Huffington Post going local, coming to Denver

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• You need to let it go, "Bob," or Brad, or Jon, whoever. Vill or Bill or Michael or whoever is handing you your ass. You're the one who comes off defensive and angry. not him. Conservatives don't stifle free speech? Tell that to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Vill doesn't have a problem with FTS's voice, but its lies and innuendo. Is your confusion on that point disingenuous? Could you share that list of discredited Media Matters stories, because you seem to be full of crap on so many other levels that I'm willing to bet you're bluffing. Your silence on this question can serve as your answer.

• Vill: Didn't set out to personally attack or anger you? As to Caplis and the Gunny guy I'm afraid I don't have the time or inclination. Caplis seems a fair minded person. Don't have an opinion about 'Gunny Bob'. However, you again make my point about the Left's obsession with too many voices saying way too many things that someone may want to consider. Why does this threaten or even offend you? Why does it even matter to you? That someone may want to choose to consider additional opinions? Why is not more opinion and discussion, better? Have you heard mainstream conservatives scream for less speech, less thought? Caldara is a decent guy. If you don�t like his point of view go for it. Apparently some folks do. Surely, you couldn�t be afraid of him? He seems to have a sense of humor. We certainly could use more of that as well as an open invitation to disagree with him on air? I believe he�s on KOA most late evenings? Same for the other �bad� guys. As to the Saul Alinsky textbook attacks you level on Mr. Jones, which don�t bear individually repeating, I would encourage you to get your rage under control. I am not close to your assertions about Jones but I wouldn�t think him to be the yellow journalist unaccredited monster you make him out to be. It�s not exactly like he is impersonating a brain surgeon you know? He�s running a news website. And by the way, Vill, if �dumpster diving� would have gotten the story, I�m pretty sure Woodward and/or Bernstein would have leaped in face first. I hope so anyway. Media Matters like some on both sides selectively edit their view point into the facts. Get that? Into the context of a quote, a story or even in some cases made some pretty huge leaps from original context. I recall the huge �Bitch Slapping� shot at Caldara. Truth won out in I believe less than 12 hours on that one. That beauty is even still online even after MM was discredited. Seems like Caldara was about the last person in Denver media to use that term. Even a recognized regional paper had used the term without an attack from MM? MM wasn�t too concerned after they were refuted. Still seem pretty proud. http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200801230002 How�s that piece of huge breaking News working out for you Vill? Date says 22 January 2008. Apparently your Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics never heard from CO Media Matters either about their dues. "Ethics, ethics? We dont need no stinkin ethics". Frankly, visualizing some MM Dweezle listening to every word spoken by every non-lapdog voice 24 hours every day and then twisting and contorting something to fill a daily PR quota is kind of funny. Seriously picture the holiday conversation.. "Hey dude, what do you do for a living?" I could spend a week showing you a list of discredited MM items but it�s a waste of your time. Facts as you demand from Jones mean little far too little to many folks these days (Obama reference in case you missed it just to be really clear). MM is in fact textbook Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals in operation. Huffington Post is a liberal talking points focused business. Upfront and center which is just fine. I believe Jones and his Face The State is simply the same type of content provider but from a view you just refuse to acknowledge; or even worse want to disallow. Just don�t denigrate the messenger for his choice of voice. Let the listener decide (or a private funder(s) spend his last cent). Stay on your Kool Aide diet if you want. As to �dusty chestnuts�? Is that better than a crazy RightWingNut? Or worse? I�m waiting for Our Instructions so I know. Chill, Vill, chill. Best! (HEY---nice interview though for the open Denver HuffPo writer spots! Good luck!)

