Recently in Tulsa World Category

UPDATE: 5:28 PM: Brian Barber's comments (a second one explained that copy editors write the headlines, not the reporters) have vanished from the website.

The headline read "Public works audit angers councilors".

The headline doesn't seem to fit Brian Barber's story, and in fact, Barber objected to it by posting a comment on the web version of the article:

Tulsa World Staff Writer Brian Barber, (6/5/2008 8:27:36 AM)

I disagree with the headline that was placed above my story. While comments at the meeting were direct, no one was angry.

Good for Brian. Writers need to speak up when headlines distort the reader's perception of the story. Given the Whirled editorial board's disdain for the City Council, it's easy to suspect a deliberate decision to use the headline to cast the Council in a bad light, when it's Public Works director Charles Hardt who comes across in the story as defensive and shifty.

Barber wrote a solid story that explained to the reader not only what was said, but the dynamics of the discussion between the councilors and Hardt.

Hardt had told the Council that the long-awaited audit of his department would be a self-audit.

The self audit will start in July and last about a year, with the organization's representatives on site to oversee the process.

The areas to be examined include service delivery, effectiveness and accountability, management and administration, teamwork, staff pride, interdepartmental coordination and planning for the future.

Several councilors are quoted in the story expressing concern about Hardt's announcement:

"I disagree with us calling this an audit," Councilor G.T. Bynum said during this week's committee meetings. "In my opinion, an audit necessitates some form of independence.

"I think what's planned will have great benefit, but I do think we need an independent audit of the Public Works Department."

Councilor Jack Henderson said that over the years he's been in office, many people have called for a public works audit.

"But I know this isn't what they had in mind," he said.

There are stories out there about a collapsed and unusable water reservoir tank, about pump stations destroyed because of overpressure required by a poorly planned system, about favoritism toward certain developers in the planning of water and sewer projects, about collusion among local contractors resulting in higher prices. I've been told that Public Works has ways of "hiding" money -- not for personal enrichment, necessarily, but to be able to shunt funds between projects without getting the politicians involved.

Many people have been calling for a full and independent financial audit and a full and independent performance audit of the Public Works department, chief among them former Councilor Jim Mautino. An internal self-audit will not provide the degree of scrutiny needed to find and correct problems and build public confidence in the department.

Hardt's reaction to the councilors' concerns:

Hardt grew somewhat defensive with the talk of an independent audit.

"If you want an audit that looks at the books and financial transactions, that's not what this is," he said.

"This is more of a performance audit that looks at how we deliver service, whether we're effective and whether there are ways we can improve.

"But if you really want to know whether we did something wrong, I think you need to hire a head hunter or a witch hunter and get on with it."

Bynum said he doesn't think an independent audit should be viewed as something to expose "any perceived wrongdoings."

"I simply think there would be some value in it," he said.

Hardt said he's been through such audits before that were wastes of time.

"I've found that you have auditors who have no knowledge or understanding of what the engineering world does and no clue as to what our objectives are," he said.

"This is a far more meaningful process than having an audit firm that doesn't understand one thing about constructing something but tells us how we should have done it. That's awfully irritating."

A member of the city Auditor's Office stepped forward during the meeting and suggested that the process should be called a quality assurance review, rather than an audit.

Exactly right. A quality assurance review measures performance against the department's own rules, procedures, and goals, but it doesn't examine whether the rules, procedures, and goals are appropriate or effective.

A real audit process needs to create a secure environment for employees to speak out about problems they've observed. A citeewurkor needs to be able to say, "We've always done it that way, but { it's always seemed fishy, it never made sense, it seems wrong } to me," without fear of retribution. PW is a big department, and it would be easy for someone to shape rules and procedures in a self-serving way without being obvious about it. (Self-serving doesn't necessarily mean lining one's own pockets. It could also involve power or personal comfort.)

In case you haven't read the latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly (for shame if you haven't), here's a link to my latest column about the recent electrical, political, and financial difficulties of our city's monopoly daily newspaper, the Tulsa World, affectionately known around here as the Whirled for the strange spin they put on local stories.

If I point out when the editor edits my story in a way not to my liking, I ought to point it out when he makes an especially constructive addition. That's how the connection between the termination of the Community World section and its employees and speculation that the Lortons might be readying the paper for sale came to be in my column. It's the first sensible explanation I've seen for the suddenness of the termination and the meanness of the severance package.

There's also Brian Ervin news story on the end of the Community World, with quotes from former CW editor Emily Priddy and World managing editor Susan Ellerbach.

This week is also UTW's green issue, with a focus on sustainable living.

Elsewhere in UTW, Brian Ervin has stories about the demise of a proposed five-story apartment complex project in Brookside (killed by Tulsa's fire codes), the anniversary of the death of Cintas laundry worker Eleazar Torres-Gomez and the results of OSHA's investigation, and the announcement that the Atlas Life building will be converted into a Courtyard by Marriott hotel.

Today, the Tulsa World is spiking its Community World editions. All CW employees have been laid off.

The Community World editions were established in 1993 under the leadership of Charlie Biggs. The intent was to stave off the growth of suburban papers. It seems like the launch of the community papers also helped the World starve the Tulsa Sentinel of ad revenue. (The Sentinel was a weekly paper published by Landon Jones, grandson of Tulsa Tribune publisher Jenk Jones. The Tribune ceased publication on September 30, 1992; the Sentinel launched about a month later.)

Emily Priddy, who was an associate editor for the Community World's Westside edition, writes on TulsaNow's forum about the end of the weekly regional editions:

Their Web site doesn't mention this today, but the Tulsa World is ceasing publication of the Community World and has laid off the entire CW staff. I notice that the announcement on the front of today's Westside issue -- which was added after we'd proofed the Westside pages, and which resulted in a reporter's actual work being spiked to make room for it -- omitted that bit about the layoffs. The announcement also neglects to mention the fact that those laid off were given absolutely no warning and received eight days' pay and 26 days' benefits in exchange for their loyalty to the company. And it entirely fails to notify readers that two of the people laid off had been hired less than two weeks earlier.

One woman had signed a lease on a new apartment four days earlier. Another had put a down payment on a condo a week before the axe fell. One girl had quit a job at Urban Tulsa Weekly just three weeks ago to come to the Community World. A woman who has struggled financially for several years had just gotten back on her feet and was about to move into a house. Another has worked for the company for ... 13 years, I think? She repeatedly asked for an explanation of why we were given no warning that this was coming and no time to find other jobs or make other plans. She was given a reason for the layoffs, but she received absolutely no explanation for the callous manner in which the layoffs were handled.

Money will buy Armani suits and Ferraris and all sorts of other pretty toys. It will put a few kids through Holland Hall, and it will buy their grandma's best friend a byline on a column that someone else ghostwrites for her. But there is one thing money -- even old money -- can't buy: Class. And I've seen far more of that commodity in Oakhurst, Turley, and my beloved Red Fork than I see coming out of the mansions around Woodward Park this morning.

