Goldberg and Traenkner met by some fate (or perhaps karma) four years ago on a quiet night at the Lit Café. As the only bar patrons for the evening, they quickly found common ground in a mutual love of poetry. Lit Café owner and bartender, Andy Timothy, [sic] entered the conversation, and by evening’s end, the three had formulated a vision for putting on a show.

The Lit’s site has an archive of all the videos from over the years. Great job, Steve, Nick and Andy. I’m glad to know you guys.

In short, Gotta Groove was nothing like I expected. I suppose had I taken the time to contemplate what it takes to press a record I would have imagined something a but more industrial, but in my fairytale mind, I imagined a magical place, filled with smooth, agile machines, carefully etching grooves on round mats of plastic. Instead, I was greeted to a room of these hulking, brutish things, reclaimed from an era when vinyl was still king and cutting edge technology actually involved cutting.

Great photos too!

Cleveland’s Little Italy made our list for its contributions to Italian culture. In addition to all the restaurants, the area claims a lot of firsts. Cleveland’s Little Italy was the site of the first Italian restaurant in Ohio. The first pasta machine was invented here, patented in 1906. And, if the stories are to be believed, the area was a major base of operations for that other Italian import, the Mafia. Finally, the area is the site of the first restaurant of a major celebrity chef: The one and only Chef Boyardee.

Being the resident Italian here at BLACKHEARTCleveland, couple thoughts. Of their list, I’ve only been to New Yorks’ Little Italy, and having lived in Cleveland’s Little Italy during law school, I am confident saying that New York makes the top of the list on reputation only.

New York’s Little Italy feels like Italian Disneyland.  It’s past immensity is gone, whittled down to a couple blocks of Mulberry Street, as the Italians moved out, and the surrounding Chinatown took over.  (which, btw, is the most incredible Chinatown I’ve ever seen.  If this place was once filled with Italians, WOW.  It sprawls.  Feels like you’re in another country).  But the remaining Italian-ness of the place feels forced.  I’ve eaten at a couple of places on Mulberry Street, and this Guido ain’t impressed.

Some exceptions, of course!  There’s a pizza place named Sal’s at Mott & Broome which is DA BOMB - flattest thin crust pizza this side of crepe paper.  There’s a pretty amazing bakery just off Mulberry, Ferarra, which is as old school as it gets.  Their canoli is great.

However, Cleveland’s Little Italy is still a neighborhood with actual Italians in it.  Murray Hill still has the homes with the Virgin Mary statues, the Feast of the Assumption gets bigger every year.  The restaurants?  Eh.  They’re o.k.  Largely because they can’t compete with the Italian moms and grandmas down the street.

But what really makes Little Italy in Cleveland still genuine is not something this Italian is proud of.  It’s still, to this day, a no go area for African Americans.  I can’t tell you how much this saddens me.  I had numerous run-ins with this during law school, and I fought it like a good law student would, especially one who doesn’t like his heritage besmirched by a bunch of morons living in another century.  Times are changing, though. They can’t change fast enough.

Either way, Cleveland’s Little Italy is the real deal.  New York’s must have been something to behold in the day, but it ain’t “the day” anymore.

[N]ot only are RTA fares the highest they have ever been in real dollars, but in the static period between October 1975 and September 2009, fares more than doubled overall inflation.

I went ahead and built a model to see what relationship exists between RTA ridership and a few logical variables. What influences ridership? I think fare prices are obvious, regional population seems intuitive, and gasoline prices are often cited as a reason why people use transit instead of driving. Lastly, it’s often suggested in the media that transit usage dips during recessions because if people don’t have jobs, they don’t have anywhere to go – so I threw in unemployment for good measure.

The (not so good) results of his number-crunching, and a passle of graphs are at the full post on Brewed Fresh Daily.

These days it still helps to be at least a little tough; a fiercely blue-collar ethos endures. But instead of abandoning the city, local entrepreneurs and bohemian dreamers alike are sinking roots; opening a wave of funky boutiques, offbeat art galleries and sophisticated restaurants; and injecting fresh life into previously rusted-out spaces.

