Buckeye State Tubes RNSC

Buckeye State Blog proprietor David Potts successfully petitioned YouTube to pull the Republican Senate Campaign Committee's ad against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. The ad lifted footage from a video interview BSB posted at the start or primary season, pulling a couple of quotes about Fisher's job at the Department of Development. Congrats to David for getting the attention of Politico and for the general awesomeness of the play.

This story is fun -- because damn -- but it's also important. Interviews like that at BSB and the interviews Jeff Coryell used to do at Ohio Daily offer an important service. A candidate relating to a nonprofessional citizen journalist tends to be different -- more relaxed, informal, unscripted. We will get less of that if candidates fear it will be plundered for an unflattering moment taken out of context. Way back when Meet the Bloggers was happening, this was an ongoing concern. We had Emily's List (well, their consultants, anyway) lift some photos of Capri Cafaro for attack mailers and Zack Space's opponent using quotes from his MTB interview in radio ads.

How far citizen journalists can push this remains to be seen. The decision to pull the ad based on the intellectual property objection is YouTube's. The ad remains (as of tonight) in the NRSC front page and is probably on their anti-Fisher attack site which I have no desire to visit. If challenged in court, they can claim fair use which works some time, but would take serious lawyering to beat. Some newspapers assert their copyright over editorial endorsements such that you have to run the entire piece, but newspapers have phalanxes of lawyers to assert those rights.

The great hope is that the embarrassment of being publicly outed for copyright infringement and especially getting dinked by YouTube will deter this kind of nonsense to some degree.

Finally, an irony worth noting. This is the interview that essentially tore Buckeye State apart when it happened. Tonight it has gotten the blog national notice.

I've Got No Job, But I'm an Opera Fan*

This evening I will be a guest blogger/Twitterer at Opera Cleveland's rehearsal for their performance of "Falstaff." Their publicity manager -- and Opera Chicken blogger -- is a blogging veteran whom I got to know back when we were trying the GABB thing. (And BTW, all respect for anyone who can secure a paid gig that includes blogging.)

The idea is to let some social media types see behind the scenes and blogg/tweet the experience. Yes, it's more than a little off-topic, but I'm looking forward to it. I will certainly do some real-time tweeting under hashtag #operacleveland. The blogging may be live but more likely will be a retrospective once we get home.

Now I have a pile of stuff to do to justify this little excursion. See you then.


*Long inside story about the title. Years ago NPR did a story about the group rock Chumawumba -- remember "Tubthumping" with it's "I get knocked down, but I get up again" refrain? A listener mailed in a thanks for the profile and in particular in clarifying that refrain. "It sounded to me like "I've got no job, but I'm an opera fan." While that description meets a number of my friends, it didn't seem sufficiently universal to form the basis of an international pop hit. " That exchange has stuck with me. In fact, as I've been working all this out, the song has been going through my head, with the alternate lyric.
On the other hand, it's not entirely accurate. But "I don't have a full-time job, and while I appreciate opera, I don't actually seek it out generally," but it didn't have the ring, so . . .

Ohiosphere Alum now Blogging for Brunner Campaign

A quick and hearty congrats to my friend Jeff Coryell, late of Ohio 2006 and Ohio Daily, and now house blogger for the Brunner campaign. Personally I'm still not sold on her as the candidate, but if she keeps showing this level of taste and judgment, she'll win me over eventually.

One quick note about the blog. One issue on which Brunner is able to put daylight between herself and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is gay rights. No coincidence that the two most recent posts highlight the issue -- one announces Brunner's upcoming participation in the Dayton Pride parade and another her support for the workplace discrimination bill now before the General Assembly. Time will tell whether tacking left on this issue will work over the long haul, but it will be interesting to watch.

Pho's Akron Pages: Insufficiently Subversive

A friend returned from a business trip to China with a gift: a screen shot my blogger from inside the PRC:
He says that my blog is entirely accessible on the state-sponsored internet there. Kinda cool to think of people (OK, a white guy I've known twenty years) reading the blog in China. On the other hand it means that my blog hasn't done anything to alert the Chinese censors, much less piss them off.

Need to work on that.

They Love Me in France

Just picked this up on a Technorati RSS feed. Apparently a French blog found the our coverage from 2006 when Obama met les bloggeurs at the ODP dinner and translated. Also posted on of Cindy's photos, labelled "Pho et Obama." My long gone college French can't tell me how good the translations is.

The photo reminds me of one many great things about the evening; for once I wasn't the guy at the table with freakishly long fingers.

Wading Back In

So here we are again. Once again a long, unannounced hiatus with a similarly unannounced return. Will it be different this time? I honestly don’t know.