The "grandma's best friend" reference is to Danna Sue Walker, whose byline appears over the World's society column. In an e-mail to me, Emily wrote:

My heart is breaking for my colleagues -- some of whom worked for the World for more than a decade and deserved much, much better than they got, and some of whom were hired less than two weeks ago, only to be terminated before they'd had time to finish walking their beats. Laying off some staff members is understandable: Newspapers are doing it all over the country as upper management struggles to cope with the pressures of competition from the Internet and other media outlets. Laying off staff members with absolutely no warning -- and then giving them a severance package consisting of eight days' pay and 26 days' benefits -- is unconscionable. I'd expect that kind of treatment from Wal-Mart. But I expected better than that from a mom-and-pop business that's been in the same family, serving the same community, for a century.

I thought old money was supposed to be classier than that. Apparently I was mistaken.

The CW editions were where you'd find some of the most interesting and well-reported stories in the paper. Let's hope those talented reporters are able to continue serving Tulsa's readers in some other venue.

An electrical fire early Sunday morning shut down production of the Tulsa World. 60,000 subscribers will get the full paper, but the rest will get only the classifieds, TV World, and ad inserts, all of which are printed and assembled earlier in the week. (Oddly enough, a lot of people buy the paper just to get those pieces.)

You can still read the whole paper -- the PDF version is online. Thankfully, that means you don't have to miss the irony of the front page headline "Downtown among safest areas" juxtaposed with "A man is killed after a disturbance at a downtown club." You also don't have to miss the latest above-the-fold story about Terry Simonson's moonlighting.

Best wishes to the World in getting back up and running, but this incident is bound to start some minds going: If they can deliver the paper to their customers, ads and all, without physically printing and delivering the paper, should they really bother fixing the printing presses?

The hive-mind that writes the unsigned editorials from its Totalitarian-Moderne bunker on Main Street had this to say today about a suggestion made Tulsa Councilor John Eagleton regarding a proposal to make city elections non-partisan:

OK, this one is simply too easy so we're going to let you fill in the blanks with the joke of your choice. And we rarely, if ever, pass up the opportunity for a cheap joke.

In the debate over changes to the city charter, in particular making elections nonpartisan, City Councilor John Eagleton, while supporting the nonpartisan issue, also wants each candidate to be able to add a word or phrase to the ballot that would describe each candidate's political philosophy.

Now, this is where you add your joke. We'll wait a second.

There.

At best, whichever drone wrote this editorial on behalf of the Whirled Collective decided to "phone it in," rather than exert the effort to lampoon Eagleton's suggestion effectively.

But I think it's more likely that the AverillDelCourJonesNealPearson doesn't understand the idea well enough to explain why the hive-mind doesn't like it. Otherwise, they would have set out a cogent argument against it.

The Whirled editorial puts me in mind of a type of adolescent ridicule. The ringleader of the popular bunch points at poor, unpopular Poindexter and says, "What a loser! Poindexter is wearing a black belt on a Thursday!" The ringleader begins laughing. All of his toadies have no idea why wearing a black belt on a Thursday is ridiculous, but they know to take their cue from the ringleader, so they point and laugh, too. The Whirled knows there is a certain constituency (declining in number) that will laugh if they say "laugh." (These are the same people that believed the Whirled when it claimed that non-Councilor Randy Sullivan was intelligent.)

Eagleton's suggestion is similar to one I made in my column in the April 6-12, 2006, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

Would stripping party labels entirely be helpful to voters? In fact, it gives voters even less information to work with. Labels are helpful aids to memory. You may have trouble remembering the name of the candidates you plan to support, and knowing that you decided to vote with your party in the mayor's race and with the other party in the council race gives you an extra hook to recall your decision....

So how do we change Tulsa's system to expand both choice and information for voters?

Instead of non-partisan city elections, let's have multi-partisan elections. Put all candidates for a city office on the ballot, but instead of stripping away the party labels, let's let candidates apply the label or labels of their choosing. Maybe that would be a major party label, maybe that would be the name of a political action committee (PAC), or even both.

There are a couple of different ways to implement this. In the column I suggested that parties and PACs could register with the city and endorse candidates, and then each candidate could choose which endorsements to note next to his name on the ballot, in place of or alongside national party names. The least complicated method, suggested by Eagleton, would allow each candidate to supply his or her own description, up to some number of lines, words, or characters.

That description wouldn't have to be "liberal" or "conservative" as the Whirled editorial hive-mind seems to believe. It could identify the candidate's position on a current issue or describe the candidate's approach to city government. A citywide group might run a slate of candidates, all using the same ballot description. It might just be a catchy slogan. Councilor Roscoe Turner, for example, might use, "Voted Tulsa's Most Believable Councilor." Since candidates are required by charter to use their full legal names on the ballot, a candidate might use the description to identify his nickname to the voters. Some possibilities, in 40 characters or less (about one line on the ballot):

• Back to Basics: Cops, Streets, Parks
• Conservative Republican
• Progressive Democrat
• Endorsed by Republican Assembly
• Endorsed by Just Progress
• No New Taxes
• Higher Taxes Coalition
• Preserve Midtown
• I love surface parking lots
• Citizens for Responsible Government
• Tulsa Alliance for Neighborhoods
• Homeowners for Fair Zoning
• Tulsa Real Estate Coalition
• Pimp This Town
• By George, It's Nigh Time
• Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Some descriptions would be sensible, some would be frivolous, all would add some color to an otherwise antiseptic non-partisan ballot. (Requiring all candidates to submit a nominating petition, as independent candidates are already required to do, would keep the frivolity within reasonable bounds.)

There's another possible explanation for why the Whirled didn't defend their opposition to Eagleton's idea: They oppose it for selfish reasons which they don't wish to reveal to the reader. A candidate's brief self-description on the ballot constitutes a media bypass. Without depending on the favor of the monopoly daily newspaper, without needing a pile of campaign cash, a candidate would be able to communicate something about himself, albeit very briefly, to every voter, in words of his own choosing.

If the Whirled editorial hive-mind gets its collective way, a city election ballot would comprise lists of bare names, with no other identifying information. As the still-dominant media outlet in Tulsa, the Whirled would define for many voters what emotions and opinions they should hold about each of those names. No wonder they don't care for Councilor Eagleton's suggestion.

This struck me as strange. Maybe this was unintentional, maybe not. You be the judge.

There's a shift in the way the Tulsa World refers to the potential commercial development on the west bank of the Arkansas River at 21st Street.

Prior to the October 9 Tulsa County sales tax election, the paper consistently connected the proposed west bank development to Branson Landing, the retail development on the shores of Lake Taneycomo in downtown Branson, Missouri, and mentioned developer Rick Huffman by name. After the election, the development has been mentioned a few times, but without any reference to Huffman and only one to Branson Landing. After the jump, you'll find examples of what I'm talking about.

One of my favorite columnists, Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, remembers editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette, who died last week in a car accident. Greenberg ponders the state of editorial cartooning and relays a pointed quote from Marlette about his profession.

