Outrageous bias at WISN-TV

I'm used to media bias but this report by Brendan Conway is one of the dumbest and most blatant hatchet jobs I have ever seen. The report is about the Walker for Governor campaign using an Ohio company to build their campaign website, a story first reported by Michael Horne who goes uncredited in the piece. Conway spends most of the report asking a local web developer how he feels about Walker using an out-of-state vendor. He then turns to a local critic of Walker from the County Board for reaction.

In the report, Conway does not ask the vendor how he feels about Governor Jim Doyle also using an out-of-state vendor (based in Washington DC) for his campaign website, nor does he ask any of Doyle's critics. He only devotes 14 seconds to mentioning that Doyle will not commit to using an in-state vendor for the upcoming campaign.

Conway has not responded to my e-mail asking about the strong bias of his report and whether he even mentioned to the local web vendors that Doyle has used an out-of-state vendor, too. Conway has also not responded to why he did not credit Horne with breaking the story.

Where in the World Wide Web is your website?

Michael Horne had a little fun tracking down the location of the company that built Scott Walker's campaign website.

The website, Scott Walker for Wisconsin Governor was created by Midnet Media, a company that, like many Wisconsin-based firms, provides "web development, video production, advertising, digital media, graphic design," and other services.

Deep cyberspace travelers will recognize Midnet Media as the creator of such sites as Dayton Bag & Burlap Company, Buds Chevrolet of St. Mary's Ohio, and NewBremen.com, (slogan: "One of Ohio's Best Kept Secrets").

Unfortunately, Midnet Media is an Ohio company with no apparent Wisconsin connection. (Although there is always a chance it might be linked to a political supporter of Walker.)

Okey dokey. But the Wigderson Library & Pub has learned Walker isn't the only candidate for governor looking outside Wisconsin for a little website help. One candidate, Governor Jim Doyle, reached all the way to his friends in Washington D.C. for a little help. Then again, why not? After all, he's been out there begging for money to fix the budgetary mess he's created. He might as well ask for a little website help, too.

Happy Birthday Michael Horne

Happy Birthday to MilwaukeeWorld.com's Michael Horne. He is fifty-five today.

Age is a contest, and I'm happy to report he's ahead.

I wanted to get him a present but I knew nothing less than an original Di Suervo would do, and it was too hard to gift wrap.

Follow-up Pulitzer

Jessica McBride had an excellent column yesterday in the Saturday Waukesha Freeman (just 3 small quarters at every corner newspaper box). Jessica looked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Pulitzer Prize win, and wondered if they would be willing to share.

The newspaper’s Dave Umhoefer, who won journalism’s highest prize, is a good person and a good reporter, who exemplifies the best in journalism.

He was one of the first Wisconsin reporters truly skilled at computer-assisted reporting, which is the use of databases in investigative journalism. So, it’s not surprising that Umhoefer won the big award for a project that involved building a database from raw documents.

His story – exposing a faulty Milwaukee County pension buyback scheme – was great enterprise work. In an era of episodic reporting, Milwaukee journalism needs more like it.

But there’s something unfortunate about the newspaper’s failure to utter the words “Bruce Murphy” as it slaps itself on the back. The newspaper got a Pulitzer for a story that stemmed from a far bigger story it ignored and traditional journalism will never honor.

Murphy, now editor of Milwaukee magazine and a former Journal Sentinel reporter himself, broke the original, far more impactful Milwaukee pension scandal on Milwaukeeworld.com, one of the first journalistic blogs here. Ironically, a local public relations executive, Craig Peterson, created the blog to tell stories the traditional media didn’t.

Murphy revealed that Tom Ament and other administrators stood to reap multimillion-dollar pensions. The big scoop sat on the Web for weeks before the newspaper reported it. Murphy’s story – the first in Wisconsin in which a blog set the news agenda – was enormously influential.

It prompted Ament’s resignation, recalls, a tax revolt, the dramatic realignment of Milwaukee County politics through the election of a Republican county executive, and criminal charges.

The buybacks were not directly related to the pension backdrop lump sums. But Murphy ignited the reportorial focus on pensions and government, particularly in Milwaukee County.

Murphy is why the editors sent Umhoefer over to the county beat. I remember how the editors used to frantically run over to their computers to check Murphy’s site every morning, panicking that he was going to break yet another story they didn’t have. Which, inevitably, he did. Now they pretend the buyback story was something that just popped into their heads.

Normally I would have let this go. After all, Bruce Murphy's a big boy and doesn't need a defense in this community. But I couldn't, and probably for the same reason Jessica cited.

What pushed me to write this column, though, was a quote from Journal Sentinel Editor Martin Kaiser. Murphy’s successor at Milwaukeeworld.com, Michael Horne, was the one who singled it out. Kaiser, in the newspaper’s story about the Pulitzer, stated, “No one else is going to do investigations like this except newspaper staffs. That is what makes you relevant. You’ve got to provide news that people can’t get anywhere else.”

The problem is, someone did.

There was another pension scandal?

Michael Horne reminds us of another reporter's work on the Milwaukee County pension scandal for a certain website. That reporter is now editing some magazine while The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wins the Pulitzer Prize for a follow-up story. Such is the nature of the beast.

Update! You want irony? Look at the first comment on this Murphy's Law.