Apparently to the Columbus Dispatch and Plain Dealer, we’re like Playboy

Just like Playboy, everyone has heard of us, but nobody will claim to have actually looked at anything we’ve published.  But they’re rip us off and hope nobody notices.

The Columbus Dispatch’s Daily Briefing blog has a post by Mark Niquette “confirming” our exclusive report that Kasich will name Inspector General Thomas Charles as Director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, with the difference that the announcement will be made on Thursday instead of tomorrow.

Mark Niquette doesn’t say in the post he wrote whom he “heard” this information from in his post written at 5:51 p.m.  He admits that neither Charles nor Kasich’s office has returned their call seeking comment or confirmation.  Niquette doesn’t say at all how he “learned” this information  some six hours after we posted it here first, or some three hours after I e-mailed it to him.  Probably just a huge coincidence, right?

Apparently, the Plain Dealer is also “confirming” the report that Charles will be appointed in an announcement on Thursday.  But, of course, the Plain Dealer won’t say whose report they’re confirming.  They, too, were e-mailed a copy of our exclusive report some three hours before they “confirmed” it.  This just happens a day after we forced the Plain Dealer into making a major correction in their “Top Story” post yesterday.

When the rest of the Ohio media reported, without question, Kasich’s assertion that the U.S. Department of Education had told Kasich Ohio’s “Race to the Top” money wasn’t in jeopardy if Kasich proceeded with his plan to scrap Governor Strickland’s “evidence-based” model, we not only questioned it, we proved that the agency made no such representation.  We simply don’t deserve to be treated as a pariah by the Ohio mainstream media.

If we wrote something that was taken from something a newspaper published without attribution, we’d get copyright threats and columns about how blogs are forcing newspapers to consider putting their internet content behind pay walls.  They do it because… why is that again?

Just remember where you read it first.  And feel free to take that laptop out from underneath your mattress.