Doug Marlette wasn't just a newspaper cartoonist but a newspaper critic in his way. In his memory, the rest of us in this business would do well to keep in mind some criticism he offered in an interview with Jeff MacNelly's daughter, Kristy Shumaker, when she interviewed him in 2003:

"We've bred this generation of Eddie Haskells, parent-pleasers, suck-ups, careerists that's hurting cartooning as well as newsrooms.... The irony is, readers are falling away, and newspapers can't figure it out as they reward blandness, homogenize the product, dull it down and drain all the humanness out of it."

Newspapers have a lot of competition these days, and have had since radio and television preceded the Internet on the scene. But we have no more serious threat than our own, fatal craving for respectability. Especially when it swells into pomposity. Or a fearful neutrality, as if we were afraid of taking sides. Doug Marlette didn't have any problem along those lines; he was willing to offend all sides.

Here's trusting that Doug Marlette isn't resting in peace at all, but still giving the haters hell.

Tulsa has plenty of pomposity, but the Whirled participates in it when it should be puncturing it. Someone once said that a newspaper's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Sad to say, Marlette's final employer has been getting that backward for the better part of the last 102 years.

Sad news. Tulsa World editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette was killed this morning in a single-car accident in Mississippi when the car in which he was a passenger hydroplaned and struck a tree. Marlette had previously been with the Charlotte Observer, the Atlanta Constitution, and Newsday, and the writer and artist for the comic strip Kudzu, a gentle satire of Southern small-town life. According to a story on the World's website, he was returning from his father's funeral in North Carolina and on the way to visit friends in Oxford, Miss.

Marlette began drawing for the World in February 2006, and he was a visiting professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he lived.

Condolences to his family and his colleagues at the World.

The Tulsa Whirled has rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic moved editorial pages editor Ken Neal into semi-retirement as "senior editor and columnist." Neal has been an editorial writer for the Whirled since 1976 and editor of the editorial pages since 1994. He will be replaced as editor by David Averill, who has been an editorial writer since 1985.

Don't expect much to change. The five members of the editorial board (including Julie Del Cour, Janet Pearson, and Mike Jones) all march in lockstep and proudly so. At a speech given by Neal in early 2005, I asked him about the lack of disagreement between the Whirled's local columnists:

I commended Mr. Neal on the diversity of his syndicated columnists but asked why there was a lack of diversity of opinion on local issues. He seemed puzzled by my question. I pointed out that you never read Julie DelCour writing that Ken Neal was wrong about something or Ken Neal writing that David Averill was wrong about something. The board is uniformly supportive of any tax increase -- something Neal openly acknowledged a few weeks ago. The board is also uniformly negative about the reform majority on the Tulsa City Council.

His reply was about what I expected: The Whirled is a private company, not a public institution. We have the right to push our opinions and our ideas.

I wasn't questioning the Whirled's right to publish what they wished, just suggesting that the lack of diverse opinion on local issues was a flaw in need of correction. Neal went on to cite the decades of experience of each of the editorial board members, many of them with years of experience covering City Hall. Because they're all so intimate with the way City Hall works, naturally they're all in agreement over how City Hall ought to be run.

He went on to say, regarding the public subsidy of Great Plains Airlines, that "everybody in town thought it was a great idea. It was a Chamber deal." This was a revealing comment. Of course there were people who publicly objected to the plan, including two members of the City Council:

To the Whirled editorial writers, and their allies in the Cockroach Caucus, city politics is utter simplicity. If it's a "Chamber deal," it must be good, and of course, "everybody in town" thinks it's a good idea. Anyone who disagrees is by definition a naysayer, an anti-progress crank, and therefore is beneath notice, no matter how well he can argue his position. The result is an inbred intellectual environment with imbecility as a predictable result.

As for Mr. Averill, I received an education in his mindset when he and Del Cour interviewed me during my 2002 run for City Council:

Given my opposition to "It's Tulsa's Time", I figured a new downtown arena would be the dominant topic. Instead, they were most interested in my positions on three issues. First, they wanted to know my position on abortion. I told them I am pro-life, and that I believe that we have an obligation to protect innocent, defenseless human life. They told me not to worry and that the Whirled sometimes endorses "anti-choice" candidates.

The second key issue was whether I approved of the use of government condemnation to "assemble" land for private redevelopment. Clearly they supported the notion. I told them I felt it was an abuse of the power of eminent domain. And they wanted to know where I stood on the six-laning of Riverside Drive, a pet project for them -- I oppose it because of the effect on the park and neighborhood, and said so.

After the Whirled made an unusually early endorsement of my opponent, I called Averill and asked him why:

He told me that my support for neighborhood empowerment (through the use of urban conservation districts) was why they wouldn't endorse me. Averill said that neighborhoods had opposed every good thing that had happened to Midtown, and they shouldn't be given any more clout to oppose progress. I cited several counter-examples to his assertion, but he was not interested in discussing the matter further.

The bottom line for the Whirled was this: If elected to the Council, I would be an obstacle to their vision for the redevelopment of Midtown, because I would work to protect the rights of homeowners and other property owners and make them a part of the decision-making process. I believe that we can accommodate growth and new development without endangering the character of our older neighborhoods, and with a minimum of red tape and regulation.

Of course, the Whirled's endorsement editorial was not so plain-spoken and made no mention at all of land use, zoning, or eminent domain. These issues did not figure in their news coverage of the race or in their last minute editorial, which blasted me for making no constructive contribution to the community, in their view. They did not dare give zoning and planning issues any exposure, because they know that their position is unpopular, particularly in Midtown.

Under David Averill, as under Ken Neal, the Whirled will continue to back higher taxes at every opportunity, to fight broad public involvement in making important city decisions, to work against the interests of ordinary homeowners and in favor of special deals for special people, to ridicule traditional values and conservative opinions on social issues, and to support the Culture of Death. Despite improvements in other sections of the paper, the editorial pages under David Averill will continue to drive subscribers away.

(For a walk down memory lane with Ken Neal's pontifications, click this link for a Google search of the BatesLine archives.)

Recently, John Hart, Communications Director for Senator Tom Coburn, passed along correspondence concerning several attempts by Coburn's office to correct errors appearing in the Tulsa Whirled. There's so much material here, I'm going to have to spool it out over several entries, and you'll have to click "Continue reading" on each entry to see the whole thing.

Here's the most recent example: On August 6, 2006, the Whirled published a story by Jim Myers, the paper's Washington reporter, about a joint town hall meeting to be held in Muskogee by Coburn and Democratic U. S. Congressman Dan Boren. In that story, Myers wrote (emphasis added):

Probably the biggest difference between Coburn and Boren, however, could be their approach to Oklahoma projects and issues.

Boren so far has followed the more traditional approach of making Oklahoma issues a priority, which led him to join others in stepping up when the state had problems this year with a federal agency's response to wildfires.

Coburn, who had been a critic of that same agency on its response to Gulf Coast hurricanes and sits on the panel that oversees it, chose not to weigh in when it came to the state's request for more assistance.

He has said he will not make requests on Oklahoma's behalf until the deficit issue is addressed.

