The PD Digs a Deeper Hole

The Plain Dealer blundered last weekend by pushing its attorney David Marburger’s confusing — and probably illegal and unenforceable — “plan” for saving newspapers by embargoing news for 24 hours and collecting fees from websites that use their news. Using columnist Connie Schultz as their mouthpiece, the paper promoted the idea that “web aggregators” were stealing news from daily papers and could “save” newspapers by paying fees. But Schultz failed to locate any aggregators doing such wholesale theft and in the process making enough money to rescue the newspaper business.

Today, the paper compounded the blunder, wading hip-deep in doo-doo — flailing away at both those who have raised legitimate questions about their proposal and those who have used it to push other agendas. It not only let Schultz engage in an ill-advised pissing match with a couple of bloggers on something that’s entirely beside the point, but it’s brought out reinforcements: resident Luddite Ted Diadiun. Uh-oh.

Of course, Diadiun (does he even use e-mail yet?) can’t make it to the end of the second paragraph without referring (only half in jest, I’m sure) to “the Big Bad Web,” and suggesting that the Plain Dealer “recklessly gave away the news” when it “so eagerly dove into the Internet surf a decade ago.” As a former editor at a tiny Cleveland-based underground music monthly, U.S. Rocker (1989-1998), which “dove into the Internet surf” long before the PD, I can only shake my head. Actually, the PD doesn’t need to worry too much about recklessly giving away the news on its website; it’s virtually impossible to find anything there.

Diadiun reiterates Schultz’s initial points: We do great work here and it costs a lot, and those darned bloggers can’t do what we do because they only “know how to produce opinion, rumor, innuendo and unsubstantiated reports.” You know, like deciding Jimmy Dimora is unquestionably guilty and demanding he resign before he’s charged with anything? Yeah, that was very irresponsible of those darned bloggers!

Where, Diadiun moans, would we get ACTUAL news, if not for the daily newspaper? Well, Ted, on everything from women’s tennis to national politics, I’m much better informed since the PD stopped being my main news source, thanks to “the Big Bad Web.” Daily newspapers didn’t question the government’s rush to invade Iraq. Bloggers did the significant reporting on the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame by people within the White House and the subsequent trial of Cheney aide Scooter Libby. The Plain Dealer never touched the dysfunction within Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s office that led to a debacle of 2004 election. And while the Toledo Blade did a stellar job of exposing Ohio’s Coingate scandal, the PD ignored it as long as humanly possible.

In a piece of truly side-splitting hyperbole, Diadiun says, “At stake is nothing less than one of the most important checks in our system of checks and balances: the watchdog role of a robust and vigilant press, holding government and business leaders accountable, shining a spotlight on them when they transgress.” Hey, if the PD actually did that, I would subscribe again.

As for Schultz’s column today, I wish she had left not-so-well enough alone. Instead of taking with good grace the criticism of her weak explanation of what appears to be a poorly thought-through idea and perhaps clarifying what she IS talking about if not suppressing discussion, she overreacts to comments from a handful of bloggers who have decided her marriage to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is the issue (It’s not, although the PD’s wavering standard on what that means is an issue — for the paper, not for Schultz).

In an epic whinefest (wait — did she just resign as governor of Alaska?), Schultz (like Diadiun) casts “bloggers” as all-purpose villains who want to see newspapers die and are contributing by — well, not really sure. “Pay us for what we produce,” she wails. What does this mean? It doesn’t mean, she assures us, not allowing people to discuss their news; it doesn’t even mean not being allowed to link to it.

Says Schultz, “This is about giving news organizations the right to recoup their investments of time, energy and resources and to sue Web aggregators who post such significant rewrites or summaries that readers to their sites lose any interest in reading the original stories.” But neither Schultz nor Diadiun pointed to anyone who is using in this manner what the PD — or any other paper — produces. Until they explain exactly what behavior would be penalized under this plan, who they believe is guilty of this behavior and where this obscure group of “aggregators” would get the revenue to save the newspaper business, it’s hard to take this particular PD advocacy campaign very seriously.