By now you all have heard the tale. My myriad responsibilities as university instructor, part-time writer and full-time Dad, along with some long term volunteer projects, does tend to get in the way of blogging these days. And at the same time, I fell out of love with blog world some time ago and haven’t yet fallen back in.

During this latest stint in the basement, Jeff Coryell and Redhorse both called it quits. I knew it would happen, but still it saddens me. And leaves me with a much less friendly blogosphere to return to.

Yet return I shall.

I will say that with the election now over, this blog may again find its footing. The Pages has always been more about policy than politics and lets face it, politics tends to be an enemy of real policy discussion. Now that a new administration is taking shape nationally and the Strickland administration finds itself bailing frantically as the state takes on water, there's a lot to talk about. I'm particularly interested in what Strickland will try to do on school funding, the burgeoning debate over what to do with Guantanomo, the continuing disintegration of the news media and much more.

Later. For tonight I'm easing myself into all this. My goal is to write something at least once a day, but this is it for the day.

See you after class tomorrow.

Tonight

I will again be a panelist on the Buckeye State Blog liveblog of the finally final debate. Surf over and enjoy.

Debate 2.0 Liveblogged at BSB

Thanks to the BSB guys for inviting me to participate in their liveblog of the second Presidential debate. Check it out here.

Righty Bloggers Complaining About RNC Treatment

If you followed the convention posts on BSB or especially from Jeff, you know that they had impressive access. Indeed, the rise of the blog was a major story line, with the only point of controversy being who got the state credentials. Whatever bad feelings may linger from that apparently do not compare to blogger complaints from the Republican convention.

From Pajamas Media:

Here on what is passing for “Bloggers Row,” there is plenty of grumbling about the accommodations supplied by our hosts. Some descriptives are not printable. Most reflect a huge disappointment with the way the GOP has shunted most of the bloggers off to the side, far from the action, dispersed throughout a gigantic “Press Filing Center” where the working media comes to hook up to the net and file their stories.

And in PM tradition, the post is hilariously overwrought: "The dungeon that the GOP has put bloggers in this time around would be familiar to Torqumada and his buddies who made the Spanish Inquisition such a great party."

Snark aside, wonder why the RNC has become so much less accomodating. My theory is that bloggers for a party in trouble are less likely to toe the party line (see also, lefty bloggers c. 2004) and therefore of less use to the party.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Grumpy Guy

Abe Zaidan, retired ABJ columnist and long the dean of NEO political commentators, has jumped into the web20 world with Grumpy Abe, a blog of "Politics and whatever comes to mind.

I've gotten to know Abe through the Akron Press Club and know that he's been considering the leap for some time. I'm glad he's finally added his voice, experience and wisdom to our little project.

Hardcore MSM-bashing blog triumphalists will have trouble with passages like this from his intro post:

I have cast myself into a disorderly crowd that has recast the tarnished badge of professional journalism into an unsightly free-for-all of gingham wolves and calico leopards. I dare say I will have to painfully adjust to the new media culture if I will have any chance at all of catching up with any of the sprinters on the other end of the dot.com.

But I think he throws justified a punch in either direction and nicely evokes the world-in-flux we now live in. For myself, I'm a Glenn plaid ocelot.

By the way, his book Portraits of Power is an excellent primer on Ohio politics over the last half of last century. If you want to know how we got where we are, pick up a copy.

About a Blog, and Other Stuff in the SocMedVerse

It's been over a week since I posted here. As usual, I have my excuses. In the past week [deep breath] school started for the girls, the wife and myself, which necessitated the usual getting back into the groove, plus two open houses, and I got my biggest freelance job to date which included attending a day-long meeting, and I had one other meeting about a different business opportunity and two different repairs on the house, plus a marathon doctor appointment for one kid and the usual schlepping about to lessons and the Olympics ended and the Conventione happened. Oh, and I got sick (twice) and threw out my back (once).

So yeah, it's been a bit of a week.

One thing I learned (over again) from all this is that if I'm not writing all the time I get rusty. Pieces I should have banged out quickly felt like passing stones or something. So when I get busy in the future, I'll try harder to write something, anything, here just to stay fresh. And keeping you all entertained is of course a bonus.

Funny thing is I get nervous about blogging when on deadline. If someone is paying me and sees blogging happening, will they think I should be doing their work? etc. Thus far every job I've gotten has included some vetting by reading the blog. But since I need this to keep my chops (and get the next job, apparently), clients will have to deal.

