By Denise Ross

One of the ususal suspects as the potential secret $750,000 donor to the 2006 Vote Yes for Life campaign has been the Catholic Church, a notion I dismissed almost out of hand. For some reason, I thought the church wouldn’t funnel its money into political campaigns, even on an abortion measure.

Not being Catholic, I shouldn’t have assumed such things. What do I know about the culture of the church, beyond the sadly salacious headlines about pedophile priests and the lawsuits they generate? (The massive payouts that have brought some parts of the church to its financial knees accounted for part of my belief that it wouldn’t spend money on campaigns.)

As it turns out, not only did the church contribute to the campaign that turned back a law legalizing gay marriage in Maine, but it was former Sioux Falls Bishop Robert Carlson taking part. (Read it all here.)

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

One has to look for the good news when it comes to the news business these days.

For the Associated Press, it might be that the Tribune Co. is dropping it only for a week (for now).

The Tribune papers (including the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times) will use reports from its papers around the country, as well as content from Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers.

Just last week I was speaking to a college class in Sioux Falls (taught by KELO’s Beth Jensen), and I predicted that newspapers would start dropping AP, as they do charge subscription fees that hit a budget hard. I also know discussions of such a move have gone on in SD media circles, predating by years the trend of newspapers routinely closing up shop - in other words, before the media world’s budget woes got truly woeful.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

There’s a battle brewing between the telecom giant of yore and the tech giant of now, AT&T and Google, over little old us. AT&T is demanding that the FCC require Google to stop blocking some calls to rural telephone numbers on the relatively new Google Voice application.

Last Friday, the FCC launched an inquiry into Google Voice’s blocking of calls and began an review of whether the application should be regulated as a traditional telephone service, also known as a common carrier. Google has rejected such claims, saying in a blog posting that Google Voice is a Web application and not a telecom service.

That is from the Washington Post’s tech blog. Read it all here. AT&T claims that Google has blocked calls to an ambulance service, a community center and a tribal center. (Out here in the sticks, we are more expensive to connect up to the grid. Ergo, phone companies - including AT&T - have tried but failed to find ways around the rules that say they have to connect to the more expensive numbers.)

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

A sleeping baby is keeping me from Dennis Daugaard’s official campaign announcement, so let’s look at one of the plethora of events in the evolution of media and journalism.

Late last week, UC Berkeley’s J school hosted a summit on new media at Google HQ. (The venue just about says it all; it wasn’t, after all, at the San Francisco Chronicle despite its fairly great website.)

The best message came from an old media casualty:

The stakes of the digital media debate were underscored during the opening session as John Temple, former publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, discussed some of the missteps that led the nearly 150-year-old daily to close earlier this year. That closure left Denver, like most U.S. cities, a one-newspaper town.

One critical mistake was thinking of themselves as a newspaper instead of an information company, and viewing every new media initiative merely as a means to protect the core product, he said.

If the company had instead monitored and responded to what consumers were doing online, the business might have invented a service like Yelp, instead of competing with it for ad dollars it used to own.

“We had all the advantages and we let it slip away,” he said.

Those still running newspapers would be wise to listen to Temple, but I don’t expect them to. The very concept of R&D at most newspapers (and I’m told TV & radio stations) is anathema. That would be spending precious profits - which long hovered around the 30 % mark - on the “non-revenue generating department,” as my old home at the RC Journal’s newsroom was referred to by those in charge. Even if attitudes and the MSM culture were to drastically change, those profits no longer soar at such lofty heights.

Instead, I’m reading with equal parts amusement and dismay about AP’s plans to embed a “tracking beacon” into its content and that of its members (ie, almost all MSM news outlets) - see hilarious graphic on the jump. (Apologies to my friends at the AP in Sioux Falls.) Meanwhile, here’s how Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab describes what AP is up to:

The point, of course, is to identify uses of AP and potentially member content that isn’t licensed. So if someone copied an article’s source code onto his own site, by hand or automation, the beacon would follow along and, according to the document distributed to some AP members, “send reports back to the core database each time the item is clicked on by an end user. The beacon will identify each piece of content, the IP address of the content viewer, the referring Web server and the time of use.”

That’s right - “the IP address of the content viewer.” The Nieman blogger also notes that the graphic (see it on the jump) unintentionally depicts a “faceless news consumer will be deposited into a toxic waste recepticle.”

The same blog post notes that AP spokesfolk aren’t being terribly clear about what they plan to do with whatever information they gather, but the anger and bitterness level amongst many ensconced in the upper levels of the MSM has been growing steadily. For reasons I can’t understand, I seem to hear most of the vitriol targeted at Google for its success at monetizing search.

It also appears as though the AP is searching for methods to block its content from anyone who doesn’t pay, a thoroughly effective way to lose most of your readership. They talk a lot about protecting copyright, which is a valid pursuit and which also completely misses the vast technological opportunities at any media organization’s feet. (ie, per the Rocky Mountain News’s Temple, “Maybe if we weren’t so busy snarling at all the new technology and those using it to good effect, perhaps we would have invented search-targeted advertising.”)

