Curses! Our secret plan of world domination and making Scott Jensen ruler of the Earth has been discovered!

Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy stops his story corrections long enough to actually speak to someone at the secret lair of the MacIver Institute to try to find out the real identity of "Number 1":

In response to my story suggesting former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen could become director of the newly formed MacIver Institute, Jensen wrote to say it’s not true. “I have a job I absolutely love at the Alliance for School Choice. They pay me well and I am passionate about my work there. I will not be leaving that post to take up any position at the MacIver Institute.”

Later, Jensen amended that somewhat, saying he is a consultant and his “main client” is the Alliance for School Choice. Jensen has done work for the group since at least 2006, when its federal tax form lists him as staff member working 38 hours a week and earning $126,045. In 2007, Jensen started a one-person consulting firm called Chartwell Strategic Advisors. Sure enough, the Alliance for School Choice tax form for 2007 dropped Jensen from the staff but added his Chartwell as a consultant, giving it $126,000.

How is it that this Washington, D.C.-based group added Jensen as a strategist?Perhaps because its former president (back when the group was called the American Education Reform Council) is Milwaukeean Susan Mitchell. Mitchell is still on the group’s board of directors. She also runs School Choice Wisconsin and has worked with Jensen and others to promote vouchers in this state.

Anyway, this seems to have left a little extra time for Jensen and Chartwell to help chart the course for the MacIver Institute.

Shocking! The horror! Scott Jensen is a consultant, and he actually is *gasp* CONSULTING FOR TWO ORGANIZATIONS! No wonder the left side of the Cheddarsphere is in a dizzy tizzy. Why, if this keeps up, Jensen will soon be consulting for three organizations! Then four! Then five!

Soon he will have a consulting operation active in every corporation and think tank in the world! And we'll have to clone him in our secret laboratories just to keep up with the number of consulting jobs. Eventually, there will be Scott Jensen clones everywhere talking about welfare reform, school choice, and cutting taxes. We'll be cloning Scott Jensens faster than Acorn can create fake voter registrations! By the time 2012 comes around, there will be enough Scott Jensens to elect Scott Jensen President of the United States.

And we're not only doing it here. We're making Scott Jensens in China and Russia. Even France! Every country in the world will soon be run by their own Scott Jensen! It's a spectacular plot to take over the world! And we almost got away with it!!!

(Have you ever noticed the political left in this state really is a bunch of paranoid ninnies?)

Bruce Murphy fires back

Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy explains the decision to run the Shelley story on talk radio (my take here) and the communication with WTMJ-AM before the story was published.

Why run the story? Well, in four days, the magazine’s Web site had 49,000 unique visitors, about 10 times more traffic than normal. It was an editor’s dream. But frankly, I had bigger plans. Before the story was published, I contacted Sykes and made him an offer: I would leak the piece ahead of time to him and offer the chance to write his own story, defending talk radio and responding to Shelley’s claims. This would place Milwaukee Magazine at the heart of an important debate, give both stories equal treatment and generate two straight months of controversy.

Sykes seemed interested and asked to see the story. But after that, I never heard from him. Finally, I was contacted by Sykes’ boss, Journal Broadcast Executive Vice President Steve Wexler, who informed me Sykes would not be doing an article for us. Instead, he asked the magazine to run a short letter from management that, among other things, said “neither the station nor our hosts were offered a chance to comment on or correct errors of fact.”

In response, I e-mailed Wexler and told him the magazine always runs corrections of factual errors, so he should inform me of any such examples. He never responded. After we posted the story, he again e-mailed me and asked if we were going to run that letter. I again responded that he needed to alert us of any errors. I was again met by silence, so I sent Wexler a revised letter that changed the wording to this: “Neither the station nor our hosts were offered a chance to comment on the claims made by the author.” Wexler agreed to this and I posted his letter.

Murphy then uses Sykes' response to the Shelley story to illustrate the claims by Shelley. I'd note that Murphy does a better job of providing examples for Shelley's claims about Sykes' methods for talk radio than Shelley did.

