“I’d like to know whether the PD publishes op-ed pieces from outside contributors (in the paper or on the Web site), and whether it pays them, and whether they are also proscribed from donating to candidates.”

I wrote and had published four op-eds I believe over the years (through 2005) with the PD and was never asked about donations and was paid. I do not know the policy, per se, however, just my experience. The PD has not, to my knowledge, publicized its oped conflicts/bias/ethics policies.

“Or even if it runs syndicated national opinion columnists (paying for the syndicate) without researching whether they make political donations. If so, then it seems to me the blogger got discriminatory treatment.”

I don’t know if they research the political donation history of the syndicated writers, or explore the syndicate’s policies for those writers that they syndicate.

Interesting questions though.

All opionions have a agenga…period.

Thee have been enough cases of bloggers failing to disclose business interests in the past that you’d think everyone would just make an explicit rule of disclosing anything that may directly contribute to your article.

If you’re blogging about politics, and you disclose a $100 contribution, then you credit readers with the intelligence to be able to decide what they might believe or give weighting to…

I think bloggers are becoming perceived as the “reality TV” of the internet, with the audience watching and hoping unauthorized, uncensored information might leak through the filters. However, like “reality TV.” eventually everyone will be in on the game.

I should have tinyurl’d it
and did

http://tinyurl.com/2afc4e

TV Tech Page 41 of this online magazine platform is a story on Net Neutrality politics and big business. Its a call to action. Sorry there is not a direct link.

http://mag1.olivesoftware.com/ActiveMagazine/getBook.asp?Path=TVT/2007/11/07&BookCollection=TVT_AM&ReaderStyle=Normal&browserWindowWidth=1014&browserWindowHeight=718

The only other piece of information that really goes to how picked off we were, is that I made donations also - I gave money to US Senator (then candidate) Sherrod Brown and to Ohio AG (then candidate) Marc Dann.

So, if the PD is claiming some high ground once they discovered Jeff’s donation, they lost it when they selectively went only to him with the ultimatum that he stop writing about the race and candidates, or he couldn’t do the gig anymore.

Because they didn’t come to me and say the same. And they didn’t go to the other two, and tell them what was going on. They only went to Jeff, and not any of the other three. At all, to my knowledge.

Susan Goldberg continues to suggest that if, after they went to Jeff, I’d come to them about my donations, they would have told me the same thing, or something similar (it’s not really very clear - sometimes she’s suggested that disclosure might have been okay).

That’s just absurd. If they were the ones pushing this ironclad standard, then it’s reasonable to expect that once they “discovered” this info about Jeff, they’d want to research all of us and approach all of us.

But they didn’t do it that way and their failure to treat us with the respect they now say we don’t have for their work is an additional cloud (after the just not getting the other realities in the world piece) over everything they’ve done. It’s the basis for the fact that the PD was pressured to act as it did by the congressman, Steve LaTourette, who gave the PD its “discovery” about Jeff.

Again - thanks for taking the time to write so clearly about this.

You’re prescient pretty often - where do we go from here? All of us?