The joint town hall will begin at noon in Rooms A and B of the Muskogee Civic Center, 425 Boston.

"I encourage everyone to attend this important meeting to share your ideas and opinions on the issues important to you," said Coburn, who barred his office from answering any questions on the meeting.

Senator Coburn then submitted the following letter to the editor:

Dear editor,

Your August 6 story, "Coburn, Boren join for meeting" contained a factual error and, I believe, deliberate distortion, which needs to be corrected as soon as possible.

I was shocked that your paper reported that I had "barred (my) office from answering questions on the meeting" I am holding jointly with U.S. Representative Dan Boren when I have no such blanket policy of not discussing this meeting and when no such policy had been communicated to your paper from my office. Your paper also reported that my office had not weighed in with FEMA on behalf of Oklahoma when our state was ravaged by wildfires when we had, in fact, weighed in with FEMA officials.

No one should have to remind any newspaper that manufacturing facts and indirect quotations is highly unethical and unprofessional and a serious offense to subscribers and readers. No provision in our Constitution grants news organizations the right to invent facts or quotations.

Regrettably, the Tulsa World has set a pattern of inaccuracy and distortion which I have been attempting to discuss with your editors for the past several months. My concerns include your paper’s refusal to correct, or even discuss, previous factual errors as well as the belligerent and unprofessional actions of some of your staff toward me and my staff. Because my concerns have not been addressed, I have instructed my office to make information available to every news outlet in Oklahoma except for the Tulsa World. As an elected official, the only recourse I have when a news outlet is willfully inaccurate, unethical and unprofessional is to deny them information.

I hope the Tulsa World will address these issues but until that time, the Tulsa World has no right to suggest to its readers that I am withholding information from the entire state when I am communicating openly with every other news outlet in Oklahoma and directly with my constituents through town hall meetings, personal meetings in my office, my website, phone calls and letters. In an age when citizens get their news from many outlets including television, radio and blogs, a newspaper that fails to provide its readers with accurate and unique information does not harm the public, but itself.

Sincerely,

Tom Coburn, M.D.
United States Senator

Following a typo in the web version of an August 8 story, Hart sent the following e-mail to Joe Worley, Executive Editor of the Whirled:

Joe,

Jim's story today refers to Dr. Coburn as "Co-burn". Please correct
that at your earliest convenience. Also, have you decided against
running a correction to Jim's fictitious claim that we have an office
policy of not discussing our joint town hall meeting with Rep. Boren?
If so, could you give us the courtesy of explaining your reasoning,
particularly in light of your refusal to print Dr. Coburn's letter to
the editor?

Thanks,

John [Hart]

Worley's response:

So it would seem from Doug Marlette's latest cartoon in the Tulsa Whirled.

I shouldn't be too hard on Mr. Marlette. Since he doesn't live here, he can't be expected to be too familiar with local geography.

For cartoons by a long-time Tulsa resident, pick up one of these.

Somewhat related: On Sunday, Julie Del Cour wrote this:

Every five years for the past quarter century, the city of Tulsa has offered voters a deal: If they approve a third-penny sales tax the city will keep chipping away at capital needs.

"Chipping" is the operative word. Even with regular bond issues and renewal of the third-penny four times, the city has about $4 billion in unmet capital needs. Theoretically the city could dedicate its total budget for the next seven years to those needs and still not catch up.

It's funny: The amount of unmet capital needs has been $4 billion as long as I can remember, at least going back to the 1999 bond issue. If we've been "chipping away at it," shouldn't it be getting smaller? Between two bond issues and two third-penny renewals since then, plus Vision 2025 (which mostly unded one of the biggest single items on the list, the arena) we've funded roughly $1.4 billion dollars in capital needs, if memory serves me correctly.

Yes, I've read the front page story in today's Whirled about the dirt being peddled on various candidates. Yes, I have something to say about it, and have already started writing, but I won't finish it until this afternoon.

Let's all give a big Tulsa welcome to the Tulsa Whirled's new editorial cartoonist, Doug Marlette. I have to say I'm impressed that the paper was willing and able to hire a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, even though they won't be paying his full salary -- and even though he won't be coming all the way to Tulsa.

According to his bio, his most recent employment has been with the Tallahassee Democrat and yet his home is in Hillsborough, North Carolina. He is moving to Oklahoma to take this position with the Whirled, but not to Tulsa: According to the Democrat's story on Marlette's departure, he'll also be a lecturer at the University of Oklahoma and will live in Norman. (The Whirled's introductory article overlooked that detail.)

It will be interesting to see if he continues to focus mainly on national and global news. If he does delve in to local and state politics, I hope he doesn't rely on the Whirled's coverage alone as the basis for his cartoons.

I invite Mr. Marlette to explore the BatesLine archive about his new employer, with special attention to the international ridicule that befell the Whirled after its attempt to intimidate me and other critics of the paper. That last link will give Mr. Marlette a good introduction to the way the Whirled wields its influence in local politics -- and a clue as to why the Whirled continues to lose favor and circulation.

Marlette's new boss, editorial page editor Ken Neal, writes:

One of the factors in Marlette's selection is the fact that he is not partisan or convinced that one group or another has a lock on "truth." His cartoons reflect a healthy distrust of government and public life, regardless of the affiliations of public officials. That is often hard for readers to remember when their favorite is portrayed unflatteringly.

Hopefully, Mr. Marlette will include within that "healthy distrust" the ownership and editorial board of the Tulsa Whirled and their favorites in local government.

Tulsans for Better Government (TBG), the group promoting a petition to dismember three Tulsa City Council districts and adding three supercouncilor seats (to be elected citywide to four year terms), filed ethics reports with the City Clerk's office, as required by state law. As of December 31, 2005, the group has accumulated $66,350.00 and has spent $18,882.14. Given that they suspended the petition drive on December 5, it will be interesting to see what they do with the remaining money.

Here is the list of donors disclosed on those forms, in descending order of amount contributed:

No time to analyze this, but feel free to comment on who gave, their connections with various interests, and their possible motivations.

My entry about the Tulsa World's legal threats against this blog and other websites is number 11 on BlogPulse's ranking of 2005's top blog posts.

A few items down is this funny bit -- imagining what the tech blog Engadget would have looked like circa 1985.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the backlog of material I'd like to cover here, and I tip my hat to my fellow Tulsa Bloggers for their continuing coverage of all things local.

Ken Neal, editorial page editor of the Tulsa Whirled, has made some noise lately -- even more than usual. I was going to comment on some of his latest stuff, including a very funny little email he sent to the South Tulsa Citizens Coalition, but Dan Paden and Steve Roemerman have done a very fine job, so go read them.

I'm still wondering about something: News stories about editorial cartoonist Dave Simpson's dismissal a few weeks ago for a plagiarized cartoon that was published in July mentioned that the Hartford Courant, where the purloined cartoon was published, complained to an editor at the Whirled, who apparemtly didn't pursue the matter. Was Ken Neal the editor who let the ball drop? It would have been his department. Why is the Whirled so reluctant to name the editor who failed to respond to the Courant?