Don’t miss the slideshow or the Cleveland Travel Guide (with links to other Cleveland stories). A lot of these people and places I’ve been talking up for years, so it is nice to see the NYT finally get on the bandwagon. If you’re not, it’s time for you to do the same.

I startle a cleaning crew resting in the warm night. They speak quietly, focusing on their cigarettes until I’ve passed. A distant burst of raucous laughter.

With both his hands he labors at the knots;
His holy fillets the blue venom blots;

Access to the river, access to the lake, both difficult, it can be easier to dismiss what’s across the water.

Hedwig says there ain’t much difference between a bridge and wall… and in Cleveland’s blackest heart we are sometimes a city of both.

The Poles, Ukrainians and Italians have continued their diaspora, and the neighborhoods adapt to reflect the new children. The peppered moth evolved rapidly through the industrial era, changing color as survival demanded. Cleveland has always been a minority-driven immigrant city, the faces have just changed. Ignore that and you ignore Cleveland.

But I’ve never made it to the observation deck for its fantastic views. Now that the scaffolding is gone, I feel like an old friend has shown me an long-held secret, something that makes our friendship new again.

Every day this week, I’m going to paint a picture of the Cleveland I know in exactly 100 words.

On Sunday evening I was kneading bread dough when the bells started to chime. It made me wonder what it was like to live during a time when Cleveland was dense with Catholic immigrants…

I think I’ll do it too:

There’s an older lady in Tremont who rides the bus around the neighborhood all day. I would frequently see her at the laundromat where she would tell anybody everybody’s business. She would, and still might, buy scratch-off lottery tickets one at a time from the convenience store next door. I’ve moved, but whenever I ride the 81, I know she’ll get picked up in front of St. John Cantius and dropped off right before Clark Avenue.

I like to think there are people like this in every neighborhood; motivated to no immediately apparent purpose, but busy-bee regular; a necessary Cleveland fauna.

What’s your 100-word Cleveland story for today?

Thanks for the video, Andy.

We here at BLACKHEARTCleveland are sick and tired of said bullshit in the Cleveland blogosphere, and said so in our editorial on Monday, say so on our About page, and we are walking that talk.  Get used to it.  Norm Roulet, who presides over what is rapidly becoming the repository of every nutcase in NEO blogdom, no likey that anyone dares to notice.  The ensuing cacophony of CRAZY at REALNEO has me laughing so hard, my sides hurt.

It began as such things normally do, with the oldie but goodie, “Russo’s EVIL!“  It has been empirically proven, over and over, that when your target goes to that, straight outta the gate, on a post I didn’t even write but am merely associated with and endorse, you’ve got ‘em dead to rights.  The problem is, when you unleash the EVIL, where can you possibly go from there?

We found out!  Norm and his commenters have since descended into realms previously unknown.  For example, I don’t know right from wrong.  I’m catty, and I hang with catty people.  I’m engaging in hate speech.  I’m attacking Norm Roulet’s family.  I’m literally fucking children.  I’ve lost my mind.  Just because I linked!  It’s all so great, I’ve been laughing myself into a coma all day.

But the best comment, by far, is this one from Norm.

Has a real hater, neonazi kinda vibe

Really, I have no idea what anyone would find objectionable about RealNEO.  That $10 million grant from the county is surely on the way!

UPDATE:  And further down it sinks, as Norm Roulet’s wife issues a death threat.

Would someone pay me to kill Tim Russo?

Since my husband is not a “trust fund baby” and I only have a part-time job I could really use the money. Too bad fucking scum bags like you don’t feel a need to get their facts right. Come over and I will show you my tax returns. I guess if you are a pervert/ pediphile it does n’t matter what you do in life — everybody will always hate you. Cleveland — and the world would be a better place without you

This case is getting easier to rest by the second.