With all that, I wasn't entirely dormant in blog world. First off, I'm integrating my social media lives, as you can tell from the shiny new widgets, stereo right. The first is links to the three other social networking sites I use, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Below that is a Twitter feed window showing my last n tweets.

As you can see, I've gotten into Twitter quite a bit. The really attentive reader may notice the de.lico.us (which thankfully is just "Delicious" now") widget is gone. I had fallen down on keeping it updated and now if I see a cool article I tweet it. Unfortunately the badge doesn't let you click directly through to the article, you have to click the tweet which takes you to a Twitter page on which the link shows up. Nonetheless, if you see something you like, that's how to get there.

And of course, you can always Follow me. My tweets are about 50/50 original versus replies to others. I realize that seeing the replies here doesn't help much -- hearing half the conversation and all that. So it goes. I'll also warn that the tweets range from substantive to pithy to quotidian. Oh, and that's where most of my snarky one-liners go these days. I will warn you that I've installed a utility that automatically feeds links the posts here. Other people feed their blog to their Twitter and post Twitter on their so I'm taking it on faith that this won't cause rift in the blog-time continuum.

My use of Facebook has evolved over time. Back when candidates started using Facebook and MySpace I started accounts just to see what the candidates were doing. Since I can't do so much as look at MySpace without getting a raft of pornspam friends ("come to my website which has my really fun pics, lol") I've let that go to seed. Meanwhile, old friends keep finding me through Facebook, so that's what I'm using it these days. Up next I'll be posting some family photos so various friends and family can see how the kids are doing. So if you're Friends with me, look for that.

LinkedIn is supposedly the grown-up, get noticed and get work social site. I know people who have gotten work through it, but thus far, nothing for me. Again have hooked up with some old friends though. As for work, nada. We'll keep playing with it to see what happens.

OK, so with that bit of a waggle, hopefully I'm back in the blog game and will try not to leave for days on end again. I've been thinking much about what I want this to be. Probably you will find more local stuff and more policy stuff, and less about the national race. On the other hand, I definitely have some thoughts about the last few days so you never know.

Just as long as it's fun.

No Idea What's Going Wrong

If you are reading this either you have great patience or the Something Terribly Wrong with the Pages has resolved itself. Apparently for the past few days the blog has developed a hitch in its gitalong, or more specifically its download. I'm used to traffic dropping during downtimes, but we're working at small fractions of where the traffic usually settles.

This may be the push to finally get me off Blogger unless things resolve.

In the meantime, we're heading back to Ohio tomorrow. If things clear up I'll start blogging again. If we are still dealing with two minute downloads and thirty hits a day, I'll probably take more time off.

The Silence and the Reasons Therefore

It would be easy enough to say I’m busy and leave it at that for why the blog hasn’t been updated in over a week . That’s true enough. This has been my busiest summer yet, especially in terms of schlepping kids from one camp/lesson/playdate to the next. In addition I have some exciting writing opportunities to work on, a syllabus to complete and plenty of projects around the house.

But that’s not it, or at least not entirely. Fact is, blogging has been far less fun lately than in the past. Back in the day (“the day” in this case being c. 2006) the Ohio political leftysphere had a much different vibe. We were a community, interested in politics and hoping our people won, but also interested in building up as a whole this thing called blog. The Meet the Bloggers project provided some of the glue holding that community together, but even those who didn’t participate in MTB were part of the conversation.

That community – my community – doesn’t really exist anymore. Some members moved on, from blogging altogether or blog far less frequently. Others have moved to other areas of blogging or up the blog food chain.

Those who remain and those who have taken their place treat this thing differently. Nowadays blogging is more competitive – explicit discussions of who has better traffic or links or “influence” pop up with discomforting frequency. And the focus is not on having an ongoing conversation about how to make the world better, but on winning – both in the blogosphere and in November.
As a result, the community is gone, replaced by a club. No one ever said it was a club (at least not publicly) and no one ever said who was in and out, but without doubt the winners have chosen those who are part of the club and ignore those who are not.

At this point I should say that it is not my intention to indict people for how things have gone. What has happened is the result of choices made by people far more successful at blogging than I, and those choices are not wrong in any objective sense, they just are not the choices that I would prefer (and trust me, if I were calling people out, you would have a very specific catalogue of who’s to blame and their misdeeds.)

I also apologize if any of this sounds whiny. I’m fine with the fruits of my blogging and, given the choice, I would change little of what I’ve done here. My only intent is to explain (to those few of you who care) why this blogger has found the whole enterprise far less enjoyable and therefore hasn’t been at it lately.