One point Murphy attempts to make I think points directly at the flaw in the Shelley article. Murphy claims, "What’s striking about Sykes’ blogged response to Shelley’s essay is how unresponsive it is. Sykes doesn’t directly address or deny that conservative talk radio hosts..." followed by 11 different points of supposed (bad) behavior by talk radio hosts. Here Murphy is holding Sykes to a higher standard than Shelley, who provided no examples to support his arguments.

What would be really interesting is a broader look at talk radio in this town, including the liberals, to see how different topics are picked and handled, and how callers are selected. It would be fun to see some myths about talk radio demolished. Unfortunately there have been only a handful of people who have worked for both of the major talk radio stations. Maybe Charlie could write it.

Shelley's gossip column

I had to laugh when I read the Milwaukee Magazine article by former WTMJ-AM news director Dan Shelley about the “secrets” of talk radio. If you had any doubt about where he was coming from, the opening sentence gave the game away, “I first got into journalism because I thought I could make a difference.”

Not because he liked learning interesting stories, or writing, or whatever. Shelley started his career in “news” with an agenda. Maybe Shelley’s a frustrated talk show host wannabe. Maybe it was just frustrating that he couldn’t change the world with the impact of Charlie Sykes.

But to hold a grudge this long for one “I told you so” minute about a snowstorm is rather silly to me.

Shelley makes a lot of generalizations, many of which reinforce some of the stereotypes of talk radio. And when he gets into specifics, he doesn’t seem to have any point at all.

What are the examples Shelley offers?

The aforementioned snowstorm, that Sykes did not want to talk about and hype. Shelley believed the audience wanted to talk about it and Sykes understandably was a little grumpy about somebody telling him what should be the content of his show.

I think Sykes should talk more about the Dallas Cowboys and martinis. Let’s see what happens when I walk in during one of his commercial breaks and tell him.

Then there was the tennis incident. Sykes didn’t think the station should be revealing the Wimbledon results, and some tennis fanatics called Shelley to complain. Reading Shelley you would think Henry V was alive and well and still upset about the gift of tennis balls from the Dauphin. Did Shelley reply to callers,

We are glad the Charlie is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces.

Then there was Harley Davidson’s 100th Anniversary. According to Shelley, Sykes didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps Sykes thought his program should be an island in the middle of all-Harley-all-the-time. And then, horror of horrors, Sykes didn’t think it was funny when someone else made fun of him on the air. From this single example, Shelley observes of all talk show hosts, “They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.”

So what are these really examples of? That Sykes might have a different view of Shelley on what constitutes entertaining radio? Or are these cheap gossip points? Certainly not examples of any big “secret” demonstrative of a general trend in talk radio.

Let’s look at the two examples that are at least related to politics.

Shelley was horrified at the slow reaction of the federal government to Hurricane Katrina, and more so at Sykes’ coverage of the event. Yet as events later proved, much of the mainstream media hype turned out to be false. Meanwhile, talk radio was able to cover different aspects of the disaster that was not going to be covered in the mainstream media, including waste and fraud in the aid programs and the unlawful confiscations of weapons.

The other example is the proposed amendment to Wisconsin’s constitution to ban gay marriage. Shelley and Sykes tell two completely different versions. In Shelley’s version, Sykes was opposed but didn’t want to tick off his radio audience. In Sykes’ version, Sykes was undecided. The facts lean towards Sykes’ version of events. If Sykes was truly opposed to the amendment, according to Shelley’s stereotypes of talk radio Sykes would not have hosted a debate on the air. But Sykes not only did so, he often expressed his ambivalence on the issue on the air, probably to the frustration of much of his audience. (I even teased on my blog predicting in 2007 Sykes would make up his mind on the ban. I don’t think he has yet.)

If anything, Sykes’ behavior during the debate on banning gay marriage in the constitution was everything Shelley seems to want in talk radio. But in this case, Shelley didn’t want Sykes to be balanced on the issue; Shelley wanted Sykes to take his side.

But you’ll be happy to know that Shelley was always there for Sykes (and Jeff Wagner). He tried to help Mark Reardon. He even worked with the sports personalities to make them “human.” He was a good Dr. Frankenstein.