Jeff Buster thinks that:

shaking out the good, bad and the ugly PESONALITIES may not be the most productive way to advance NEO. Shaking out the ideas is another thing.

Well Jeff, you’re wrong. The personalities are the problem. In the time that Cleveland bloggers have spent chasing grant money or scrambling for access and influence with the people in power, they could have actually accomplished some game-changing benefit for the city. Yet whenever two or more gather in the name of Blogging for Change™, agendas and personalities clash and the conversations inevitably turn toward monetizing the activity. “Hey this sounds great! Let’s get someone to pay us to do it!” And then, when the smell of money starts to smell like work, the new hotness becomes the new hot potato.

You don’t think the Cleveland blogosphere luminaries are out to make a buck and make a name for themselves? Wake up! Grab a cup of coffee and read on.

Data Point One - Norm Roulet & RealNEO

Here’s a pretty egregious example of money chasing:

Trust-fund baby Norm Roulet keeps trying to squeeze $10 (or 20 or 30) million out of the County to (initially):

establish 1) Real Co-Op Food: a $10 million economic development co-op fund for local foods sector development in 2009, and 2) Real Co-op Info: a $10 million economic development co-op fund for open source information technology and social computing development in 2009.

which then morphed into the RealNEO messiah-of-the-month Marc Canter’s idea:

I have proposed a $10 million open source social computing community development initiative to Commissioner Jones and many of the directors at the County and have every reason to believe that will proceed, which will shift all our focus to developing “Citizen Dashboard”

and we get back to the food thing which claims that RealNEO was

recently recognized as one of the top networks of our type in the country, by the Knight Foundation

but the truth comes out in a comment:

The Knight Foundation did not recognize Realneo.us directly, but rather The Knight Foundation funded a study at, as I remember, the University of Missouri school of Journalism.

What this really means is that the Knight Foundation hasn’t even heard of RealNEO; just some journalism researchers in Missouri. What is troubling though, is that Norm Roulet is essentially lying on his resume about the Knight Foundation recognition in order to improve his chances at getting some cash.

Remember, this is a guy who, when asked for details on how to draft a proposal for grant funding for RealNEO said:

Our proposal to the county includes funding to figure all that out - to be honest, it is an expensive and time consuming process to define

Not only is it stupid to assume that someone is going to give you money when you don’t even have a plan, it definitely shows a lack of integrity on the part of RealNEO as a whole to make up something to put into a grant proposal in order to get money, instead of having a legitimate idea and then seeking grant money for it. Including grant money to go to Paris:

I like your thinking - REAL COOP/REALNEO needs to be at Drupalcon09 in Paris, and push for Drupalcon10 in NEO.

It’s going in the budget for Cuyahoga County, I can tell you that right now.

Hm. Sure sounds legit to me!

Data Point 2 - Meet the Bloggers

Meet the Bloggers was a fantastic opportunity to legitimize the “local bloggers as citizen journalists” paradigm. It ended as a bloody gutter abortion due to personality conflicts and greed. Meet the Bloggers started as a way to get more in-depth coverage of candidates in the 2005 Cleveland mayoral race. There were some costs associated with the project, a variety of fundraisers were held, and funding was sought to help sustain the quality of the content.

Funding ended up being sought a little more zealously than quality content, and when Tim Russo, one of the founders and the main driving force for scheduling top quality interviews, was kicked out because of his past, no one else had the gumption to keep things kicking. The last interview was two years ago, and toward the end, Meet the Bloggers scraped the barrel-bottom by interviewing their friends (perfectly great people in their own right, but not up to snuff in terms of MTB’s initial ambitious goals).

There have been indications lately that Meet The Bloggers is going to be resurrected (or, more likely, turned into Zombie Meet The Bloggers).

Where the plot really thickens however, is that just about every piece of information about the reasons the original Meet the Bloggers aborted has mysteriously disappeared from the internet. Just about the only thing you can find about those fateful weeks in 2006 is in this post by Bridget Ginley. Incidentally, she’s said that:

my post about the whole meet the bloggerbooger screw over has had more hits in the last few weeks than ever before.