The Tulsa Whirled is advertising for a cartoonist to replace Dave Simpson, who was fired a month ago for plagiarism:

Unlike many newspapers, the Tulsa World is seeking a cartoonist. The Tulsa World is one of an elite few of daily newspapers that remain family owned. We believe the venerable political cartoon is, and should be, one of the most visible and popular parts of the newspaper. We have been advised to hire a cartoonist with the same careful consideration that we would use in selecting a new dog. Not that cartoonists are dogs, but both situations require mutual like and respect and long commitment.

Our requirements are simple: Our new cartoonist has to be a great caricaturist; be up to the minute on news developments locally and nationally and produce a funny cartoon at least five times a week, or at the drop of a hat. Now, that won't be too hard, will it? If you believe you measure up and will work for something less than an arm and a leg, (maybe an occasional bone), let us hear from you. We promise great working conditions, colleagues who like to laugh and enjoy their work, and a lot of ideas, most of which you can feel free to reject.

Please contact Laura McIntosh at laura.mcintosh(at)tulsaworld.com OR send resume, samples of work and salary requirements to my attention at the Tulsa World, 315 S. Boulder Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74103.

The ad appeared on the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists bulletin board on Monday, which happened to be Black Ink Monday, when cartoonists published cartoons protesting the decision of the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun, both owned by Tribune Corp., to lay off their cartoonists.

Simpson's cartoons were a highlight of the Tulsa Tribune, one of the ways the evening paper distinguished itself from the Whirled. (The Whirled had been without a cartoonist for as long as I could remember.)

Back in the '70s and '80s, Simpson could be funny. I have a paperback of his cartoons from the period and still get a chuckle out of them. When the Whirled killed the Tribune, they hired Simpson, but they seem to have put him on a short leash, and every cartoon reflected the Whirled's editorial line. A good cartoonist makes everyone look ridiculous, but Simpson, during his Whirled years, may as well have drawn a nimbus behind Susan Savage's head in every cartoon she appeared in. Not to make excuses for plagiarism, but I suspect working at the Whirled would kill anyone's creativity over time.

Many of the commenters on the EditorialCartoonists.com bulletin board think that the editorial cartoon has had its day. Laurence Simon posted this comment about the Black Ink Monday cartoon gallery. (He posted comments about the individual cartoons on his blog.)

Let's treat this gallery not as a protest, but a pop quiz. "Can you draw an editorial cartoon that's simple, effective, and conveys the message?"

Well, I've graded the class, and there's lots of C's, D's, and F's.

Most of the cartoons failed to convey the basic message, used pointless or goofy symbols that required labels to demonstrate what they represented, showed poor quality artwork, employed pointless dialogue, used a Boss Tweed reference most readers wouldn't understand, or engaged in non sequitur Bush bashing.

If columnists were to engage in such rambling off-topic and obscure activities, they'd find their space replaced with syndicated material and bra ads, too.

Other commenters point out that cartoonists will be more valuable to their papers if they adapt to new technologies (why not cartoon in color?), focus on local issues, and draw well and be funny. Pat Crowley, an illustrator/cartoonist for the Palm Beach Post, wrote:

With the internet ANYONE can be a political cartoonist these days. Your newspapers pay you to draw 250 cartoons every year. That gives you the edge over the internet. Are you using it? Are you a better cartoonist than you were last year? ... The art of editorial cartooning has deteriorated over the years and you can't blame it on the accountants. A lot of the work I see out there looks like it was executed- and written- in less than an hour.... When the editors start rejecting your work because it's too well-drawn, too timely, too local or too funny, you have a case.

A new cartoonist at the Whirled could be a great asset to the community, but not if he's restricted from making fun of the politicians and programs that the Whirled supports. If you're a cartoonist and want to work for a Tulsa publication that will allow you a great deal of creative freedom, you should get in touch with this paper instead.

Don Danz laments that he's been tardy in blogging about our monopoly daily newspaper, but more than makes up for it with a new logo design for the Whirled.

A commenter reminded me that I had yet to link to the video of Tulsa Whirled City Hall reporter P. J. Lassek vigorously displaying her agreement with Councilor Susan Neal at Tuesday's council committee meeting. The discussion concerned a subpoena for the original bank transaction records for Great Plains Airlines. Neal was attacking Councilor Chris Medlock's motives in seeking the records of the publicly-subsidized and failed airline.

Thanks to KFAQ's ever-alert Chip Anderson for capturing and posting the video. That's P. J. sitting along the wall on the right, behind and to the left of Chris Medlock.

Steve Roemerman was actually at the meeting -- here's his account.

More comments on the video from Our Tulsa World and Hooah Wife.

Roemerman on Record will be quiet for a while, as Steve Roemerman is off to Gretna, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi from New Orleans, with a group from his church to help Convoy of Hope. We'll keep Steve in our prayers and look forward to his report when he returns.

Our Tulsa World has added more video clips from Mayor Bill LaFortune's September 6 third-penny meeting at the Zarrow Library. This is a great service that Mr. Schuttler is doing by filming, converting, and posting these video clips. Too often the claims and promises made in this sort of meeting are lost to history. His summary of the meeting puts the clips in context. In another entry he has the response from Mayor LaFortune and Fire Chief Allen LaCroix to the question, "Are we prepared if Keystone Dam breaks?"

MeeCiteeWurkor has a special comments thread just for registering your opinion of the Tulsa Whirled. He's asking for submissions in a contest -- things you can do with a Tulsa Whirled. And he's about to add a new contributor to the blog.

City Councilor Chris Medlock has a recent entry on his proposal regarding the sales tax money currently going to Tulsa County for "4 to Fix the County." He says that the county is fixed now, and between the Vision 2025 sales tax and rising property taxes, the county is well fixed for funds. By denying a renewal of the 2/12ths cent "4 to Fix" sales tax, City of Tulsa voters could opt to pass the same size sales tax at the city level and earmark it for public safety.

Another noteworthy item on MedBlogged cites two Tulsa Whirled City Hall stories, one from 2002, one from last week. The March 2002 story has Mayor-elect Bill LaFortune saying he plans to have a direct, face-to-face relationship with the City Council, which lines up with my recollection of my first meeting with LaFortune as he started his run for office. The September 2005 story has councilors, including recently-elected Bill Martinson, complaining that LaFortune won't deal directly with the Council on issues like the new third-penny proposal.

Tulsa Downtown reports that new clubs are opening in the Blue Dome district.

Tulsa newcomer Joe Kelley has been trying the immersion approach to understanding his new hometown, and he's posted a list of some of the people he's met with so far, and would like suggestions for others he ought to talk to. About a week and a half ago, I introduced him to the tawook at La Roma Pizza (a Lebanese restaurant disguised as a pizzeria), and we had a very enjoyable conversation. He seems to be a very astute observer and a quick study.

