E-Media Tidbits

Jeff Coryell Ohio political blogger Jeff Coryell just lost his freelance gig blogging for Cleveland.com.

That quandary has hit the fan at Cleveland.com, the Web site of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. This morning, online editor Jean Dubail announced that the site's group political weblog Wide Open is losing one of its liberal voices: blogger Jeff Coryell (who also runs the Ohio Daily Blog).

The reason? According to Dubail: "When we learned that [Coryell] had contributed to a particular political candidate, we asked that he refrain from writing about that candidate and his opponent on this blog. Our concern was that since Jeff and the other Wide Open bloggers are paid, his views might be taken as those of the paper, which could raise legitimate questions about our fairness. Jeff was uncomfortable with that restriction, so we felt obligated to end our relationship."

That's one side of the story. According to Coryell, the issue of the $100 contribution he made to the campaign of Bill O'Neill, the Democrat currently challenging Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio), is a red herring. Instead, Coryell contends that the real reason he no longer blogs at Cleveland.com is because the Congressman's office pressured The Plain Dealer's editors to fire him.

"I hadn't written about LaTourette on Wide Open," said Coryell. "I wrote about him during the prior election cycle on another blog, and I explicitly supported his challenger in that race."

Dubail confirmed that within about a week of Wide Open's launch, LaTourette's office complained about Coryell's inclusion in the blog to The Plain Dealer's editorial page editor. Said Dubail, "Of course, people make threats like this all the time. It's not uncommon for people to say 'I'm never going to talk to you again.' Any responsible news organization will check whether there's any truth in what those people say. But even if important people stop talking to us, that doesn't mean we stop covering them."

Dubail says he mentioned LaTourette's complaints to Coryell in September, but made no requests at that time. Then, on Oct. 16. The Plain Dealer published a campaign finance story that disclosed Coryell's contribution to LaTourette's current opponent.

"That's when [Plain Dealer editor] Susan Goldberg got concerned about how the paper would be received," said Dubail. "She worried about about having someone on the payroll -- even a freelancer -- who has taken sides in a partisan dispute. After some discussion, she indicated a strong belief that Coryell needed to recuse himself from covering that race."

At that point, Dubail asked Coryell to refrain from discussing LaTourette or O'Neill on Wide Open, as a condition of the blogging gig. Said Coryell, "I told [Dubail] that I'd not been going out of my way to cover LaTourette, but I couldn't predict what would come up in the future, and I needed to be free to blog about that. We're participating in an experiment here, and what we do here can set a precedent for the future."

Wide Open is indeed an experimental group political weblog. The format is that four established political bloggers from Ohio (two liberals, two conservatives) raise and debate state and national issues in a thoughtful, civilized discourse. Dubail said the blog had been generally working out well, and though Coryell's departure throws off the balance, he'd like to replace him with another liberal blogger.

But this afternoon the blog's balance was knocked completely askew when the remaining liberal blogger, Jill Miller Zimon, announced her resignation -- leaving only conservative voices on Wide Open.

Zimon wrote: "This experiment is, in my estimation, over. ...[Even if it continues,] every reader will know that everyone who blogs here has [traditional journalistic] restraints hanging over them -- restraints which Jeff and I reject as intolerable in what is supposed to be a Wide Open forum."

One of Wide Open's conservative bloggers, Tom Blumer, chimed in: "This post isn't as much a resignation as it is an observation that the whole thing has sort of blown up, and it looks like there's nothing left to resign from."

Shouldn't Cleveland.com have seen this kind of problem coming? Yes, admits Dubail. "I probably should have considered it. I was so focused on finding a good team of bloggers to offer high-quality debate on the issues that I overlooked this point. In general, I think we would have to consider watching out for people making contributions who are covering a race. I'm mainly concerned about current contributions to current state or national races. But not absolutely in every case. We're still working out exactly what our policy should be."

Coryell believes such retroactive policymaking is not only unethical and unfair, but -- at least in this case -- deeply misguided. "If you're going to have a rule about campaign contributions, have it at the outset and don't adopt it in response to a complaint," he said. "But it's a bad policy. I was specifically hired as a partisan, to argue my side. If you want partisans to blog, it's absurd to rule out campaign contributions. Conceptually it doesn't fit the situation.

"If you're going to hire political bloggers, it's important to understand the distinction between reporters and editors. Don't try to jam bloggers into the reporter model and make them obey reporters' rules. It's a bad fit."

As of this morning, Dubail was still holding out hope for Wide Open. "We undertook this project in the belief that newspapers and news sites must become more open and welcoming to other viewpoints. This not-insignificant stumble hasn't changed my view of that at all. I think the bigger mistake would be not to experiment."

What do you think about this situation? How might you (or your news org) handle a similar flap? Please comment below.