What is clear is that someone committed a felony by hacking into Blogger Interrupted and deleting three posts. Only three posts are missing, and it just so happens that all three posts have to do with Meet the Bloggers. Tim Russo has his suspicions that George Nemeth is involved in this fiasco. In response, George posted this smug non-denial:

Here’s a note I sent my MTB friend Tim regarding his recent technical glitches:

Hey Tim. How are you doing? It’s been a long time. Sorry to hear that you’re missing content on your blog. I can imagine how you feel. Last time BFD crashed, I lost about 5 months of posts that I’ll never get back. While jumping to the conclusion that I “hacked your blog” seems reasonable based on our past history, hacking would be unprofessional and frankly unethical. I think my standards are much higher then that.

which stinks to holy hell. Another commenter says:

what you have quoted here is something i would write if i were guilty as a former buffalo bills running back.

To summarize: Two posts about George Nemeth and one post about Scott Piepho and their involvement with Meet the Bloggers were deleted by someone who hacked into Tim Russo’s weblog. The bad blood between George and Tim results in accusations from Tim and a snarky non-denial from George.

As of now it appears that Tim is letting the issue go, but if there is one conclusion that can be reached from this little story, it is that the parties involved in Meet the Bloggers have made it a morass of self-interest. What could have been an amazing 4 years of innovative citizen journalism was ruined by avarice. That makes any attempt to resurrect Meet the Bloggers automatically up for suspicion of ulterior motives. Where’s the money this time?

Data Point 3 - Cleveland Social Media Club

I’m sure there are plenty of members of the Cleveland Social Media Club who just think it’s a fun excuse to get some drinks and pass around some egoboo, but the main movers and shakers are after money, again. The newer, innocent members of the Clevosphere are in danger of being sucked into the “how can i monetize my opinions” paradigm by the same old crew that has spent the last 5 years trying to get money for their own opinions. The newbies have no idea what they are walking into. The names are familiar:

For example, the Cleveland Social Media Ventures Workgroup, headed by former Cleveland Tech Czar Michael DeAloia:

The SMVF was originally conceived as an “ever-green” fund that would raise between $3.0 million and $5.0 million in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio to invest in the fledgling social media industry. The SMCC took it upon itself to apply for Third Frontier Funds from the State of Ohio. Every economic development group that the SMCC took this concept too offered key advice but little in the way of overt support. Based upon the complexity and the very short duration of time that the SMCC had to register with the State of Ohio it was decided to shelve the concept until the fall of 2009.  That was until the SMCC, after during significant research, discovered an opportunity to request $30,000 in a grant from the Civic Innovation Lab (www.civicinnovationlab.org). These grant dollars would help support the legal fees and consulting fees necessary to successfully launch the SMVF.

Sound familiar? From the same post:

All expectations out of the event were that other start-ups were going to begin percolating in Cleveland. I am part of two start-ups (and a third being discussed) that will begin development and beta testing very soon.

That should definitely sound familiar. In fact, it sounds like Michael DeAloia is trying to use the Cleveland Social Media Venture Fund as a way to funnel money into his own start-ups. He should get together with Norm Roulet!

George Nemeth is in the mix again, looking for money, any money at all (comments can be found digging through here):

who else should we be talking about this to? Is there federal money (Congressman Ryan’s Tech Belt Initiative)? Venture Capital? Angel investors?

and can’t understand why TechLift might dismiss their request:

Why would they torpedo our request? It’s probably the most viable proposal they’ll receive…

I’m guessing the reason is because grant-making committees are bloodhounds after bullshit proposals. They can sense insincerity and greed just by smelling the paper such proposals are printed on.

The Cleveland Social Media Club sounds more like a non-profit than a club. They have a Steering Committee, a Social Media Center Workgroup and the aforementioned Social Media Venture Fund. And the membership is crowd-sourcing Michael DeAloia’s and George Nemeth’s work for them. One way these guys have improved over the years is that they’ve figured out a way to get other people to do the work for them. Join a group to help the Tech Czar fund his own start-ups!