Tulsa Topics has an audio tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including their radio theme song, "Okie Boogie," "Cadillac in my Model A," and tributes by The Tractors and Asleep at the Wheel. One thing I love about Bob Wills songs -- you don't need liner notes, because Bob tells you who's playing as the song proceeds.

As always, you'll find the latest and greatest entries from blogs about Tulsa news on the Tulsa Bloggers aggregation page.

Why is the Tulsa Whirled beating the drum for at-large seats on the Tulsa City Council? Dan Paden has it figured out:

Election campaigns are expensive, and city-wide campaigns are necessarily more expensive than district-wide campaigns. It is hard enough for good people to raise the money to run for a district seat. It will be harder for them to finance a run against the deep pockets of the Cockroach Caucus and their candidates. The more at-large councilors there are, the more pull the CC will have at city hall.

He's right, and it's even worse because a city-wide election makes it difficult to conduct a low-budget, grass-roots campaign. Jim Mautino, Energizer bunny that he is, knocked on nearly every door in his district (which has a population of about 43,000) during the recent recall campaign. Imagine trying to knock on every door in the city. (The city election calendar already works against grass-roots campaigns, with campaign season limited by Christmas and New Year's and falling during the coldest and shortest days of the year, which severely limit door-to-door campaigning. For those reasons and others, I'd love to see city elections moved to the fall of odd-numbered years.)

Be sure to read Dan's whole piece. I especially liked this pithy comment:

[T]he Tulsa Whirled has become something of a reverse barometer for Tulsa. That is to say, if the Whirled thinks it's a good idea, somethin' jist ain't right.

That's a very useful heuristic.

I see that despite a hint of a concilatory tone in the Whirled's Thursday editorial, the paper still hasn't run out of ways to show contempt for those they dislike. In Pamela Jean "P. J." Lassek's Sunday "story" on potential candidates for City Council and Mayor in 2006, she refers to 2004 District 4 Republican nominee Eric Gomez as Jason "Eric" Gomez.

As I pointed out over a year ago, Eric is the man's legal middle name, which he prefers to his first name. He was on the ballot as Eric Gomez and uses Eric Gomez in his real estate business. I've known Eric since 1999, and I never knew Eric wasn't his first name until the Whirled started printing his first name and putting sneer quotes around his middle name. There is no legitimate reason for the Whirled to do this. What's implied by the use of sneer quotes (also known as scare quotes) is that Gomez either is an eccentric (like Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner) or is trying to be deceptive in going by his middle name.

As a blogger, I'm allowed to be snarky and to mix opinion with news content, but mainstream media types are supposed to be objective and dispassionate observers. At a time when the Whirled has already taken some huge credibility and objectivity hits over Great Plains Airlines, the 71st and Harvard F&M Bank rezoning, and the recall, this petty but obvious example of bias doesn't help them.

UPDATE: I was informed that Ms. Lassek did not write the part of the article about the District 4 race, but it was written by fellow City Hall reporter Brian Barber. (I don't know what Brian's full legal name is, so I don't know if I should be putting sneer quotes around any of it.) As a resident of District 4, Ms. Lassek doesn't write on District 4 politics as a matter of the newspaper's policy. Perhaps the decision to so style Mr. Gomez was made by city editor Lewis "Wayne" Greene. I was also informed that the reason to use Gomez's full name is because he has a couple of misdemeanors on his record, which you can only find in OSCN if you search on his full name. I guess they want to make sure readers can look those up. That still doesn't explain the use of the sneer quotes around his middle name.

Tulsa should be proud! Our monopoly daily newspaper is one of eight nominees for the 2005 Mapes Award for Stupidity:

Ooooooo-klahoma, Where the Newspaper’s Head is up its Rear: Fair Use Censorship on Both Sides

The Tulsa World tries to bully blogger Michael Bates into submission, threatening legal action for linking to the World and excerpting articles for criticism, both very much protected under fair use. The blogosphere rose to the occasion, frequently hitting Bates’ tip jar when they weren’t hitting the World upside the head with a clue bat. Legal counsel for the Media Bloggers Association did a little threatening of his own, thus putting the World in its place.

On the flip side, Creators Syndicate tried to threaten a liberal blog, News Hounds, for linking to a Bill O’Reilly column.

The award will be made at the end of the year by Ra^thergate, a media bias watchdog that was involved in uncovering the forgeries purporting to be from President Bush's superiors about his service in the Air National Guard. The award is named for Mary Mapes, the 60 Minutes II producer who "found" the memos and pushed to get them on the airs.

It shouldn't be forgotten that I wasn't the only blogger or website threatened by the Whirled. Chris Medlock, Tulsans for Election Integrity, and TulsaNow also received similar threats -- see articles here and here. Although blogs and websites supportive of the reformers on the City Council were threatened for merely linking and excerpting for the purpose of criticism, no such threats were received by the group pushing to recall two of those reformers, even though they published the full text of 76 articles from the newspaper, without any comment or criticism, and have not received any threats from the newspaper for their blatant copyright violations, which are still online. In fact, the pro-recall group published the full text of Tulsa Whirled articles in the attack newspapers sent to voters in the affected districts.

As the Ra^thergate article mentions, there was an outpouring of encouraging support from my fellow bloggers, who recognized that the Whirled's threat is a threat to every blogger. You can read the whole saga, including links to some of the heartening and humorous reaction from the blogosphere, in the Tulsa World category archive.

The latest and greatest example of media bias at the Tulsa Whirled? Robert Lorton, chairman and CEO of the Whirled's parent company (and former publisher of the paper, and daddy of the current publisher), contributed $2,500 to a political action committee which channelled the money directly to a campaign committee supporting the recall of two Tulsa City Councilors. It appears that by giving to the PAC, Lorton intended to avoid exposing his contribution until after the election, but thanks to alternative media -- including this blog -- word of the contribution became public, and the newspaper acknowledged the contribution at the end of last week. The paper has been slow to disclose their owners' other business interests when there is a connection to a political controversy.

Thanks to Ra^thergate's Kevin Craver for helping to spotlight the Tulsa Whirled's bullying tactics. And even more thanks to Kevin for his service to our country in the U. S. Army. Best wishes, Kevin, as you're demobilized and return to civilian life.

You read it here first, but the Tulsa Whirled this morning acknowledged that the chairman and CEO of World Publishing Company, Robert E. Lorton, gave $2,500 to Build PAC Issues, which money was given directly to the Coalition for Reprehensible Government 2004, the committee supporting the recall of Tulsa City Councilors Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock. According to the Whirled story, the PAC registered with the City Clerk's office on June 16, and all the money it has raised so far has been contributed to CFRG. According to CFRG's ethics report, Build PAC Issues contributed $13,600 on June 29.

Josh Fowler, the staff director of Build PAC Issues, who is also executive VP of the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa, told the Whirled the PAC wasn't set up to conceal contributions. Then why was it so hastily set up, and why has it given its entire pot of money to one campaign? Since there are no maximums for contributions to issues campaigns (which is how a recall campaign is classified), and since corporate contributions are allowed, there is no reason other than concealment -- PAC contributions don't have to be disclosed until after the election on July 31 -- for someone to give money via this PAC rather than directly to the campaign. And why would a newspaper publisher give money through a home builders PAC, except to try to conceal the donation from the public? (What's that Bible verse on the Whirled masthead? "Publish and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not.")