Now he’s out in New York City, and the biggest item on his resume is that he was the news director and assistant program manager at a radio station he claims was called “WGOP” by former Mayor John Norquist. There has been speculation why Shelley would dish the gossip on his former colleagues, especially in the comments at the Milwaukee Magazine site. Perhaps it’s a simple matter of geography, looking for a career in liberal New York City but stuck having to apologize for working at a conservative talk radio station. Must suck when he has to talk to all the right kind of people.

Kagen still deserves an "F"

Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy criticizes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for using an expert from the Heritage Foundation to grade the responses of each Wisconsin congressman to the question of what to do about the growing fiscal problem posed by entitlement spending.

The JS Sunday Crossroads section has done a fine job of balancing right-wing and left-wing commentary. So what in the world was the paper doing running a story where an analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation grades the Wisconsin delegation as to their proposals for Social Security and Medicare reform? The writer assumes immediate reform of Social Security is needed, and therefore gives his worst grades (D+ to F) to four Democrats (gosh, what a surprise coming from a conservative). Of course, commentators like acclaimed economist Paul Krugman contend there is no actuarial basis for demanding immediate reform of Social Security. In short, there is a real left-right policy disagreement here, so why give us the analysis, much less grade politicians, from one side only?

What Murphy misses is that the editors had originally posed the question from the point of view that there is a fiscal crisis looming because of the growing entitlements, and each of the congressmen that replied accepting that premise.

Well, perhaps except for Congressman Steve Kagen who gave the most bizarre answer that did not deal with the entitlement question at all. For that the Heritage Foundation's expert gave him an "F". The grade, even Murphy would have to admit, is well-deserved regardless of who does the grading.

Bad habit

You definitely want to take the time to read this Milwaukee Magazine article on the Sister Giannini sexual abuse case. Jessica McBride does some of her best writing in taking us into the lives of two of Sister Giannini's victims and the incomplete resolution of this story after her conviction.

Commenting foul balls

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Tom Haudricourt issued an umpire's warning to commenters on the MJS Brewers Game Blog:

Because there were so many crude and vulgar comments in the game blog Sunday in New York, we have discussed what should be done about it. The editors have decided to monitor the posts more closely, and those who use vulgarities will have their access denied to future blogs. You can change your call name afterward if you want, but that name will also be denied if vulgarities are used.

Words that we would never dream of using in a family newspaper are being used on the Brewers Blog, and we intend to stop it. It's a shame it has to come to this. I never dreamed we would have to even consider banning people from posting on the blogs.

So, this is fair warning. If you want to show crass instead of class, you'll be denied future access to posting on the Brewers Blog. The blog editors have assured me they can and will remove access for all call names who use crude and vulgar words. We think people can disagree with each other without using foul language or calling each other nasty names.

Kathy Schenck of the (indispensible) MJS Words to the Wise blog notes that the newspaper is considering allowing comments on their news stories when they switch computer systems.

Newspapers allow the free flow of comments on their Web sites for two reasons. First, readers use the commenting feature as instant messaging. They post comments, read what others have to say, and some respond. Second, newspapers are worried about liability. If they censor some comments but not others, do they open themselves up to lawsuits? Even if we wanted to approve all comments before they were posted, we do not have the resources to hire the dozens of people needed.

The official policy at many papers is to let the comments flow. Users may report abuse of policies against bad language and personal attacks, but the bar to be banned or edited is pretty high. I've seen comments on many JS blogs, not just the sports ones, that I would not want my son to read and that I'm embarrassed were under the Journal Sentinel name.

I'm not opposed to letting people comment without prior approval. In fact, I'm enthused by how passionate our readers are about the issues. And yet I worry that "a few bad apples" will spoil the newspaper's reputation as a credible forum for civil public discourse. Being that forum has been part of our mission for decades. Should we let mean and immature people hiding behind false names tarnish us?

Mark Maley, the CNI editor overseeing the CommunityNow sites for the MJS, has a bit more earthy view of comments. Answering in Milwaukee Magazine to the Kevin Fischer controversy:

"Even with the skirmishes, nobody's been sued," he says. "It's basically been a handful of people tossing mud. There's been some online behavior that I'm not thrilled about, but the vast, vast majority is pretty positive stuff." Even some of the people involved in the verbal duels have also engaged in enterprising work, like airing details of community development projects or conducting open-records requests for officials' e-mails.