And I’m feeling wistful about the community has passed. The whole community thing gets overused, but upon attending a blogger meetup last week (my first in over a year), it all came back to me how it was and how much more fun it was back then. Not that the change should be a surprise. The best human institutions only string together a few Brief Shining Moments before drifting off course, and in the electronic age, those shining moments seem ever briefer.

And yet, I’m back. A few things have happened. First off, two of my favorite commenters got into a great discussion on last week's sole post. That plus meeting old (in adjusted blog terms) friends at the meetup, plus the fairly impressive traffic numbers while I was gone, plus some real-world conversations have suggested that the Pages still exist in some tattered remnant of a community.

In addition to that, some writing opportunities are presenting themselves and the standing advice for freelancers is 1) start a blog and 2) don’t let it go out of date. Last year between teaching and the blog and my one standing writing gig, not much time remained to build the freelance business. But if I’m to be serious about freelancing, I also need to keep up the maintenance around here.

So I’m going to start showing up around here more. But my plan is to be less part of the broader Ohio leftysphere and concentrate on what this thing was at the start – a place for my personal venting and, above all else, fun. I will wade at best infrequently into the dispiriting food fight that is the national campaign. I spend less time keeping up with news and more time digging into those bits that are interesting and little discussed. Above all else, I’m more interested in generating conversations about where we are and where we need to go as a society than carrying water for any one politician or badgering you all to agree with me.

And with that, I'm back, more or less.

Ohio Dot Com's New Law Blawg

The Community Blogs section of Ohio dot com has a new member: Akron Law Cafe. The bloggers are four professors from the University of Akron School of Law.

You can read the mission statement here. Essentially they hope to foster a deeper understanding of the law among nonlawyers, always a laudable goal.

As you can imagine, I'm familiar with the players -- familiar enough that I've known for some time that this was in the works. In fact, I've been invited to do some guest posting on occasion, though we're still talking about what that will look like.

In the meantime, it's a solid group of bloggers, with the usual cache of posts up before they go live. Surf over and have a cup.

Image: Ohio.com

MSM Poaching: Gawker Explains It All

Gawker contemplates an incident in which the NY Times apparently stole a year-old story from the Wall Street Journal. But Gawker's explanation, if true, explains a lot about why blogs get acknowledgment only rarely when the papers run familiar-sounding stories.

According to Gawker, the Golden Rule is:

Media outlets can only steal outright from other media outlets that are not their direct competitors, and do not fall in their same class.

* * *

When stealing from one's own class, it must be acknowledged that you are doing so, and that you have been scooped.

Unfortunately, Gawker rules leave us with little recourse. For one, no Ohio media outlets acknowledge parity with even the mightiest blogs. For another, bloggers have little ability to impose the "penalties" for violation:

Those who foolishly flout this rule by stealing the work of other reporters in their same class with no credit can expect to be ostracized at media parties; have vicious gossip about them leaked to Gawker; and, one day down the road, to be the subject of a gratuitous backhanded smear in the outlet that they stole from (this goes double if you're dealing with tabloids).

On the other hand, the summary admonition:

Reporters are small people, and we never forget an insult. Play smart.

Applies to bloggers with at least equal force. Pay heed.

The Kids Are Alright

Last week I upbraided the BSB guys for their take on the DNC Convention credentialing process. Subsequently BSB HQ communicated off-blog about the incident and now they have gone public with their take in a well-written post. The upshot is that they regret attacks on Jeff Coryell but maintain that the credentialing process lacked transparency.

Good on both counts. My major objection was the elbows thrown at Jeff, and I should note that those attacks have been edited out of the BSB posts in question.

At the same time, I agree that the DNC needs to make the bases of such decisions transparent. I don't have a problem with the party using a backstop in case a higher-traffic/technorati-ranked blog may be embarrassing to the Party, or (really the case here) if a good blog in a strong second arguably offers intangibles that will help the party get its word out better. After all, the DNC exists for one purpose -- to get its people elected. Blog credentialing should serve that purpose.

But whatever the process, it should be agreed to ahead of time and disclosed to the
applicants. That didn't happen here and is the reason for the lingering raw feelings.

Be all that as it may, we are left with two happy results. Each of Ohio's most comprehensive and well-read blogs will be going to Denver and they will do so on good terms with each other. More generally, the new leadership at BSB is showing a maturity and thoughtfulness that hasn't always been a hallmark in the past.

Jesse Taylor Is Back to Blogging

Ohio bloggers may remember Jesse Taylor, the Pandagon blogger who ran internet communications for Strickland's campaign. He's been gone from Pandagon but now (h/t Ezra Klein) he's back.

Why is this a big deal. Try on this sample from the comments to his post about the prezzie race. The quote is from the earlier comment to which he responds:

“It’s also a mistake to keep ignoring and insulting the non-obama supporting feminists, if he wants our votes.”