There’s no shortage of discussion of this topic online, but I’ve got to stop here. Click “CLICK HERE” below to see that graphic, which includes the cryptic, detached phrase “royalty settlement,” described on the Nieman blog thusly:

The AP’s graphic explaining the beacon and a new microformat was easily mocked and labeled “magic beans” by prominent tech blogger John Gruber.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

From my e-mail box, a press release from Sen. Tim Johnson’s office about his work on the Senate Banking Committee, specifically ongoing work to try to infuse some sense of common courtesy into the Wall Street culture. (Read the entire release on the jump.)

Says Johnson:

The regulatory structure overseeing U.S. financial markets has proven unable to keep pace with innovative but risky financial products, and this has had disastrous consequences. We need a bipartisan proposal that creates an updated system of good, effective regulations that balance consumer protection and allow for sustainable economic growth.

The entire release is a bit cryptic, which is compounded by its brevity. For example, I can’t tell for sure, but I think in this part below he endorses President Obama’s plan.

As a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, Johnson has used his position to examine the Administration’s regulatory reform proposals, including the President’s plan to create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The proposed agency would help stabilize the financial sector and modernize the regulatory system.

That is followed by another quotation that includes, “We cannot afford to get this wrong.”

So, a call for bipartisanship, a declarative sentence saying that Obama’s plan would “stabilize” and “modernize” the current system and a call for transparency, accountability and consumer protection.

Could real reform be at hand? It’s hard to tell, but what Johnson ought to do in the meantime is invite a few Wall Street high rollers out to DakotaFest and let them take the stage for a town hall meeting.

That would be far more satisfying than “transparency” and “accountability.”

To read today’s press release, click “CLICK HERE” below.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Knudson raised $250,000 at a Thursday night fundraiser attended by about 200 people, a source close to the campaign (who is not Sen. Knudson) tells Hoghouse Blog.

I know he’s got to go a ways to catch up with Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who’s been raising money since, like, 1992, but isn’t $250,000 a haul? Especially for South Dakota?

Is the fact that Sen. Knudson could raise so much a sign that there’s active opposition to the Daugaard candidacy? (I haven’t been in Sioux Falls in ages, so I am totally guessing here. But I must wonder if the dollar amount is telling us something.)

Are we in for a spirited primary next spring? If so, please don’t go the route of Barnett-Kirby 2002. Or maybe go ahead. That was interesting, if a bit painful.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

By Denise Ross

South Dakota’s US senators have just said ‘no’ to the credit card reform bill, but they were among just 5 ‘no’ votes, so they hardly won the day.

The fact that both our Republican and Democrat voted against the bill didn’t stop the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from issuing a press release titled “SENATOR THUNE CHOOSES TO PROTECT CREDIT CARD COMPANIES OVER SOUTH DAKOTANS.”

Ah hem. DSCC, I think you forgot someone in your headline, there.

Anyway, I wrote a newspaper column last week about the fact that South Dakota’s entire congressional delegation wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the credit card reform legislation wending its way over Capitol Hill. (Read the full column on the jump.)

This month, Congress is answering President Obama’s call for a reform bill by Memorial Day.

But South Dakota’s congressional delegation is not on board. The trio is eying the jobs credit cards have produced for their constituents. Between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs of the 20,000 that now exist at operations like Citibank and Premiere Bankcard could go away, state officials estimate.

Looks like it could turn out that one man’s lower interest rate is another’s lay-off.

It’s important to note that South Dakota’s congressionals favored a reform plan designed by the Federal Reserve and scheduled to take effect in July 2010. This new legislation changes some of the rules and ramps up the timeline.

To read last week’s full column and quotes from our delegation, click “CLICK HERE” below.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

 By Denise Ross 

OK, I haven’t blogged about my weekly newspaper column in many months, but I’m going to get back on the wagon. Expect frequent posts about past columns until I get the backlog cleared. The wisdom will shine brightly from the Hoghouse.

Here’s what’s run most recently, a rundown of South Dakota’s stimulus funds: (Read the full column on the jump, by clicking “CLICK HERE” below.)

With “stimulus” now part of every American’s vocabulary, I thought readers might like a rundown of how South Dakota’s share of the pie is moving through the bureaucratic python.

There are ways to track it yourself online, too. On South Dakota’s website - http://www.recovery.sd.gov/ - Gov. Mike Rounds says the Rushmore State is one of the first to put the federal money to work.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

Photos by Mr. Hoghouse

Here are more photos from Wednesday’s tea party event in Rapid City, with special attention paid to the plethora of signage.

Spread the word

Hide Sites

Photos by Mr. Hoghouse, David Larson

Mr. Hoghouse stopped by Rapid City’s tea party today and took some photos. (I was not in attendance, as the little munchkin required my presence at home, so I don’t have any extra reporting to pass along. Just the photos.)

Here are 2 photos that show the large turnout over the noon hour. Stop back later for more photos. I have to run an errand. (6ish pm Mountain Time.)

UPDATE: Here are a few more photos. A second post to follow.

Spread the word

Hide Sites