Archive for the “Media” Category

While it’s nice that the News Sentinel decided to do a story about Kim and John Richards and Kim’s battle with breast cancer, I have decided today to block Fort Wayne Newspapers from accessing my blog. I did the original story “Support your local coffee shop” 4 days earlier. The News Sentinel, not unlike Pat White use this blog for show prep. Do I care, not really. And in this case, it’s for a good cause.

When Matt Kelty’s plea deal was announced, both WANE TV and Indiana’s News Center gave us attribution and provided a link after copying some of our content. Kevin Leininger did a story on the same subject using content from this site, but instead only stated “from a local blog”.

I’ll most likely do it tomorrow. I suppose a redirect is what I’ll use, I just need an idea of where to send them. Any ideas?

Off to cover Sarah Palin - AWB

From Editor and Publisher

WASHINGTON Sen. John McCain in comments at the Associated Press Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. today said he would support the Federal Shield Law in the U.S. Senate but couched it in terms that indicated that he wants to make sure the press, with these protections, acts responsibiy.

Note, the misspelling was from the AP story.

“I must confess there have been times when I worried that the press’ intent to get a scoop can conflict with other priorities,” he said. “I think that the New York Times’ decision to expose surveillance practices came too close to crossing that line. I can understand why the government would want to discourage that from happening….

“The Shield Law is frankly a license to do harm, perhaps serious harm, but it is also a license to do good. I know that the press that discloses security secrets that should have remained so also revealed the disgrace of Abu Ghraib. So I have decided to support [the bill]. If the vote were held today, I would vote yes.”

For bloggers..

The House of Representatives has amended the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 to include provisions to protect bloggers from being required to divulge their sources under certain situations in the same way as journalists. Instead of requiring journalists to be tied to a news organization, the bill now defines “journalism” to focus more on the function of the job: “the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

Introduced last week by Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA), the bill is meant to offer a federal version of reporter “shield” laws that are in place in some 32 states in the US. Legislation at state level has struggled in the past to determine exactly how to define journalism, with bloggers who don’t often write for traditional news organizations finding themselves in a murky gray area. However, in 2006, a California court ruled in favor of two rumor sites (often considered “blogs”)—AppleInsider and Powerpage—after they divulged details about unreleased Apple products. The ruling concluded that there was no relevant legal distinction between journalistic blogging and journalism when it came to the shield law.

AWB

How’s this for a headline?

Don’t get too excited all you libbies.

AWB

Hat tip: Hoosier Access

Both of Fort Wayne Newspaper web sites appear to be down. Word is the press room broke something and have been for about 45 minutes.

I was looking for my stat counter today and found this.

Quincy Newspapers operates 12 television stations including WSJV - South Bend, IN which is currently looking for a morning news anchor and news reporter. Maybe they’re just scouting her?

AWB

I’ve been meaning to post about this since last week but I’m just getting around to it. Channel 21 thinks they had a scoop last week regarding precinct committeemen filings. You can view it here where Melissa Long states “As we first reported”. That was February 20th. Your friends here at AWB posted 2 stories, the first on February 17th here, and another on February 18th here.

As one fan of the site emailed me later..

In a INC story today, Nicole Pence says they “were the first” to break the story about the group trying to fill the precinct committee positions in order to possibly oust Shine.

Of course, YOU were the first to break that story. This kind of shit pisses me off…

The truth be known, Nicole Pence called me after she saw my post and said she wanted to do a story about the precinct committeemen filings as well. It was AWB that gave INC the names of who to contact for their story. Stay tuned, I’ll have an update to that ongoing saga on Wednesday.

Also, last Friday at 4:46 p.m. WOWO announced “Coming up in the news at 5:00, an Indianapolis Blog is reporting that John McCain does not have enough signatures to get on the ballot in Indiana”. I had posted this post the previous day.

