Monday, November 21, 2005

Swing State Ohio

For the time being, I'll be blogging primarily at Swing State Ohio. I may bring Cincinnati News back at some point but my current focus is on the 2006 elections.

When you get the chance, you should also check out Andrew Warner's Blog. He covers a lot of Cincinnati issues as well as things of national significance.

Until next time, enjoy!

Friday, November 04, 2005

GOP Officials in Bar-fight

From WCPO:

Three Butler County republican party officials are accused of starting a brawl at a local bar.

According to police reports, Quentin Nichols, Tim Dearwester and Sean Maloney were at Putters on Cincinnati-Dayton Road in Liberty Township when they attacked a bartender.

Allegedly, one of the men made sexual remarks about the bar owner and when the three were asked to leave, they punched the bartender and hit him with a chair.

The incident is under investigation.

So far, no one has been charged.


This reminds me of going to high school in Butler County. Someone makes an inappropriate sexual comment, they are asked to leave nicely, and they start a fight. I guess some things never change.

Update: Daily Kos and the Enquirer picked the story up this morning.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

This Week in City Beat

This is a new piece that will be posted weekly by Thursday morning. In it I will briefly cover the highlights and (occasionally) lowlights of each issue of the alternative weekly Cincinnati publication, City Beat.






This week is the long awaited "endorsement issue." The front cover lists both their mayoral and council endorsements prominently.

The "World Famous, Who's Endorsing Whom?" charts can be viewed here.

John Fox wrote:
These charts provide a snapshot of the endorsement positions from area media, political action committees, parties and nonprofit groups -- and in the case of the statewide issues, we collect the endorsements of Ohio's major newspapers.

One of the best things about these charts is seeing which candidates have broad appeal (Laketa Cole and Christopher Smitherman) and which don't, which races are fairly evenly split (statewide issues 1-5) and which aren't and which issues have generated a consensus of opinion and which haven't.

We also get a kick out of seeing who's endorsed by opposing organizations, such as who's backed by both the Fraternal Order of Police and the Sentinels Police Association (Jeff Berding and ex-cops Cecil Thomas and Wendell Young) and who's endorsed by both Equality Cincinnati and Right to Life (no one).





In Porkopolis, Greg Flannery offers an interesting piece called "Neither Religious nor Right." In it he gives a good summary of a complaint filed last week against Councilman Sam Malone and Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values. According to Flannery:
Some of the donors who anonymously contributed money to (unsuccessfully) preserve Cincinnati's anti-gay law and (successfully) pass a statewide ban on gay marriage might finally be dragged into the light.

The complaint, filed by Former Mayor Bobbie Sterne and President of Equality Cincinnati Gary Wright, says that "What we have here is a network of deception with CCV Action at its hub." I will post the hearing date when the Ohio Election Commission sets it.




Best Quote: Ben L. Kaufman in Media, Myself and I.
Be accurate and fair, correct mistakes and move on and remember that, whatever the medium, audiences require reliable, relevant information on which to base their public and private decisions.





This Modern World: How The News Works Now.




Interesting fact: Candidates with paid advertisements in the Endorsement Issue = Gerry Kraus, Jim Tarbell, Leslie Ghiz, Eve Bolton and Wendell Young (shared).




City Beat is distributed to 1450 locations every wednesday throughout Greater Cincinnati.


Cincinnati.com Voter Guide Bias

The voter guide available on Cincinnati.com is not a very useful tool at all. It seems like a good concept... give customized, specific information on the candidates and issues to people based on where they live. In my opinion it does more harm than good when the information presented is so incomplete.

The site suggests that you, "Try MyBallot, the easy way to an informed vote" and "See side-by-side comparisons on the issues." Unfortuntely, due to the lack of content, you are unable to do so.

On Issue 8, it describes the proposed amendment as "Salary Increases." This, without other information, implies that a yes vote will directly increase salaries. As many of you are aware, that is not the case. When you click on "compare on the issues" the site informs you that pro means yes and con means no.

In the section on council candidates just 13 of the 32 have pictures and and 14 of them have a one sentence description. The Cincinnati dealer pieced together pictures of 26 candidates here. For Wendell Young, the one sentence description reads, "Cincinnati City Council Candidate." The irony is, of course, that this applies to all of the rest of the candidates as well.

On the mayoral comparison page, located at this link, David Pepper's information is available in full. For Mark Mallory it reads, "Biographical information on this candidate is not yet available."

For fun, I decided to see how long it would take me to find the information on Mallory that they list for Pepper.

It took about 1 minute. Three links (provided below) provide the information. Two are on Mallory's campaign site, one is on the enquirer's site.

http://www.electmallory.com/contact.html

http://www.electmallory.com/accomplishments.html

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051016/EDIT03/510160305/1023

Almost all of the information was also in yesterday's enquirer on the front page of a section called "Your Vote '05."

It is possible that Mallory declined the opportunity to respond to questions specifically for the online voter guide. Even if this is the case, cincinnati.com probably should have taken the few extra seconds to include basic information about Mallory that is widely available.

Gannett, either intentionally or through neglect, is painting an incomplete picture of next week's election. They are tipping the scales in favor of the candidates with information provided and taking advantage of their position as a media giant to do so.

I am calling on Cincinnati.com to update this "voter guide" as soon as possible to give voters access to the information they deserve. If they can't do this in the next few days, they should remove the partial and misleading voter guide from their website. At the very least, the guide should include a disclaimer that acknowledges that the information presented is nowhere near complete or representative of the candidates or issues as a whole.

This link has been sent to the helpdesk and editor of Cincinnati.com. If they provide a response, or update/change the voter guide, I'll have it here.