by P.D. Lesko

I voted absentee for the first time. No lines. No waiting (well, maybe 5 minutes while the ballot was prepared). Overall, an excellent experience compared to voting at my local polling place with its cantankerous poll workers, God love ‘em.

For A2P newbies, you might be shocked, just shocked to learn that I ran for local office. I ran for mayor in 2010 and as write-in for Council (as a favor to several local politicos in Ward 1 who were horrified of the thought of what Sandi Smith would do if elected—they were right) in 2008. Running in 2010 was hard work, and I assumed that telling the truth about my vision and skills would be the best strategy. “Bzzzzzt. Wrong answer, Hans” (for extra credit name the film from which that line comes). I underestimated how dirty the local Dems play, and how unethical and inept the local print media would be. AnnArbor.com political repeater Ryan Stanton sent me an email in which he asked me what he should write about my opponent. Shortly thereafter, I was approached by Council member Sabra Briere’s husband with an offer to fix interview questions (Stanton had emailed him and asked what should be asked of candidates in interviews). I was stunned, and forwarded both emails to Stanton’s boss Tony Dearing, who defended the utterly sleazy and unprofessional behavior.

A few weeks later, I woke up on a Sunday morning in 2010 to read a piece of garbage about how I was “misleading” voters. I should have expected it. Maybe Stanton’s bosses at AnnArbor.com took my stance that Ann Arbor taxpayers should stop funding Ann Arbor SPARK the wrong way. AnnArbor.com VP Laurel Champion sits on the SPARK Executive Committee (which I had suggested was a serious conflict of interest). I still think SPARK CEO Paul Krutko can get his $250,000 salary somewhere other than from money that should go to the Ann Arbor Public Schools. An art teacher at an AAPS elementary school might have a $500 budget for supplies for the year. Krutko has a $30,000 car allowance.

In 2010 my views about public policy, city spending and fiscal responsibility caused a ruckus that still hasn’t died down. My support of funding public safety earned me the strong endorsements and support of the police and firefighters, as well as the support of hundreds of residents all over the city. Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin walked with me as I went door-to-door, as did firefighters, concerned that John Hieftje had gutted the city’s emergency services.

It’s two years later, and my run for mayor is still a topic of discussion on AnnArbor.com and in the Ann Arbor Observer. During this election season, I’ve gotten more mentions in AnnArbor.com than John Hieftje. People ask me if I am going to run again because, well, I actually was telling the truth. Damn right I was. Ryan Stanton and his boss Tony Dearing, who defended Stanton’s libelous hack reporting, did the heavy-lifting for Heiftje. The Ann Arbor Observer, which got about $100,000 in advertising revenue from the city in 2010-2011, sent Ann Arbor’s own Rita Skeeter to cover the 2010 race—Jim Leonard is ridiculed among candidates because of his inability to gets the facts straight.

In a piece about the 2012 race, among other mistakes, he messed up which candidates were running in which Wards. Seriously? Leonard mentions me in that piece. He managed to spell my name correctly. In a 2010 piece about my candidacy, among other mistakes, he quotes a woman named Adrienne Neff, who claimed to have served on a board with me. She never did. Leonard dug up a local Man Baby named David Hammermesh who whined that I’d used profanity when coaching a sports team we played on together almost 20 years earlier. Oh, and I yelled. Can you believe it? The guy was an arrogant, pouty, know-it-all who criticized everyone else. (Sounds like how the Ann Arbor News described Hieftje in an editorial endorsing Jane Lumm against him, come to think of it.) I yelled. Mother Teresa would have smacked Hammermesh and called it a religious service to the team.

It’s two years later, and Dearing has been airlifted from the ship he helped sink, all the while claiming to the public in his yearly anniversary editorials that AnnArbor.com was doing just peachy. His sketchy professional ethics were questioned in 2011 by mainstream media analysts. Ryan Stanton, whose reporting now routinely earns him the ridicule and even ire of his own readers in the site’s comment section, is clutching an AP reporting award for a piece he wrote that another local news site revealed was full of mistakes—a piece Dearing did everything but retract. If there were ever any question about whether the Ann Arbor Observer is biased in its political coverage, Leonard’s one-sided propaganda on behalf of city officials and Hieftje was the meat of Hieftje-supported Ward 1 candidate Eric Sturgis’s campaign web site.