But bad journalism might be what the readers want. "I'm not crazy about it," Maley says. "But the FranklinNOW site has rapidly become our No. 2 Web site rather than 6 or 7."

I actually thought the "cheescake breath" comment was funny, myself.

Maybe Maley should talk to Haudricourt about playing ball.

We've discussed comments and comment policies before and I think the discussions themselves tend to fall into a lot of finger pointing. For those of you that are new here, I do try to keep comments as open as possible. I do draw the line at libel and conspiracy theories, and I try to edit for profanity.

We'll see if a family newspaper can set standards that it can live with.

Milwaukee County had a pension scandal?

Bruce Murphy takes a look at Milwaukee County's lawsuit against Mercer:

It is remarkable how little has been written about Milwaukee County’s suit against Mercer Human Resources Consulting. The stakes for county taxpayers are high. The county has hired actuarial experts who have estimated the total cost of the notorious November 2000 pension plan to be $600 million.

The county has also uncovered considerable documentation suggesting the Mercer did a shoddy job when it came to advising on and estimating the costs of the infamous “backdrop” program, which has allowed county employees to collect lump sum payments as high as $600,000 while also getting a monthly pension payment for life. If Mercer is found at fault, the county could win big. (Two years ago it asked for a settlement of at least $100 million.)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stories have barely touched on the details in the court filings.

Murphy also discusses Dave Umhoefer winning the Pulitzer Prize for his work on the county buyback program first reported by Bruce Murphy.

The irony of the JS winning for writing about the county pension system, the story it didn’t cover until it was forced to, is remarkable. Even when it finally wins, there’s a dark cloud shading the silver lining.

But it’s still a Pulitzer, for a paper that’s never had one, and whose predecessor paper, the Milwaukee Journal, had last won in 1977. That’s a long dry spell. The victory validates the strategy of Kaiser to recruit nationally for talent. He did, and brought in enterprise and investigative editor Mark Katches, who had overseen two projects that were Pulitzer finalists at the Orange County Register. Katches seems like the real thing, and the JS appears to be giving him the resources needed to do investigations. I hope there are more Pulitzers to come for the paper.

The winning story involved a county buyback program that allowed employees to buy credit toward their pension for previous years of service, even though they had originally waived payments to the pension during those years (for seasonal jobs in their youth, etc.). Horne and McBride note that I wrote first about the county buyback program in 2002. True, but I did nothing about it. JS reporter David Umhoefer learned about the program and did a strong, in-depth story.

The paper hired two actuaries to crunch the numbers on this program, and they estimated a $50 million impact from several hundred employees who got a buyback. Of course, most of the cost actually came for those employees who were thereby vaulted into the elite group that benefited from the backdrop and the 25 percent bonus passed in November 2000 – the pension sweeteners I wrote about that may cost as much as $600 million and led to the ouster of eight elected county officials.

Still, Umhoefer added another discrete tale to the ongoing story of cronyism and greed that has characterized all aspects of the county pension scandal. More particularly, his piece dramatized the impact a daily paper’s beat reporter can have. Umhoefer took over the courthouse beat in 2002, just after the pension scandal hit, at a high-pressure time, when the county and the paper’s coverage of it were in the spotlight. He waded through all the cross-currents, covered the beat with energy and clarity, and brought that knowledge to bear in the buyback story. His Pulitzer winner, in short, was really the culmination of his work as a beat reporter. And yes, it did remind us of the enduring value of newspapers. Whether in print or online, most journalistic scoops are still being delivered by newspapers, and we all benefit from the work they do.

Gracious of Murphy, considering he could've wondered when he gets to throw out the first pitch at Miller park, too.

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.

Idiot politician of the week

It wasn't Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson. Getting into a fight with someone who buys ink and pixels buy the barrel may not have been smart. Posting a partisan endorsement (and I know he tried not to make it look that way) on a city website was not bright either. But Nelson gets a break this week.

City of Waukesha Administrator Lori Luthor is not quite the evil genius of distant relative Lex Luthor, at least not last week. The explanation for attending the Barack Obama rally just does not hold water (always a problem in Waukesha). Awfully hard to coordinate security for an event when 1) your job has nothing to do with security and 2) you're sitting in the front row of the event between the mayor and the governor. Unless you're planning on acting as a human shield for the mayor, you belong back at the office. But even that is not the winner this week.