I wrote earlier that the PAC provided a loophole to avoid the intent of the law that campaign contributions be disclosed before an election, but if the PAC exists only for the purpose of supporting this issue, it must follow the same reporting rules as CFRG and Tulsans for Election Integrity. Enforcing that provision will require someone, and it probably needs to be a registered voter in District 2 or 6, to file a complaint with the District Attorney that Build PAC Issues has violated 51 O.S. 314 and 315.

In other recall news:

District 6 voters have been getting calls claiming that it's not important to show up to vote against recall on Tuesday because Jim Mautino is retiring anyway. That's an utter lie, obviously intended to depress turnout among Jim's supporters.

Dan Paden takes apart this morning's Tulsa Whirled editorial endorsing the recall of Tulsa City Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino. Click the link and read Dan's entry, "Pukoid Postings at the Whirled". I was going to respond to the Whirled's dreck point-by-point, but Dan's piece is so well-put it doesn't seem quite as urgent. (I've been busy with some behind-the-scenes efforts to help Chris and Jim.) Go read the whole thing.

Oh, and don't expect the Whirled to look into this, but there are reports that the Lortons have contributed $2,500 to the Homebuilders PAC, to be passed through to the Coalition for Reprehensible Government 2004's (CFRG) campaign in favor of recall. By using the PAC to launder the contribution, the Lorton name wouldn't appear on CFRG's list of contributors (assuming the list is even turned in on time). Since the Whirled didn't bother to disclose its interest in Great Plains Airlines until very late in the game, and as far as I know never declared their owner's connection with F&M Bank, don't expect that they'll call attention to any backdoor contributions to the pro-corruption forces.

Over on the Homeowners for Fair Zoning blog, HFFZ counsel John S. Denney has posted an excellent analysis of the way the Whirled does its dirty work. Included in the piece is a response to Whirled editorial board member David Averill's Sunday op-ed calling for at-large councilors as a way to ensure that future councils are firmly under the thumb of the Cockroach Caucus.

Here's one excerpt from Denney's article:

Cynical efforts to bait the reform Councilors into responding to attacks upon them eventually led to an atmosphere of hostility in Council meetings. Unlike the World, a real newspaper would have told the truth about the situation, instead of heaping scorn on the reformers and attempting to discredit their efforts. Some very intelligent people in Tulsa are being gulled by these tactics into believing that honest and hardworking Councilors like Jim Mautino and Chris Medlock are disruptive and uncivil. These men have both civility and integrity which would be the envy of most of us. When faced with personal conflicts of interest on the Council created by baseless lawsuits aimed at compromising their votes, they have properly removed themselves from participation in related Council actions. Not so with Councilors like Bill Christiansen who folded like a cheap tent under a lawsuit filed by F & M Bank.

Many of the attacks upon reform Councilors at Council meetings are carefully scripted by opposing Council members and those seeking to paint them in an unflattering light. Their responses, no matter how civil, are then treated in the newspaper the next day as hostile and self-serving remarks without giving the true picture of the Council exchanges.

And when the Whirled talks of civility, this is what they mean:

The type of Council civility the Whirled, new District 5 Councilor Martinson and the Chamber advocate is the silencing of legitimate dissent and genuine efforts at reform. You, like many, may consider powerful and ruthless leaders of our community to be necessary evils in the quest for an economic turnaround for Tulsa. This assumes the trickle down theory of economics applies in a situation where the hand on the tap also controls the direction the water flows. How many large companies will be happy moving to a community where the government is controlled by a few powerful men and a newspaper unworthy of the name? The best way to promote Tulsa is to drop your subscription to this newspaper and to find one worthy of your support.

Go read the whole thing.

Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock will be slammed in this morning's Tulsa Whirled over the status of his MBA degree from the University of Tulsa. Medlock was contacted Friday by Whirled reporter P. J. Lassek and told that they were investigating rumors that he did not actually have an MBA degree. This allegation stunned Medlock, who tells his side of the story on his blog:

The only thing more shocking to hear would've been to have been told something to the effect of, "Your campaign literature claims that you have been married to your wife Cheryl for 25 years, but we can find no record of your marriage." Just as I had, in 1979, stood before a Baptist preacher who was more nervous than I, and repeated wedding vows, I knew that I had gone to TU for a year and a half, and studied in the Graduate Business School.

He believed that he had completed all course work for the degree. Because he finished in August of 1992, there was no graduation ceremony for him to walk in, and by the time the next commencement rolled around, he was well-established in his job at T. D. Williamson and didn't seek to participate.

After hearing from Lassek, Medlock visited the TU registrar's office and discovered that he had an incomplete in one course in the Spring 1992 semester for failing to complete one paper. His recollection is that he could have taken a "C" in the course without the paper, but he asked for an incomplete to try to finish and keep his GPA at the needed level to graduate with honors. Over the summer, however, he worked a full-time job, took his final two courses, and worked 10-15 hours a week in the TU computer lab for the scholarship stipend he received, and the paper wasn't completed.

What I find amazing, thinking back to my college years, is that his faculty adviser didn't alert him to the problem. If I recall correctly, MIT checked the records of graduating students some months before commencement and alerted them to anything that might pose a problem.

I expect the Tulsa World and the rest of the Cockroach Caucus to make a mountain out of this molehill. Medlock attended all the required courses, did all the work, save for one paper, and for the last 13 years has believed that he finished his MBA. When the Whirled challenged him about it, he took the initiative to find out what happened and has shared that information openly and publicly.

In the meantime, it appears that the Cockroach Caucus was tipped off about the problem before Medlock was approached. At Thursday night's Council meeting, Councilor Bill Christiansen made reference to Medlock's MBA in a way that seemed like a rhetorical question, but then he waited until Medlock confirmed that he had the degree before going on with his remarks.

MORE: David Arnett comments at Tulsa Today that this is another example of the Whirled's "assassination by adjective."

Thanks to Sean Gleeson for a brilliant comic-book-cover-art tribute to the Media Bloggers Association's valiant intervention in response to the Tulsa World's threat of legal action against this blog. Sean urges his readers to vote for MBA to win a Freedom of Expression award from Reporters without Borders.

Reporters without Borders has nominated the Media Bloggers Association for a Freedom of Expression Blog award, in the International category.

You'll recall that the Media Bloggers Association provided legal assistance to BatesLine in response to the threat letter I received from the Tulsa World back in February. If you appreciate what MBA did on my behalf, help them get some well-deserved recognition by clicking here and voting.

This morning's Tulsa Whirled features the usual clueless column by Ken Neal, this time about the recall and Tuesday's special meeting where lack of a quorum stopped the Cockroach Caucus from rushing the recall to a May election date. Neal's column confirms something I wrote about him and his colleagues last month:

To the Whirled editorial writers, and their allies in the Cockroach Caucus, city politics is utter simplicity. If it's a "Chamber deal," it must be good, and of course, "everybody in town" thinks it's a good idea. Anyone who disagrees is by definition a naysayer, an anti-progress crank, and therefore is beneath notice, no matter how well he can argue his position. The result is an inbred intellectual environment with imbecility as a predictable result.