At the end of the 2010 race, one of Hieftje’s Council cronies bragged that I’d been “swift-boated” with the help of the gullible and cooperative local print media. It was in that moment I decided I would not only continue A2Politico but grow it. In 2011, A2Politico helped shape the debate around Ward 2 DINO Council member Stephen Rapundalo’s support of Republican candidates. In 2012, in response to A2Politico’s digging into Council member Tony Derezinski’s campaign finances, we have Derezinski hopping around, waving his arms and telling voters he’s a “lifelong Democrat.” Right. A lifelong Democrat who has been financed by big name Republicans, and whose donations to a local PAC have helped finance big name Republicans who are anti-choice and anti-gay.

A little digging into Eric Sturgis’s claims about his academic cred, and his campaign imploded. Among other whoppers, he’s telling Ward 1 voters I am running his opponent’s campaign. Um, no. That would be Kathy Griswold, a local pedestrian safety advocate and community volunteer. Not only did Sturgis lie about attending Eastern Michigan University, he defrauded voters by running for precinct delegate in two counties at the same time. Ryan Stanton wrote that I called out Sturgis. Actually, I called the National Student Clearinghouse, where academic credentials are verified. After that, a little chat with the Registrar at Eastern Michigan University, and it became clear Sturgis was misleading voters (and Stanton) about his academic qualifications. That kind of thing has cost CEOs their jobs. Jim Leonard, too busy misquoting the candidates and screwing up the facts in the August 2012 Ann Arbor Observer, didn’t have time to report Sturgis’s bogus claims about attending EMU. Ryan Stanton never bothered to do his own homework, even after looking at my paper and complaining about the right answers.

It was A2Politico that reported an Ann Arbor voter had filed a complaint with the Michigan Elections Bureau against Sturgis for running in two counties at the same time.

Neither the Ann Arbor Observer nor AnnArbor.com has the last word in political reporting anymore. Neither publication is consistently objective or even accurate. It’s a tragedy for our community that the bulk of local mainstream media political coverage is produced by the Fox News Brothers, Stanton and Leonard.

Meanwhile, I’m delighted to see content and links from A2Politico posted elsewhere, including in the national and state media. Evidently, the local journos who copy off A2P’s paper never read the site, or so claimed David Askins, Editor of the AnnArborChronicle.com, in a comment on his own site after he wrote about Eric Sturgis’s election fraud caper after A2P covered it, and neglected to credit A2P for breaking the story. Just as I never thought two years later, the local media would still be talking about my race for office, I never imagined A2Politico would have tens of thousands of readers every month. My appellations for local politicos have entered the vernacular: The Council Majority (comprised of Hieftje and his cronies) is routinely referred to as the “Hive Mind” and the “Hive Mind Collective” in comments on AnnArbor.com and elsewhere.

A2Politico continues to be a fun ride. Another year has passed. Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for calling. Thanks for your emails and tips. My time working on A2Politico is limited (in my day job I am the Publisher of a higher education publishing group). I have a list as long as my arm of topics to cover, including a look at the use of credit cards by AAPS employees, AAPS officials who have not pursued millions in state funds due the District, DTE Smart Meter installation locally, the loss of the AAPD officers who served the public schools, several interviews with state and national politicos running for re-election, and after August 7th, many of the writers who have been contributing to A2P will return. I wanted to focus the site on the local elections, and that has been a worthwhile effort.

Remember to vote August 7th. A2Politico endorses no candidates, but rather urges readers to educate themselves about the local City Council, county and judicial candidates. Then, vote for the ones you think best represent your viewpoints. Click here to see how I voted in the 2012 primary election.

by P.D. Lesko

This month A2Politico.com becomes a pay-to-view site.

Editor & Publisher published a feature recently titled, “How Can Newspapers Convince Content Is Worth Paying For?” I believe the answer is simple: Provide compelling, smart, well-written and thoroughly-researched content that people can’t get anywhere else. Employ carefully chosen and talented writers, and always assume readers are ready to think, analyze and be challenged.

So, why doesn’t A2Politico just get advertisers to foot the bills?

For the same reason you’re not washing your clothes for “free” at the nearest river by beating them against a stone and wringing them out by hand. Progress and change. The model whereby news sites rely primarily on ad dollars to pay the bills is looking more and more like a stone on the side of the river.

I believe Ann Arbor deserves local news and reporting that isn’t fettered by conflicts of interest and cozy advertising arrangements. What do I mean?