• Bob, You've presented so many dusty chestnuts here it's hard to know where to begin. First, the problem with Face the State clearly is not that it promotes conservative stories or ideas. The problem is that it is posing as a journalistic enterprise when it is not. Period. The fact Brad Jones does not act professionally as the journalist he claims to be speaks volumes. And that message is reinforced by the myriad factual accuracies, personal smears and other GOP messaging that constitute the bulk of FTS' content. Shopping around a story is fine; shopping around a purported story based on documents that clearly are fraudulent is not. The fact that Caldara groupie Jones and Jessica Peck Corry's pal Jessica Fender are the only two people who would "cover" such a story tells us all we need to know. By all means, more voices are better than fewer voices; what we don't need are GOP errand boys like Jones prancing around in journalist clothing. Second, the canard that "right leaning types have literally lost their voice" is a howler, given the abundant evidence to the contrary (a 13-1 conservative advantage in talk radio programming; a national cable news channel serving as a pipeline for talking points from the national GOP, as evidenced by that channel's own internal memoranda; and a "local rag, the Post," that promotes its right wing editorial voice on the front page -- the main *news* page -- of the newspaper. Finally, if you have no idea who was funding Colorado Media Matters you're either pretty lazy or pretty dim. The organization -- and others -- since its inception stated publicly a number of times who its funders were. Even Caldara knows that. There's even still a news release on the CMM site naming the Gill Foundation as a primary funder And please, cite here five instances in which Colorado Media matters "denied" or "surpressed" the truth. Given that the organization's work was based on information that *already* had been disseminated by public media, a statement that it "surpressed" anything is laughably ignorant. Please also cite factual evidence that "the organized Left has been on a tear to reduce our flow of ideas and information." HuffPo itself contradicts that idiotic statement by -- using your own plea -- encouraging more talk, writing and thought. Further, in Colorado, it was "the organized Left" that helped create Colorado Independent, an award-winning news site that adheres to the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics (a pledge Face the State has yet to adopt). What news organizations has "the organized Right" created in Colorado over the past four years that adhere to ANY Codes of Ethics? Do yourself a favor: If you want to be better informed spend less time repeating the time-worn and well-debunked BS that you've cited and more time trying to squeeze out some original thoughts based on factual evidence rather than the rantings of Dan Caplis, Jon Caldara and Gunny Bob.

• Dear Vill: Nicely written post. However..... While us right leaning types are wondering through our �40 years in the desert' I would like to point out just a few items. One, we literally have lost our voice. Meaning that in the MainStream Media we are less important that a dog bites man story. Let's not waste the time to debate; the MSM has turned far Left as their business model (Chris Mathews, �I have a tingly feeling running up my leg�.�. Times ten). Consequently, we have essentially very little opportunity to get any favorable press let alone even impact the Orwellian Obama cheerleading from places like the NYT down to the local rag, the Post. The Post allows some strong conservative Op Ed voices to assuage their Lefty guilt I would assume, and then goes back to editorializing on the few pages they do print as reporting. Two, not being a journalism student (obvious from this post) I do believe that the actual business model of journalism in the U.S. has reinvented itself many times over. From so called yellow journalism of the 1900s (By extension the term is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion, such as systematic political bias. Yellow Journalism can also be the practice of over-dramatizing events. Like say the new White House dog story for three months��wikipedia). Now, we wouldn't want to admit any Yellow Journalism among our MSM would we? So, where do conservatives turn, Vill? Shouting into the darkness gets really old. And finally, regarding Face The State's position in the Colorado marketplace of politics and ideas? A Conservative 'shopping around' interesting information or stories in this political environment has few places to visit. Is FTS's ownership and staff of more relevance to you than their breaking a fair balanced unpublished and declined story (That would be the Unions and local business trying to buy Caldara's Amendment last fall. Plus more.)? Is valuable but suppressed information less truthful or less valuable if it is published by Face The State? Who is watching FastTracks? Who is pushing your politicians for public dollar transparency? I know who is always fighting transparency of tax payer dollars. In closing, the far Left organization which funded Colorado Media Matters was owned and paid for by��? Exactly, no ownership was attached to the extremely unbalanced hit jobs from Media Matters because they were owned and funded by��? I just don�t know? George Soros possibly? CO Media Matters was a paid hack/hit job site whose only goal was to deny truth (suppress) and attack every day the names on a literal list. I maintain Google Alerts for a number of �names� around the state. Every morning my mailbox was filled with CO Media Matters hit jobs so transparent it was honestly hard for me to imagine anyone even taking a paycheck to write such�.well.I don't get the sense that FTS gets out of bed everyday to dishonestly report and distort. Push a certain side of an issue? Absolutely, and they seem to do it openly. Fact is we have many media sources to choose from today. Not enough. I welcome as many local (meaning Colorado) news organizations as possible. I invest much of my day reviewing far left sites. Daily, I read the entire New York Times, most of Huffington, et cetera. I appreciate the opportunity to create my own balance, solidify my own positions. Lefty�s please get this: More information is better than just the information/news you like. More voices. More opinion. Better ideas. Lately it seems the organized Left has been on a tear to reduce our flow of ideas and information. Why wouldn�t we as citizens (and consumers) want to encourage as much talk, as much writing and as much thought as we possibly can? I want the platform for free association of ideas to be as robust as possible. Bring em all on and let us be better informed as a result.