Let's just take apart his latest offering, line by silly line. Ignoring the throwaway opening, here's the first substantive point:

This week's Oklahoma Gazette -- Oklahoma City's alternative weekly -- has a story by Deborah Benjamin about the Tulsa World's legal threats against BatesLine.

For the story, Benjamin spoke to me and to my attorney, Ron Coleman, the general counsel of the Media Bloggers Association.

The story contains the first public comment from an attorney representing the World, Schaad Titus. Titus doesn't address the issue of excerpting (which is what I do) at all, but merely states that it's necessary for those who post articles in full to seek permission first.

Titus explained how, in his opinion, a hyperlink can be a copyright infringement:

He added that direct hyperlinks, which don’t outright copy content but refer to an HTML page where it can be found, also act as a copyright infringement because they “avoid the pay provisions of the Tulsa World’s Web site.” If such links prompted the reader to pay before viewing the content, then the hyperlinks would be acceptable, Titus added.

Note that this differs from the World's earlier assertion: The letter from World VP John Bair said that any link to their content without written permission constituted copyright infringement.

I can't see how a hyperlink can "avoid the pay provisions" of any website. If someone sends me a link to a page on the web, and I can view that page without logging in or being asked for payment, what "pay provisions" were avoided? And how is it avoiding "pay provisions" to pass on that same link to others? If you put something on the World Wide Web and want people to have to pay in order to see it, it's up to you to install the necessary screens. It's a bit like putting elaborate Christmas lights on the outside of your house -- if you put it out there for everyone to see, you hardly have a right to complain when people give directions to your house.

Ron Coleman points out that newspapers could prohibit their registered subscribers from deep-linking as part of the "click-wrap" user agreement. Of course, such an agreement wouldn't be binding on non-subscribers.

I like Ron's comment on how the World is handling this:

“They’re so heavy-handedly telling him, ‘You have no First Amendment rights as regard the Tulsa World: You can’t link to us; you can’t excerpt from us.’ And that’s just not true,” Coleman said. “... It’s just such an incredible emblem of the thick-headedness of old-media monopolies and their own inability to react rationally to a new-media landscape.”

Last October, Deborah Benjamin wrote a Gazette story about blogs as media watchdogs, speaking to me, Charles G. Hill of Dustbury, Mike from OkieDoke, and Alfalfa Bill. That story and this latest piece demonstrate that she understands blogs and their relationship to traditional media. I'm glad at least one newspaper in the state gets it.

One of the more notable reactions to the Tulsa World's legal threats against BatesLine came from Michael Gorman, the incoming president of the American Library Association (ALA). His response was not a defense of fair use and its role in public discourse, but a knee-jerk reaction, which, as it turns out, reflects a deeper lack of respect for blogs, the Internet, and the electronic availability and searchability of the written word. Karen G. Schneider has documented Gorman's reaction to the World controversy, along with his other controversial statements, on the blog Free Range Librarian.

The "Tulsa World silliness," as Ron Coleman calls the World's legal threats against BatesLine, got more airtime on CNN's Inside Politics on Friday, talking about the Media Bloggers Association coming to my assistance. Bob Cox of the National Debate (and the founder of Media Bloggers Association) has video and a transcript excerpt.

Bob Cox was scheduled to be on MSNBC today to discuss bloggers organizing. He should have video up at some point.

Bob also has a thorough entry on the hard work of being a credentialed blogger at an event like CPAC:

As I attempted to sort out my role at CPAC, I reflected on a point made by Judith Donath of MIT coming out of the Harvard confab, "bloggers tell their readers what they think is interesting or important, but there is no attempt at comprehensiveness." I agree but I don't take that to be a bad thing. Comprehensiveness is not part of the blogger "value proposition". Blog posts are more like points of light, colored onto canvas by George Seurat; sometimes the result is a grand mess while other times the result is La Grande Jatte.

I soon accepted that my role at CPAC was not to determine the news or to fit my reporting into someone else's (an editor, a readership) larger definition of what is important about the event I was covering but rather to write about what I could see that seemed important to me and share that with my readers (and the readers on the CPAC feed aggregator). And so I wrote about what I saw: a heated argument between Michael Medved and Al Franken, a backstage look at a surprise appearance by Matt Drudge during Ann Coulter's speech, John Fund helping himself to laptops in Bloggers Corner because one of them was mine and other little tidbits of information that, taken together with other CPAC coverage by blogger, might bring blog readers a more personal view of the goings-on at CPAC.

MBA general counsel Ron Coleman (wearing his blogger hat) has a couple more comments related to the Tulsa World silliness here (on the perils of deep linking) and here (on the best way to protect your copyright).

Meanwhile, Okiedoke has had visitors from tulsaworld.com looking for passwords.

I was using Technorati to see what bloggers are saying about the Tulsa World's threats against BatesLine. Chellee of Telling Deeds posted an entry calling the World's missive "wonderfully fascist" and praising Joel Helbling's wonderful parody of it.

What caught my attention was this comment from "Apathy Bear":

Yeah, I just checked out this guy's site. His blogroll's got some interesting links. "Club for growth" is not a good sign... Also, the guy's name-dropping people like Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin. Malkin, for example, is an apologist for the Japanese internment of WWII. On the surface, Bate's claims appear legit; I have my reservations, however. I'll look into it some more. Something tells me that we're not getting the whole story from Mr. Bates.

Be sure to check out his take on the Terri Schiavo deal. I'm smelling the unpleasent reek of fundy mindrot here...

For the most part, left-leaning bloggers who've commented on the World's threats have focused on the copyright issue. They recognize that the matter affects every blogger, regardless of your ideology. So this comment shouldn't be taken as typical, but it is revealing of a certain mindset. He appears to have reservations about my credibility, reservations which are based entirely on his finding that I have conservative bloggers and organizations on my blogroll. It's as if he were saying, "I'd believe him if he were a Daily Kos reader, but Club for Growth supporters are shifty and dissembling." It really is another form of the World's blindness -- the idea that anyone with a different perspective must be stupid, unbalanced, or disingenuous.

And what about my "take" on Terri Schiavo is evidence of "fundy mindrot"? If "fundy" means someone who believes in the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, I plead guilty, but it doesn't seem to have eroded my mental ability enough to keep me out of MIT or Phi Beta Kappa or to stop me from writing software for the last 25 years.

Anyway, what's "fundy" about believing that you shouldn't kill a human being by depriving her of food and water? I'd hope every one would agree with that.

Chellee's reply was quite decent:

I saw that the site has definite conservative ties. I'm not one to defend conservatives, except when it comes to constitutional issues. I believe in freedom of speech, and threatening someone in the name of copyright to shut them up doesn't sit well with me.

Hugh Hewitt comments on a <