Addendum

Tom Guard at The Daily Bragger got his feelings hurt a couple of weeks ago when we commented about his post about the CSMC and sent BHC an email:

I really thought you had a great concept with your blog. I enjoyed reading it. I even considered linking to it. That is until I got a pretty vile backlink. Why would it be such a bad thing for members of Cleveland’s Social Media Club to get together and write an ebook on social networking? There is no marketing ploy. As a blogger, local business owner and resident inside the city of Cleveland, I’m really dissapointed with your latest post. Good luck with your blog,

First off, this email is a joke. It is written by a guy whose LinkedIn profile claims his primary job is Author/Blogger and whose job description consists of: “Write and demonstrate blogging tips, social media tips and opinionated news.” His business is telling other people how to make money by blogging. No wonder he had his feelings hurt, his whole shtick is self-marketing.

Also, George Nemeth, CSMC founding member, does SEO marketing for Adcom/Optiem, a marketing agency; Dominic Litten (founder of CSMC), Senior Account Executive for Fathom SEO, a marketing agency; Michael DeAloia does little else but talk about social media marketing on his blog and his best friend, John Heaney is a social media marketer. And that vapid Cleveland Social Media video? - It was made by thunder::tech, a local marketing agency who’s founder, Jason Therrien, is also a member of the Cleveland Social Media Club.

So, Tom Guard of The Daily Bragger, when you tell me that anything the CSMC does isn’t a marketing ploy, I call bullshit. Try harder.

Wrap-up

It’s just… tiring; the same people year after year, trying gimmick after gimmick to get someone to hand them money. That’s the way people seem to operate in Cleveland. How can I trick people into funding my pet project? How can I scam some cash for my business associate? Screw whether the project is viable, or whether it even needs money to be a success in the first place. What’s in it for me?

You know what… trying to bootstrap your ideas in order to make a buck is the American way. There’s nothing wrong with that. But pretending that your motives are altruistic while doing so is scummy shyster behavior. Be honest, motherfuckers. Admit that you’re out for yourselves, to feed your egos, to make an easy buck. You’ll feel a lot better about yourselves - it will be freeing. Come out of the closet. And, in case you didn’t know this, your efforts at marketing improve nothing. Try harder.

Ingenuity gets more underwhelming each year - as you walk through, you can almost see in your mind’s eye the grant application being filled out months ago, check this box, check that one, Gund happy, Cleveland Foundation happy, this billionaire might like that, such and such millionaire will go for that, ok….open!

So I’d given up.  But this year, founder James Levin approached Dana Depew, owner & curator of Asterisk Gallery in Tremont looking for more local artists.  Asterisk At Ingenuity was born, and unbeknownst to me, my video of Loren Naji’s “Portrait of Obama in Gunsmoke” was included in Dana’s exhibit, next to Loren’s Obama portrait.  Loren kept calling me, telling me to come down, and finally I relented, because Asterisk At Ingenuity was outside the admissions gate, so I didn’t have to pay any money.

From the first few minutes inside Asterisk At Ingenuity, it was clear that nothing inside the admissions gate would even come close to what Dana had put together.  Over 60 artists, all volunteering their work, all local, packed into the two floors of the dilapidated and abandoned former Christian Science Reading Room and 107.9 WENZ offices on Euclid Ave., across from the State Theatre.  Every room was different - from interactive exhibits, to electronic, computer, video, sound, neon lights, smelly stuff, textured stuff, girly stuff, guy stuff, kid stuff, paintings, sculptures - you name it, it was in Dana’s space.

And it all had a very “Cleveland” feel to it, from the moment you walked in.  You could have spent an entire afternoon wandering between rooms, staring into paintings, watching films, becoming part of installations…it was deeply Cleveland art done by the curator of the finest gallery in Tremont, and it screamed for attention around every corner.  There has been nothing at Ingenuity, ever, in its short history, to even compare.  And I did walk through the admissions gate (with my free “artist” badge) to confirm that yet again, Ingenuity itself was a big dud.