You don’t lose people’s respect because you don’t support Obama or because you’re a feminist.

You lose people’s respect because you keep insisting up is down.

Yes! And one!

Actually, the Story Is Cold Dead, but BSB Keeps Pounding on It's Chest Anyway.

First off, congratulations to the new Buckeye State team of Nick D and David Potts for a seamless transition to a new regime. They have embraced many of the virtues of previous Head BSer Jerid, and minimized his vices. Also, congrats for securing credentials for the Democratic National Convention in the General Blogger Pool.

All that said, quit yer goddam whining about Ohio Daily getting the nod for State Bloggercorps credentials. For those of you who don't know what this is about, Paul reset the "controversy" here when it first sputtered. You might think that when the DNC decided to acknowledge the importance of blogs and offered credentials to one of our own that we would all be happy and that the success of one is a positive reflection on the work we all do.

Dude, that is so 2006.

In Nick's announcement that they received General Pool credentials, he maintains that the story of BSB being passed over "will not die" and links to two stories, one in a WaPo blog and one on Wired. Actually there are three stories at work here. One is the story of the state blogger corps being overwhelmingly white. That's the focus of the WaPo story. A second is the story of some state blogger corps blogs actually being corporate owned as opposed to the DailyKos first raised that complaint which is the focus of the Wired piece.

Then there is the story of two quality blogs in the state of Ohio competing for state credentials and the loser raising a fuss. That angle is mentioned nowhere in any of the stories linked above. BSB is mentioned nowhere in either of the stories linked by Nick. In fact, at last count about five people, all in Ohio, give a crap.

But in their zeal to cry "We wuz robbed," the BS partisans are both linking their cause to real issues and dropping facile slams on Jeff Coryell, including resetting the meme first launched by Russo that all Jeff does is post press releases.

All bull. Jeff may be the hardest working man in blog business. He travels all over the state, has interviewed scores of candidates and other figures and offers plenty of analysis. Posting press releases is also part of the the current SOP for political blogs, though his presser posting is not significantly greater than either BSB and certainly less than ProgressOhio.

Bottom line, there's plenty of niches for different blogs to fill. Jeff represents what could be called the grown-up sector of the blogosphere. BSB is a little more shoot-from-the-hip, a little more reckless. That's fine and all -- part of what makes blogging great is the diversity of voices. But people shouldn't be shocked shocked if they live to give a finger to the establishment and the establishment doesn't love them for it.

In any event, I for one and happy that the DNC found room for both blogs under the big tent and am proud to be part of the blog world with both.

Word on a Blog Alumnus

From the Dispatch blog Daily Briefing:

On Nancy Hardin Rogers' first day as Ohio's interim attorney general, three top lawyers in the office found themselves sitting in new desks.

Rogers said she didn't order the moves, which are among the first personnel changes since former Attorney General Marc Dann resigned under pressure May 14.

One of Dann's most loyal advisers, Christopher R. Geidner, got a new title as deputy chief counsel for administrative agencies. Geidner had been counsel to the attorney general. His $90,000 salary did not change.

Not bad for a law dork.

Blue Ohioan Is Back Up

Blue Ohioan founder Anthony Fossaceca just posted an impassioned argument for Hillary Clinton, hopefully reviving the long-dormant blog. The post makes me a little wistful about what could have been -- passionate supporters focusing on each candidates strengths. Instead we got Hillary nutcrackers and dismissive rants about Barack the "Unity Pony." Most unfortunate.

And unfortunate that circumstances didn't permit Anthony to post sooner. As I wrote in his comments:

[T]his post . . . was a great argument three months ago. If Toxic Susie had written like this, Blue Ohioan would have remained readable.

But the election is what it is. It's not impossible for Hillary to win, but it is impossible for her to win without overturning the clear will of the voters, thus tearing the party apart. Aside from some sharp-elbowed tactics and winking approval of the race bias against her opponent, what really has Obama's supporters in an uproar is that continuing to press her case is damaging the party and successfully pressing her case would be disastrous.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about the complaint from Hillary supporters about the pro-Obama/anti-Hillary bias in the media. There is probably something to it, or at least more than is within my biased perception (and probably less than the pro-Hillary biased perception.) Nonetheless, it's all one with a flawed pro-Hillary electability argument that boils down to: Obama has little going for him except his charisma and political skill which has generated a core of wildly passionate followers, tons of money in small donations and favorable media coverage. Which is too bad because Hillary is more electable.

To which the discerning reader says, "Huh?"

CORRECTED With the link.