The Business of Plunderbund 2011 Year in Review

Eric — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:23:16 +0000

In terms of Plunderbund as a business, 2011 has been a big year. October marked the second anniversary of our decision to push the boundaries of political blogging in the state and take the site to new levels. In April we went live with our third major site re-design since 2005. We added several ad placements and began using a combination of Google ads and direct placements to fill out our ad inventory.

We’ve published more and better content than ever and broken more stories than any blog in Ohio has in a single year. Joseph and Modern are [...]

John Kasich’s Ohio Vanity License Plates

Eric — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:48:51 +0000

We recently brought you the story of the re-design of the Ohio license plate. We decided to have some fun with it and asked our fans on Facebook what they thought John Kasich’s vanity plate should be. While we haven’t done an exhaustive search, we’re pretty sure that post broke a record for comments. We got 164 at last count!

We also decided to design out own plates with custom background words and we asked our fans what their favorite Kasich quotes were. Again, we got a huge response!

Kasich is asking people to go to

Will the Ohio Republican Party Listen to their “Townhall” and Slow Down the Train?

Eric — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:54:06 +0000

The ORP has a pretty neat tool that allows anyone to put an “idea in action”. They call it “The Townhall” and they probably didn’t plan on the most popular idea being for them to slow down their train and stop attacking workers and heading more and more to the right.

User gravess posts:

I have been a proud member of the Republican party since 1972. I have faithfully voted Republican in every local and national election. I have even given money, even though in small amounts I STILL GAVE TO THE GOP. I have served 4 years in [...]

ICYMI: First Plunderbund National TV Appearance!

Eric — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:51:06 +0000

ModernEsquire scores the first national live TV appearance in Plunderbund history. Nice work man!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Election Night 2011 – Live Coverage

Eric — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:03:21 +0000

PB is the place to be for live election night coverage. We’ll have a live chat, streaming video commentary, interviews, and more! The crew will be on-site in Columbus helping you get a flavor for election night. Go vote and come back here later!

Live Chat:
Election Night 2011

Live Stream:

Live video by Ustream

Des Moines Iowa based “Legacy Foundation” Blankets Ohio with Misleading Mailers

Eric — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:05:44 +0000

The strangest things tend to happen on or just before a big election day in Ohio. Shadowy out-of-state rightwing groups dump tons of money in our state. Ohio is a key battleground state, etc. We get all that.

What we don’t get is why a group out of Iowa cares what Ohio does in state referendum and Constitutional Amendment issues?

The Legacy Foundation, formed in 2008 by former Speaker of the Iowa House and gubernatorial candidate Christopher Rants, is sending out misleading, though innocuous looking mailers that appear to be simple reminders to vote tomorrow. The text clearly favors [...]

[Audio] The Pat Boone Issue 2 Robocall

Eric — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:56:16 +0000

We’ve been hearing about this in comments and on our Facebook page. I know our readers are wanting to hear it, so I give you the Pat Boone Issue 2 Robocall:

PatBoone

Not the most enthusiastic of robocalls, really. About what one would expect from a birther and recipient of a lifetime achievement award at CPAC.

I’m thinking Pat may be singing a different tune come tomorrow night:

Cincinnati Firefighter Who Pulled Zoey from the Fire Says “Pull The Ads!”

Eric — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:39:38 +0000

Cincinnati Firefighter Paul Weber was on the truck that responded to the fire and helped save Zoey, the subject of a recent We Are Ohio ad. The political hacks over at Build a Better Ohio used that ad to mislead voters into thinking Zoey’s great-grandmother Marlene Quinn really supported Issue 2.

Paul has a simple message for TV stations: Pull the ad!

He also has a message for voters in Ohio: Vote No on Issue 2!

[Updatedx2] [Confirmed] Stations Pulling Egregious New Pro-SB5/Issue 2 Ad

Eric — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:41:39 +0000

[Update 10/11/11 5:50pm] We’re getting word that NBC4 in Columbus has also pulled the ad!

[Update 10/11/11 5pm] Two more stations WSYX and WTTE in Columbus have also pulled the ads. Keep it up!

Earlier today, we broke the story of the Building a Better Ohio campaign misusing an ad run by We Are Ohio in an attempt to mislead voters. We have now confirmed that at least 2 television stations that were contracted to run the ads have pulled them:

WSAZ in Charleston Huntington, WV
WTAP in Parkersburg

More are sure to follow. Thanks to everyone who [...]

A Quick Note on Advertising

Eric — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:10:26 +0000

One of the biggest pieces of feedback we receive via email and on our Facebook page is “why is [insert offensive advertisement] running on your site?” The explanation we share with people individually we now have on our Advertise page:

Quick note on Google Ads: We run ads from the Google network when there are not direct placement ads available for a given banner ad spot. This allows us to still generate revenue while seeking qualified progressive advertisers. We often hear feedback from our readers that they don’t like an ad that Google places there. These are contextual [...]

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