I asked Dana how on earth he pulled this together.  He had no budget except to bring the rotting space up to code.  He was given the keys to the space about 2 weeks before the festival began, and in that time, had to clean out the tons of debris, wire it, paint it, make it safe, and fill it with the most diverse and quality art I have ever seen in one space at Ingenuity, or for that matter, almost anywhere in Cleveland at any time. Dana looked exhausted, and with good reason.

Because Dana Depew’s Asterisk At Ingenuity was nothing short of a triumph.

Sitting with Dana on the roof talking, I was struck at how perfectly his experience represents a microcosm of everything wrong, and all that is right, about Cleveland.  A space in the Hanna Building sits and rots, in full view of every single person in downtown Cleveland, at the heart of Playhouse Square, and for the lack of anyone in power with the slightest vision, will do so until it gets torn down.  But in 2 weeks, one person is given the keys, and with no money, runs rings around the entire Ingenuity Festival itself, merely because that one person has the drive, the heart, and the vision to make something incredible happen in a snap of his fingers.

All while inside the admissions gate, steps from Dana’s momentary flourish of brilliance in record time, people pay $10 to enter a corporate and foundation funded fizzle that looks more like an excuse to sell beer and pizza than an art festival.  It was like the fireworks at an Indians game - why pay for a ticket to the game, which is going to suck anyway, when you can watch the real show for free?

James Levin deserves the credit for thinking of including Dana Depew at this year’s Ingenuity, even if Levin put the best he had outside the admissions gate.  If Levin hasn’t lost his soul tailoring his festival to every grant application that he’s ever hunched over, perhaps he’ll learn from this.  Let’s hope so.

To get to this universe, you have to assume that a bill to give news organizations 24 hour exclusivity over information, enforced by federal law, gets to the floor of the House, passes the House, passes the Senate, goes to conference committee, passes again, surviving the inevitable deluge of online advocacy against it, and in a brief moment of insanity suggesting he’s had a lobotomy, gets signed by President Obama. In fact, let’s pretend it happened on Monday, the day after Connie’s column, instead of taking the months to years such things normally take.

Before the ink is dry on the signature, every major internet media company files suit, followed by a coalition of left and right the likes of which not one human has ever imagined - think ACLU and PajamasTV as co-plaintiffs.  The law is enjoined in lieu of litigation that will last several years, winding up in the Supreme Court, while Connie’s job still disappears in the meantime.

BUT WAIT - THIS IS AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE.  Can’t we get rid of that, too?  OK, scratch it.

Let’s reprogram our spaceship time travel magic carpet Aladdin’s lamp LSD toadstool to AVOID that entirely, and pretend that all of this actually happened on Monday and NOT ONE PERSON OBJECTS AFTER THE FACT.

In other words, let’s pretend the incentive to contract with newspapers to get license to use their information in the first 24 hours is in place, unchallenged, federally enforceable, and the current state of incentive in the newspaper industry on July 1, 2009.

Who, exactly, is going to enter into those contracts?  Google?  Yahoo?  The Daily Beast?  The Huffington Post?  Some blogger in a basement at his mom’s house?  You get the picture.

So then, the PD has at its disposal a legel remedy!  Off to court we go, to enforce our 24 hour exclusivity.  Uh oh….messy litigation!   Looks like a court’s gonna have to take a careful look at this!  More months and years pass, the PD spending ever more money on litigation, chasing a few pennies from some kid in a basement, and Google.

In this universe, can someone explain to me how the PD still survives by the end of 2009?

That is six months from now, which is a lifetime in an industry that, in the last six months, has slashed thousands of salaries and jobs. How much more time can we waste before we’re no longer an industry worth saving?

Schultz cites a paper proposing a change in the law written by the PD’s own attorney, David Marburger, even quoting Marburger, obliquely noting the somewhat important fact that he’s on the PD’s payroll.