McCain secures enough signatures in Indiana
Blabber-mouths Jennifer Wagner and Blue Thomas have it wrong again. She states on her blog this morning:

Sign Here, Please: McCain Short In CD04, May Not Make Indiana Ballot
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain will be here tomorrow, but he might not be on the Indiana ballot in May. Blue Indiana creates and reports this story:

Another hatchet job by the Dumbocrats. In the end, they’ll be the ones that will be embarrassed. Wanker and Thomas didn’t do their homework plain and simple, and now they are stuck with this story.

Jay Kenworthy, Communications Director of the Indiana Republican Party went to the Elections Division this morning at 7:45 (and waited outside until they opened at 8:30) to be sure he was the first to count the signatures. McCain has 531 in the 4th Congressional District, according to his count. That pretty much mirrors the county reports with one exception. Marion County claims 58 signatures, when in reality, there are 60 (they missed one signature, and their addition was wrong on the final tally).

So being the nice guy that I can sometimes be, (kiss my ass Warner) I called WOWO and told them they were about to make fools of themselves and suggested they pull the story, which they did.

My point is this, the mainstream media are lazy. They use the blogs as news sources and to generate leads, rarely verify shit and then never give credit. If I post something from WANE, INC, the JG or NS, I always link or give a citation. Tracy, is that mean-spirited enough for you?

KMPWA - AWB

Todd, it’s time for a redirect.

Greg Shoup of Wane TV has started a weather blog, aptly titled “Into each life some rain must fall”. Greg states on his first post why he’s starting a “Weather Blog”:

Why a weather blog?

Okay, so that’s the big question. Why a weather blog? We’ll first off I am a certified weather ‘geek’ and the best thing about my job is that I get paid to be one! I only wish there were more hours in the day and I didn’t have to do other mundane things in life. So this is going to be your way to get into my head and see what I am thinking about upcoming and past weather events. It gives me a chance to vent and it gives you a chance to experience true weather ‘geekdum‘!

The title of my blog comes from one of meteorology’s first poets Longfellow..

Welcome to the Blogosphere Greg!

The link to Greg’s blog is here.

DT

Tracy Warner must have been drinking some spiked apple cider when he wrote this piece.

Having Kelty on ticket put councilman out of office

When Republicans chose Matt Kelty in the May primary, they not only assured that the Democratic Party would keep the mayor’s office, they contributed to the loss of a stalwart GOP City Council incumbent and possibly a second Republican.

Nelson Peters or another less controversial candidate at the top of the ticket would have had coattails long enough to influence at least 14 more Republicans in the 2nd District to vote straight tickets, making up the margin of nine-term councilman Don Schmidt’s loss to Democrat Karen Goldner. Kelty’s weakness as a candidate and his followers’ criticism of fellow Republicans most likely helped influence a handful of Republicans to stay home and a few more voters to split their tickets – and that was all it took to turn a close Schmidt re-election to apparently a close defeat.

The controversy Mr. Warner is talking about was perpetuated by his efforts to destroy *his* opponent, Matt Kelty. It’s not not required for Warner to be fair in his reporting, but from the outset he acted more like the PR department of the Henry campaign than a journalist.

[...]

How much the presence of Libertarian candidates on the ballot affected the ultimate outcome is unclear. Their votes more than made up the difference between Crawford and Brown, but it’s hard to say whether – or how – the voters who chose Libertarians would have cast ballots in their absence.

Horseshit Tracy. How can you so readily dismiss over 11,600 votes?

From Kevin Leininger
“If not for the Libertarians, John (Crawford) and I would still be on council,” said 2nd District Republican Don Schmidt, a 36-year veteran who came up a scant 13 votes short in his race against Democrat Karen Goldner. Crawford, R-at large, best known for his forceful and unapologetic support of the city’s no-smoking ordinance, finished a close fourth in a contest having room for only three. Crawford echoed Schmidt’s conclusion.

The good news? With Tom Henry as mayor, Tracy will have a hard time finding the zeal to destroy someone in the way he has Matt Kelty.

DT

Around 6:45 yesterday two upset family members of a woman Indiana’s News Center had recently ran a story about purportedly tried to bust down the door of the building.

From what I’m told they were upset with Nicole and the way she reported the story.

No word on what or who the story was about.

DT