It wasn't Roger Danielsen, the disgraced ex-school board member from Waukesha who resigned before he could be recalled, although I'm certain he'll be in the running in the future. Believing he could run again for public office is certainly idiotic. Believing the circumstances under which he was driven from public office would not be an issue was enough to make him first runner-up. But he just fell short of our winner.

No, the winner has to be New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero. Even cutting him some slack for being mayor in the snake pit of New Berlin, his complaint about blogs and his response to them takes the prize. From Milwaukee Magazine Pressroom, March 2008:

And New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero says his administration has opted not to post press releases online because of the blogs. "They're negative and filled with wrong information," he says. "If we post our information on there, people won't know if it's true or not."

No, the test of whether a press release is accurate or not is not if its online. The test may be if it comes from the office of Jack Chiovatero.

For keeping his office in the 19th century, Jack Chiovatero is our idiot of the week.

(Send your nomination for the "Idiot Politician of the Week" to Jamesmdw@yahoo.com. The idiots will be identified every Sunday for the previous week.)

Crazy Shepherd teams with BNN

Blog Net News and the Crazy Shepherd have teamed up to form the Express Milwaukee Blog Network. Southeastern Wisconsin bloggers not making the current list may want to contact David Mastio at Blog Net News to be added.

I don't see Michael Horne's blog, Doug Hissom's blog or Bruce Murphy's regular online column. (I didn't make the list at first, either.)

The Crazy Shepherd and BNN don't appear to be limiting this to political blogs, as there's a "fat acceptance" blog as well as others.

Catching up on being Wiggy in the Media

From today's Sound Off in the Waukesha Freeman:

Thursday’s column by James Wigderson, I thought that was really hitting the nail on the head. He talks about the city administrator’s position and the council, I’ve talked to a lot of people who think that the city’s budget has become a runaway train ever since that position was batted.

At the same time, our council also made the brilliant move of eliminating the only position that was accountable for the public and that was the controller. People used to call him the watch dog. He seemed to keep things in check. I’d like to see a report that shows how much our city taxes have gone up and how much our bond rating has gone down ever since those position changes were made. Somebody needs to rein in the spending and all these unnecessary things like the transit center or the library addition or the fire house that was supposed to look like a fire hat, instead it looks like a big red shark fin with a number.

We don’t need fancy architecture, especially if the city residents are being taxed to the point where they can’t stay here. We need more aldermen like Kathy Cummings who is one of the few that goes to bat for us taxpayers.

"No Big Deal", Tim Schilke, Waukesha Freeman 8/22/07

Freeman columnist James Wigderson wrote a column on this topic last week, willingly including the same mistake: "Four of the hottest 10 years on record are now from the 1930s," Wigderson wrote. This statement is simply not true unless the qualifier "on record in the United States" is used.

He also accuses global warming skeptics like myself of playing a game of "telephone" and not getting the facts straight. Sorry, Tim, I think it was you playing the game of "telephone" while I went directly to the original source of the correction. Also, since I don't think Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President of the Earth in the 1930s, and since I specifically referenced the set of data being corrected, have a raspberry - ppffllp'.

Two things readers of Schilke's column might want to keep in mind: 1) The data used for the United States is supposed to be the most accurate set used globally, but NASA still has to use a formula to correct for the inaccuracies. That formula was (last I checked) still not released to the public. 2) As I stated in the column in question, when Global Warming promulgators defend the data, they claim the recent correction was no big deal. Yet their whole theory is about tenths of a degree incremental change. Sorry guys, but I ain't willing to spend a trillion dollars and send us back to the stone age because you can't decide if it's the heat or the humidity. I'll just turn up the air conditioning a notch and drink a cold martini to feel better. Let me know when the bananas in Saskatchewan are in season. We'll make daiquiris.

Don't miss this month's issue of Milwaukee Magazine. Erik Gunn gave me good quote in "The Happy Warrior", an article about Waukesha's "liberal, peacenik, nuclear-freezing Democrat" Mayor Larry Nelson. By the way, the first person who told me Nelson could beat Nischke? Waukesha Taxpayer League President Chris Lufter, who is also quoted in the article. But back to numero uno, me.