David Marburger is a First Amendment lawyer at Baker Hostetler who has represented newspapers, including The Plain Dealer, for nearly 30 years.

In the very same edition of the paper, Marburger is also described as on the payroll, in another story on the Sunday front page.

Attorney David Marburger, who often represents The Plain Dealer on issues involving open meetings and public records…

Let’s look at Mr. Marburger’s paper.  Largely, it’s a litany of predictable MSM whining about the internet.  His proposal, as Connie describes it.

Ideally, news originators’ stories would be available only on their Web sites for the first 24 hours.

Stop laughing, and let’s go to the rationale, then you can laugh as hard as you want.  Marburger hangs the entire 51 pages on a case from 1918.

In 1918, the United States Supreme Court affirmed an injunction barring a for- profit news wire service from competing with the Associated Press in much the same way.   The International News Service allegedly rewrote uncopyrighted AP news dispatches arriving in New York, and sold them via telegraph and telephone to newspapers in the western states.   That enabled the INS dispatches to arrive out west at about the same time that AP’s original dispatches got there. Describing INS as misappropriating AP’s “quasi-property,” the Court decided that INS was unfairly competing with AP by free-riding on AP’s substantial journalistic costs. The injunction was not permanent.   It lasted only long enough for AP to exploit the highly-perishable commercial value of its own news reports before INS could exploit their substance.  That case is International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918).

Marburger himself even notes later in his paper that “courts generally have treated the INS ruling as weak, unreliable precedent.”  Not weak enough for the PD!  But weak enough to be wiped out by Congress explicitly in 1976, which Marburger dutifilly notes.

When Congress revised the copyright act in 1976, it added a provision — § 301 – that abolishes all state laws that function as copyright does.    A draft of the statutory revision had preserved the INS theory so that it was not subject to the copyright act’s pre-emption of state laws.   But the Justice Department objected, exaggerating the effect of the INS decision by arguing that it gave news organizations a “boundless monopoly” in factual information of public interest that the copyright act placed in the public domain.   The House then struck the exception.

The Justice Department seemed to think in 1976 precisely as Connie Schultz did yesterday in her piece!

Marburger anticipates the rebuttal: “Newspapers want to monopolize the truth.”

Marburger, having duly gutted the First Amendment with his proposal relying on a non-precedent, then posits the miracle world in which his clients CONTROL ALL NEWS PAY ME FOR IT NOW MOTHER FUCKER.

If used strategically by newspaper publishers and others who originate news reports, our recommended change to the copyright law would pressure aggregators to contract with originators of news reports to avoid the legal consequences of unjust enrichments suits.

Marburger is not essentially, but precisely proposing a state creation of a state news agency, enforced by law, forcing every other person on earth who wants to link to that news in the first 24 hours to pay for it.

The rest of Marburger’s paper reads like an autopsy of how the internet killed newspapers’ flawed business model, not news or newspapers, before the death even happens yet.   It’s as if the PD knows how fucked they are, is predicting it, and wants Congress to pass a law to stop their business from dying.

What Marbruger proposes isn’t just offensive on its face, it’s utterly unenforcable, as Marburger himself notes.

The injunction would last for a sufficient period of time to enable the originator to exploit the brief commercial life of its news reports before the aggregator can, and thus recoup the originator’s investment in journalistic services.

The goal, however, is not to indulge those remedies.  It is to create substantial legal and economic pressure on the aggregators to compete fairly with news originators in the market for advertising revenue.  Eventually, that should lead to contracts, not lawsuits.

Get that?  Marburger admits that enforcing his new law after the fact is kinda impossible, it’s the FEAR of being sued that will FORCE the internet aggregators to enter into CONTRACTS with his CLIENT.  This is a fantasy land. If you want to see what that fantasy really looks like, here’s the full PDF, download it, put on some early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, sit back, burn one, and enjoy the trip!