• Vill, You read my mind, in this case. If publishing fraudulent documents (in other words, documents that cannot be verified to be real) that were shopped around by Caldara to every other news outlet before landing as a Face The State expose is considered �conservative� investigative journalism then we must need all the supposed �left� journalism we can get. The democratic movement of citizen-based media on-line is leaving GOP political operatives and sympathizers in the dust, and so far in this state they have yet to utilize it to make a change policy wise. All they've really got left to do is to imitate incompetently, which is fine. There's a description for people like that in South America. They're called �pe� de la oligarqu� in authentic journalism circles. Salud, Erin

• Denver's blog scene is pathetic and small, I'm thrilled to see Huffpo join the fray.

• Brad, the only way you'll probably "meet the folks behind this new endeavor" is if you're valeting their cars, or possibly if one of them catches you digging through their office dumpsters. Face the State is a GOP lapdog website whose operating credentials include unbalanced "reporting" as a standard practice; factual inaccuracy as a standard of quality; funders too cowardly to identify themselves; and a "managing editor" whose ignorance of the subject matter he discusses in print and on the air is an open joke among people with real journalism credentials, in both new and traditional media. Let's compare Face the State with HuffPo, shall we? 1. HuffPo's original pieces all are bylined; FTS generally hides the identities of its writers and always hides those of its funders. 2. HuffPo bloggers and columnists include nationally prominent elected officials, venture capitalists, artists, academics, authors and others. FTS? Unknown given it hides the identities of its writers, but doubtful given the quality of the writing it posts. 3. HuffPo is the generally successful result of a concept promoting the idea that more voices and information are better. FTS apparently was the vision of a "managing editor" whose chief achievement before the site was staging "bake sales" to ridicule the concept of affirmative action. Its sole voices are those of the Colorado GOP and the Independence Institute. 4. HuffPo credits its sources of aggregated news. Face the State not only has poached a URL in an attempt to fool readers -- visitors to coloradoindependent.org, are redirected to Face the State instead of the legitimate journalism site coloradoindependent.com -- and uses NPR's "Weekend Edition" label for its own weekend programming aired over a handful of right-wing radio stations in podunk markets. The GOP and your sycophantic relationship with Caldara, Corry, Oliver et al haven't bought you any credibility yet Brad; it's doubtful that such a sophomoric analysis of HuffPo's Colorado plans will do it either.

• I'm psyched. I'll totally ready it!

• If the Denver version emulates the strategy for HuffPo and its Chicago version, the question will be: what will their site offer news consumers that isn't already available elsewhere? HuffPo is an interesting concept but its main business - news aggregation - is highly dependent on other news outlets. How hard is it to surf around to about a dozen highly-relevant Denver news sites and link to their content? Face The State does some news aggregation - but it's state-wide, and not a core product offering. Who will blog for Arianna's new site, and what will they write about? There will be plenty of out-of-work journalists willing to pen opinion for the Denver micro-site, but if history is any indication they'll be encouraged to toe the liberal line. That's easy to do against a corrupt political establishment like in Chicago, but it's harder when the highest-profile men in Denver are media darling John Hickenlooper and the uber-vulnerable Bill Ritter. Why would the left spend their resources targeting either of them? There's also the matter of cannibalizing your core audience: politically-savvy activists and insiders. The left already has an action tank (ProgressNow), a news shop (Colorado Independent) and couldn't justify the continued existence of Colorado Media Matters. How does HuffPo fit in, and how do they grow the audience? HuffPo recently announced the creation of a spin-off non-profit to pursue investigative journalism, but that kind of work doesn't appear to be at the core of the site that will appear in Denver. More talking heads and blogger-pundits are always welcome (many times I'm one of them) but we also need a steady stream of original reporting to feed the opinion leaders. With the death of the Rocky, I'd put my money on reporting - not opinion. And there is a question of money. At the recent Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Baltimore, a HuffPo non-profit exec declined to elaborate on the corporate entity's budget, but indicated the company wasn't exactly wildly profitable. How will Huffington's company make money in Denver when the national site hasn't yet been able to reliably produce? I'd love to meet the folks behind this new endeavor and ask them some of these questions - drinks are on me, guys. Brad

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