Read all about it: Newspapers are saved!

Yep — we don’t have to worry about the fate of newspapers anymore. They’ve got a new business plan, and the money’s gonna start rollin’ in. Advertisers will be flocking back to newspapers (online, anyway) in droves, throwing money at ’em as fast as they can.

And it’s so easy, they say. Fight fire with fire. Or, in this case, fight Google and Yahoo with Inform.com.

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How do state politicians use campaign money?

We shouldn’t overlook how our representatives in state legislatures raise and spend money.

Matt Spina of The Buffalo News offers a real eye-opener about New York state legislators’ use of campaign money for babysitters, season tickets for sports events, payments for cars and such.

See Matt’s Sunday front-pager here.

An ode to the motivation of a House vote (money, perhaps?)

Who knew the United States needed a free trade agreement with Oman? Apparently, my representative in Congress, the Hon. John R. “Randy” Kuhl, did, because he voted for it along with 220 of his GOP colleagues.

No matter where you stand on free trade agreements (bad for national security, helping out a “stalwart” friend in the Mideast, bad for workers’ rights in Oman or a host of other reasons), you’d hope that our representatives in Congress would study such an issue carefully.

You’ll recall that these are the folks who leave D.C. Thursday afternoon to politick and fundraise in their districts, then return on Tuesday morning to spend much of their time in party offices making fundraising phone calls. These are the folks who will likely spend only 100 days in session in this Congress. (See earlier post.)

So did Rep. Kuhl study this issue carefully? Or did he decide to help out a pal, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who sponsored the legislation?

Story on Kuhl, Massa campaign money could be better

My representative in Congress placed on his Kuhl for Congress Web site under the head “Kuhl Way Ahead in Money Race” a copy of a story about his and his opponent’s campaign finances.

The story, from their hometown newspaper, has Rep. John R. “Randy” Kuhl, R-Hammondsport, and his Democratic challenger, Eric Massa, trading barbs about who’s raised the most money in and out of the district.

The story — it at least addresses campaign finance — just doesn’t dig deeply enough. If the reporter had used easily available information on Web sites I’ve mentioned many times, a little more time and a calculator, he might have produced a more insightful story. The story could have expanded beyond “he said vs. he said” to how much both have raised out of the district as a percentage of their totals.

It could have shown the financial connections between the top Democratic and GOP House leaders and Rep. Kuhl and Mr. Massa.

Pardon the ego, but compare my take with that of the Corning Leader story. Leader readers could be better served with a little more digging.

It’s about the content … really

Earlier this week, I cheekily posted a story that the Wall Street Journal had decided to put ads on its front page. Jabber and seeking4sophia took issues with that and, in essence, asked for an alternative. My reply is after the LJ cut.

Campaign ‘finance’: sickening, depressing, frustrating, infuriating

To represent a New York congressional district slightly larger than the state of Connecticut, with a population of just 1.8 million people who, on average, earn between $23,000 (Yates County) and $37,700 (Monroe County), the incumbent congressman and his principal challenger have raised nearly $1.4 million so far in the 2006 election cycle.

Most of that money comes from outside the district each seeks to represent. It demonstrates the distressing, access-peddling role of money in American politics. That’s depressing and unlikely to change.

PBS’ new rule: If you bleep it, pixelate the lips, too

Here it is, from an e-mail sent by PBS:

Editing of Coarse Language/New Practices. Henceforth, producers would face two new requirements: (1) if a word is bleeped or wiped (silenced), the entirety of the word must be bleeped or wiped, meaning that “mother-F-word” would now have to be “bleep bleep,” and (2) if the F-word or the S-word were uttered to camera so that viewers could recognize it from the speaker’s mouth, the lips must be pixelated. [emphasis added]

See the reaction of Front Line’s executive editor, Louis Wiley Jr. (He doesn’t like it.)

The world’s gonna end now. Really.

“Wall Street Journal to Run Ads on Front Page”

Good grief. Is nothing sacred? See the NYT story and the Dow Jones press release.

Wanna make $1 million? Vote in Arizona

Arizona voters this fall will vote on — get this — “a proposal to award $1 million in every general election to one lucky resident, chosen by lottery, simply for voting — no matter for whom.” (NYT story here.)

A “political gadfly” gathered more than 185,000 signatures of registered voters to put it on the ballot. This guy says the odds of winning $1 million in a random draw of those who voted is about 1 in 2,000,000 compared with the odds of winning Powerball — about 1 in 146,000,000.

The goal, says Mark Osterloh, promoter of the initiative, is to increase voter turnout.

Ah, hell. Why not? Let’s amend the Constitution to provide a voter lottery payoff in all 50 states. We’ll fund it with a tax on oil windfall profits.

Hold legislators accountable for their votes

Despite claims by some Republicans that their states were being unfairly targeted for reforms, the House passed the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act with a 390-33 vote last week.

See stories here (AP), here (San Francisco Gate) and here (New York Times). But none of the stories listed vote tallies. I wish journalists would hold representatives accountable for their votes by naming who voted how much more often. So what if Congress has 435 reps and the tally would take up space? At least, provide such tallies more often on newspaper Web sites with clear, easily identifiable links within the stories.