By Roldo Bartimole

You may have noticed that Mayor-elect Frank Jackson backed off his rather dictatorial demand that all members of the Cleveland school board submit their resignations to him.

He did the right thing. It bodes well that Jackson is willing to listen to others, and even to change direction if necessary. It speaks against the image of Jackson as stubborn and mulish. Thus, it points to him as someone who really does want to do the right thing.

What many might not know, however, is that Bill Callahan chastised Jackson shortly before the change in direction. Callahan, a long time Cleveland activist, writes a blog known as Callahan’s Cleveland Diary.

He’s one of an expanding number of local bloggers who have spiced commentary on political and civic matters. They are edging – or pushing - their way into the civic discourse. I visit a number of them online each morning to get a dose of their observations.

What often gives further zing to their “posts” – the word for remarks often linked to subject matters from elsewhere – is the ability of others to respond immediately. Whatever the issue, a public debate, open-ended, can ensue.

Callahan wrote in a rather long post that he had two problems with Jackson’s demand. First, Jackson didn’t have the legal power to force resignations. Once mayor he can appoint when vacancies occur.

Secondly, Callahan wrote, “ My second misgiving is about Jackson’s stated political basis for the fight, the ‘standards’ that Jackson says he wants to apply to his appointments: ‘active involvement in the schools, have attended public schools and have children who attend or attended Cleveland schools…people who have a stake in the system.’” Callahan believes that bans too many who might be helpful to a system that certainly needs help.

He was telling Jackson to back off.

I would have added (and did comment) that this also was a needless fight for Jackson. Further, it was a poor choice as a first post-election move. It was not the right signal to send.

I don’t know for certain that Callahan’s objections gave Jackson pause but I think they probably caught the attention of his people and did make a difference.

Callahan is one of the better bloggers because, first, he knows what he’s talking about, and, second, he does some digging to back up his comments.

A number of the small blogging community that I have discovered and begun to follow pushed themselves into the mayoral election by interviewing mayoral candidates before the primary. Each candidate was interviewed for about an hour and the interviews were made public via Brewed Fresh Daily, the daily product of George Nemeth. [ed: George Nemeth also serves as Cool Cleveland's Chief Information Officer and edits a weekly column there called Emissions from the Blogsphere. Cool Cleveland also published interviews and videos of Mayor Jane Campbell here and Council President Frank Jackson here, just prior to the election. And Cool Cleveland endorsed Frank Jackson in the Mayor's race here.]

This added some depth to the meager coverage by the Plain Dealer, which seemed to have an aversion to the campaign and candidates. The paper has been short-changing its readers on too many civic and political issues.

The bloggers can be very clubby – they all seem to know each other and some do meet together – and they often link to each other’s postings. But they're sometimes brash to the point of being “snarky,” a word that seems to pop up in posts as they discuss various issues.

This quality evades much of the mainstream media, or MSM.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this in Democracy Guy, a lively blog by Tim Russo. I read Russo daily and find some of it refreshing. He roams from local to state politics and beyond. Russo pricks some national blogs that take ad dollars from political campaigns in which they have involvement touches on an important ethical issue that needs more attention.

Because of a rather simple comment I wrote – 23 words of 1,700 – in a recent column, I raised Russo’s ire. I wrote. “… and after a good start, the emerging bloggers have slowed down and let go of an opportunity to show up the MSM.” I was “wringing” my hands, in Russo’s opinion. No, actually I was hoping for more from them.

I think because bloggers are new to the game they are still somewhat defensive about their efforts.

I was merely pointing out that I thought the bloggers had missed a golden opportunity to stick it to the Plain Dealer by going further than the interviews and following the candidates, especially when it got down to two. They could have filled in more detail than the MSM offered. I thought they missed opportunity to be more aggressive locally.

Russo took umbrage: “Roldo Bartimole has been writing the same column for the last 20 years: you’ve read one, you’ve read ‘em all. It’s usually some combination of PD/MSM hate, Gateway/stadium/tax abatement rant, with a little timely curmudgeonliness thrown in. And for this, he’s a sainted grand poobah of Cleveland journalism.”

See what I mean about snarkiness.

If you go into one blog site, you will likely be invited to taste other bloggers, an expansion of views. You are given choices. It will also lead you to other Ohio bloggers and you can get a dose of political activity around the state.

These bloggers are democratizing debate beyond what the daily newspaper or TV do. They are not going away. Rather it is growing with no foreseeable limit.

In 1968 when I started Point of View (ended in 2000) there was really no competition. Of course, there were few readers and little money – a problem for bloggers, too. Locally, I believe all of them have to have other incomes. Some ask for donations to help keep them going but the sites are free and easy to find via the internet.

If I were starting today, I would probably be a blogger. It makes communicating so much easier: no runs to buy paper, no need to type and layout the publication, go to a printer, retrieve the printed copies, fold the copies, stick the labels on, sort them all by zip code for the post office, keep subscription lists, send out begging reminders to lapsed subscribers. Of course, the difficult job of actually going out and gathering information and doing the reporting, preceded what I called the “shit” work.

The motivation that took me from MSM to as lonely, I expect, a trek as bloggers take in their efforts was simply the ability to say what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it (and how often). I knew from personal experience that I could not do that in the MSM.

However, I do not regret having gone through the MSM because I learned how it operates and what it takes to gather news. I also learned how power people and power institutions use the media to their advantage.

The mainstream media, particularly newspapers, are nervous about bloggers and the internet. (Newspapers also have bloggers but they have to behave themselves, unlike those who can freelance blog.) Newspaper readers have been declining and the avalanche of new outlets of news and its byproducts have cut into their power and profit. There is worry, thus, that newspapers face decline and demise.

I don’t believe that. Bloggers surely depend heavily on the MSM for their fodder. There’s little independent journalistic coverage in these blogs. Much of the local content, no matter how titillating or truthful, rests on reaction to what is in the Plain Dealer here. After all, the PD has some 400 editorial employees. No bloggers alone or in combination can match or ignore that workforce or the shoe-leather aspect of MSM journalism.

That’s why the Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer were subjects I could not ignore when I was writing my newsletter, Point of View.

Bloggers, too, don’t ignore mainstream media. However, there are enough of them to alter MSM, I think for the better. More and more I think they will have to be paid attention to by the MSM.

Moreover, the bloggers have made it necessary for community institutions to pay attention. It’s grassroots nature feeds into the community a public opinion quality that will need to be addressed.

More power to them.

There are numerous sites to visit, especially when one goes beyond the local blogs. Some of the local sites I visit in addition to those mentioned include Have Coffee Will Write, MB Matthews: Street Smarts (insightful comment by a Cleveland schoolteacher), Hypothetically Speaking, Working with Words, and Buckeye Politics.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)