This is what happens when you’ve spent your career cloistered in some other world.  A Pulitzer prize winning columnist Connie Schultz, who happens to be married to a US Senator, openly campaigns for federal legislation designed by her employer’s attorney, whose status as such she barely notes, whose proposal relies on ancient long overturned precedent to create a federal fiat ordering people to contract with her employer so she doesn’t lose her job.  All the while urinating on the First Amendment.

You couldn’t make this up if you tried.  That cat’s something I can’t explain.

we ask for more media outlets, more alternatives to the shit we get, but when they crop up, we dont support them. sure we pick em up and put it in our bags, carry issues around but we do not support them as we should. and we dont have the money to support them without the help of advertising, and local businesses are hurting too much to use their limited resources and advertise with start-ups.

we all know the issues. we all know solutions. i just wonder what we are waiting for.

Rafeeq is right on the money.  When I first moved to Cleveland almost 6 years ago, there was a great glossy mag run by Daniel Gray-Kontar called Urban Dialect. It ended up folding rather soon after I wrote two music reviews for it. Probably my fault. That was my first brush with the ephemeral world of Cleveland indie media. The publication cycle is one of perennial sprout and wither for these grassroots, passion-filled people.

The issues are easy to enumerate. Here’re a few:

1. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland Scene and oft-forgotten stepchild Sun Newspapers aren’t doing a good enough job covering local news.
2. Other publications, like the Plain Press, don’t cover the same topical material.
3. Obtaining funding or advertising to produce the physical publication can be so time consuming that the writing suffers.
4. Finding and keeping a good depth of passionate writers is difficult, especially if you can’t pay.
5. The process takes a lot of work.

I don’t know what all the solutions are that Rafeeq alludes to, but I’ve got at least two ideas that I feel have wings.

• Collaboration & Cooperation, not Competition: The people involved in these local publications need to share content, writers and funding in order to stay afloat. These local magazines might see each other as competitors when they should be thinking of them as teammates. Anyway, sharing funding is probably the craziest idea that just might work, especially if they’re poaching each other’s advertising dollars. That’s the way publishing houses or film studios work. The big sellers make it possible for the independent, smaller run books and films to be made. The analogy doesn’t exactly cross-over into the independent media, but there’s something to be said for having independent media (if they insist on remaining a print publication) Co-Operate with each other, even if it does smack of *gasp* socialism. I derived this part from the assumption that the people writing these publications aren’t just doing it for the money.
• Cyberspace over Meatspace: You can setup a fully functional web-site for under $300 these days if you’re tech savvy. If you’re not, you’ll have to pay someone who is to get it setup for you, but the cost is negligible compared to producing an actual print publication. The only downside is that you don’t have the distribution or an actual physical object to hold and read while you’re at your 2 o’clock appointment. The website doesn’t preclude actually producing a print publication, and if you can’t afford to go print for a month, you’ve got the website to fall back on.

Here are some current independent publications that I know of:

• Messy Magazine - “an online, theme inspired publication focusing on the creative community in and around Cleveland, distributed from Cleveland. We showcase literary work, art, music, film, photography, DIY, you name it.”
• Pinkeye Arts Magazine - “covering local artists and gallery openings going on around town.”
• Faction Press/The Independent/Rust Belt Report - Ambitious, hoping to be an eventual Scene competitor/killer. First issue arrives August 5th.
  

There’s also the hyperlocal weblogs/print publications run as non-profits. It seems like someone decided to monetize the hyperlocal community weblog. None of these existed when I started Tremonter 4 years ago, but I’m glad to see that they’re around:

• Ohio City Argus - They don’t seem to be updating their site at all, but I picked up the actual physical paper the other day at Dave’s supermarket.
• Collinwood Observer - Same website design as the Argus, spun off from the Lakewood Observer.
• Heights Observer - Same deal as the previous two, only covering Cleveland/University Heights.
  

I’ve emailed whomever I can find as a contact at these publications, inviting them to come over to BHC and start a conversation.