James Wigderson, a conservative blogger and Waukesha Freeman columnist, says Nischke was weakened by the legislature's failure to pass the Constitutional amendment limiting property tax increases. "If the amendment had passed, she would have been able to tout that as a success," he says. "Because of her failure, all of her touting of it was a reminder to people why they didn't like Madison."

Another mistake: copying the Vrakas playbook, down to his proposal to cut the County Board. "At one point she even floated a trial balloon of reducing the number of aldermen," Wigderson complains, "not understanding that people look at their aldermen and county supervisors in a completely different way. Aldermen are personal."

The Nischke campaign, he adds, "just stumbled along with this sense of inevitability that a Republican would win over a Democrat. Nelson hit the doors a lot harder than she did."

I'm quoted elsewhere in the article, too. In addition to reading quotes from moi, the article I think gives a good feel of where the city is now politically. I'd pick a nit here or there, but it's really worth your time reading. Gunn also quotes State Rep Bill Kramer, WTL President Chris Lufter, Brian Nemoir from the Chamber of Commerce, Steve Shmucki, Rick Congdon, Joe Wineke, Dan Vrakas, Bill Huelsman and Jessica McBride. No aldermen were harmed in the writing of the article. Advice for Larry, ask for the picture on page 9 for your re-election brochure.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel picked this blog post on the end of former Governor Tommy Thompson's political career as one of the "Best of the Blogs" last week. I'll give the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel a hint. They could've quoted me without all the ellipses if they weren't so in love with Mike McCabe who repeated what they wanted to hear even though it had no basis in the truth. (btw, it's W-i-g-d-e-r-s-o-n Library & Pub.) Maybe this week.

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Buying a pot of gold

Bruce Murphy, who broke the original Milwaukee County pension scandal, comments on the latest scandal and asks, "Who’s to blame for this sleazy deal?" Murphy blames a culture of cronyism, former County Executives Dave Schulz and Tom Ament, and the pension board.

The county board seems to have clean hands on this entire scandal, other than supervisor Michael Mayo, who sat on the Pension Board and pushed for benefits he could collect. But all the decisions were made by the Pension Board without getting county board approval. (This also means the media isn’t culpable, as it was for failing to cover the far bigger pension sweetener passed by the county board.)

What screams out here is the make-up of the pension board: Three members are appointed by the county executive, two by the county board chair, three by employee participants and one by the retirees. What’s wrong with this picture? Every appointee is made by someone who can benefit from the pension system. There is no appointee whose sole concern is the impact for taxpayers.

But then Murphy also addresses the person currently at the top, Scott Walker.

On the latest pension scandal, the worst that can be said about current County Executive Scott Walker is that he moved slowly. Walker took office in Spring, 2002, but it wasn’t until 2005 that the pension board voted to put a sunset on the buyback program for seasonal or part-time work.

Walker always seems to drag his feet when it comes to cleaning up the county’s pension system.

Maybe moving slowly is the worst he can be accused of, but that's still pretty damning considering how he came to office in the first place. It shouldn't have taken Walker's administration over three years to find this problem with the pension system. Worse, it appears Walker became aware that there might be a problem when his former parks director Susan Baldwin benefitted from the pension buyback program. Walker is now calling for an outside agency to audit the program to see if there are any more "surprises". Shouldn't this have been done three years ago?

Walker deserves credit for holding the line on taxes and spending since taking office, but this is one time he earned a few political bruises.

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Am I worth 50 cents? Am I worth three bucks?

From "Crashing the Party", the Insider Pressroom in this month's Milwaukee Magazine:

In the last few years, the number of of independent Internet writers, or bloggers, has exploded. Their impact is increasingly felt.

Bloggers Owen Robinson and James Wigderson now write newsaper columns (both write for papers owned by Conley Media, which includes the Waukesha Freeman and West Bend Daily News). Along with liberal Jay Bullock of the blog folkbum, they're also used by local television stations to comment on election results.

I checked, and I am not featured in the article on Whitney Gould or on finding the right neighborhood for gay acceptance. They also forgot to mention Bullock's time in the center square.

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