iran continues their nuclear work and North Korea is launching missiles and wants to test another bomb.
If this is “success” … egad!
But perhaps success is measured in positive media press, which in that case … best president evah!
Now granted, except for the deficit acceleration and the appointment fiascos, yes much of this is inherited. But personally I’d hold off on saying this have been great until some of these problems get fixed. But that’s just me.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Senate, Primaries
Update on the Ridge vs. Toomey situation that Matt
blogged about earlier.
Roll Call via the scorecard
POLITICO.com
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge is considering running for the Republican Senate nomination in his home state, according to a senior Republican aide with knowledge of the situation.National and Keystone State Republicans have been publicly and privately urging Ridge to consider a Senate bid since Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) announced earlier this week that he was switching parties and would run for re-election as a Democrat in 2010.
Well, this is more than annoying. It smells again like the National GOP is jumping in to save the party from those annoying conservatives that make up a frustratingly large part of GOP voters.
Depending on what happens in the next year and a half, I can easily imagine Toomey winning over a damaged and weakened Arlen Specter, especially if Specter gets primaried. My gut reaction is that there is no need to save the party from Pat Toomey, and doing so will only anger grassroots PA conservatives.
Now, I may change my mind if I see some good polling data that shows Tom Ridge having a significant advantage over Arlen and Toomey, but for now it looks like Toomey is once again going to get screwed over by the national party, and unnecessarily.
Remember, social conservative Rick Santorum won in PA in happier times for the GOP, and it took a PA political icon to take him out. Republicans can win here and Toomey is primarily a fiscal conservative at a time when it’s going to be very important for the GOP to build up their fiscal conservative credentials.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Filed under: Primaries, Fundraising
Weapons of Mass Discussion were on the con call today and had the updates.
The Swamp has the story
Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland presides over a state that the Democrats were able to corral for the election of President Barack Obama last year, a state which nevertheless has undergone extreme pressure in the recession now underway even before it was a recognized recession. How Ohio plays in 2010 will speak volumes about what Ohioans make of the Democratic strategy for economic recovery.
And apparently Newt Gingrich was tipped off? This is what he said last night:
I am confident that when you have candidates like John Kasich for Governor and Rod Portman for the Senate in Ohio, you have a ticket that in 2010 is going to be dramatically stronger than anybody would have suspected 30 days ago. ( FOXNews.com)
John Kasich was a congressman from central Ohio in the nineties and part of the Gingrich revolution. Not surprising at all if Newt would have an advance heads up on this. And in OH, with Cincinnati being red and Cleveland being blue, Columbus is usually the difference maker. That Kasich is known in the Columbus area is an asset. I’m also happy is that we’re going in a different direction than the leadership that lost the statewide races in 2006.
But even more of an asset is that he has nothing to do with our former GOP governor, the despised Bob Taft. The Ohio GOP has had the slats knocked out of it for the last two cycles, but they also have a deep bench of quality candidates, as this announcement shows.
The sitting governor, Ted Strickland, is a formidable politician and has decent popularity even in these tough times with decent fundraising skills. But Kasich is no sacrificial lamb. As he indicated on the con call, he intends to spend the next thirty days fundraising, after that we’ll have a better idea if this will be a titanic matchup or more of a David vs. Goliath.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Dave is a geek, network admin, and political junkie who contributed to the now-defunct Wide Open and AOL’s Political Machine. Some posts here are linked back to both sites.
email: dave -at- nixguy -dot- com / Follow me on Twitter
Recent Comments