Several local media outlets have advertising relationships with city and county governments (one local media outlet earns six-figure advertising revenues from city government ads). Another media outlet has an executive who serves on the board of Ann Arbor SPARK (which receives incurious, glowing coverage on a regular basis). AnnArbor.com appointed to its editorial board a University of Michigan employee who is a former PR executive—a move slammed by national media analysts, as well as a former Ann Arbor News reporter.

I’m asking you to pay, because the work the writers produce is unique, compelling, smart, well-written and thoroughly researched by writers committed to giving you the best. Our investigative reporting has been praised by the Columbia Journalism Review, and our writers have earned praise from the New York Times, Rachel Maddow, as well as Politico.com. A2Politico.com has broken important stories locally and state-wide, and our work has been picked up by newspapers and news sites throughout the state and even around the country.

How come A2Politico.com doesn’t simply rely on “community contributors” who would write free of charge? News sites that rely on “community contributors” to produce content for free rely on an exploitative model that pretends there is no value to the content produced while at the same trying mightily to a profit from the content via page views sold to advertisers. It’s the 1 percent-shaking-down-the-99 percent-for-their-lunch-money business model. In fact HuffingtonPost.com is embroiled in a lawsuit filed by a man named Jonathan Tasini who argues that using unpaid “community contributors” to rustle up revenues should be illegal. Tasini, an active member of one of the largest writer’s unions in the country, sued the New York Times, Co. in 2001 over the company’s copyright policies and won.

There are loads of “progressive” news sites in Michigan and throughout the country that use this business model. There is nothing remotely progressive about economic exploitation.

I believe the content A2Politico writers produce is far and away some of the best writing, reporting and analysis around as do the almost 10,000 people who’ve shared A2P content with friends and colleagues on social media sites over just the past few months. That A2Politico readers have shared what we’ve written so often and so readily is high praise, and we value it.

A2Politico is a part of a local, independently owned company, a move away from the media consolidation that dominates the Michigan news marketplace. At the moment, Michigan’s news market is dominated by four publishing conglomerates: Advance/Booth, Heritage, Journal Register Company and Ogden. Media consolidation is part of the reason Occupy Wall Street protests initially got absolutely no coverage in the country’s mainstream media—an eerie and frightening example of what can happen to the news when conglomerates control coverage. The result is also cookie-cutter coverage produced by people who have to churn out content like line cooks at fast food joints. Slim profit margins do not afford many of Michigan’s mainstream journalists the luxury of spending weeks or even months on a single story.

In contrast, A2Politico.com recently posted the first in a series of stories on class sizes and teaching loads in the Ann Arbor Public Schools for which it took multiple FOIAs and 72 days to get the information from school officials. A2Politico spent almost 45 days seeking the release of a draft report from Ann Arbor City government. Our site was preparing to take the City to court to force the release of the information when it was suddenly given over to the media without explanation.

Six years ago, the academic publishing company that I head produced a print magazine. I looked around and concluded that production and delivery costs would never be controlled. Furthermore, I predicted that advertising revenues would slowly become an insecure way to fund the publication. So, I decided to move that print product to digital, a move that left advertisers and readers alike scratching their heads, frustrated. Librarians had no idea how to deliver a digital product to faculty readers. Advertisers hadn’t a clue how a banner ad worked. Faculty members simply wanted to open a 4-color, glossy magazine and read it.

In the publishing world, 2005 was a lifetime ago. Now, newspapers and magazines all over the country are taking their digital content behind pay walls.

Over the past 12 months, in response to the addition of a group of incredibly talented and dedicated writers, A2Politico.com’s readership has exploded. In December, A2Politico hosted close to 40,000 readers. A2Politico.com saw that growth despite the fact we haven’t started marketing the site in earnest. We want to further expand our coverage and take our time developing important stories. A2Politico.com doesn’t strive to post first. We strive to post the most complete, in-depth stories about local and state government, as well as a host of other important beats.

Here’s how it will work: Year-long memberships are priced at $5, $10, $20, $40 or $100. You’re some of the brightest readers around, so you decide how much 365 days of A2Politico content is worth to you.

You’re also some of the most affluent readers in the state, so we’re offering a Lifetime Membership (yours or ours) for $500.

Please note: the $5 year-long membership is a special offer to regular readers; the offer will end on 2/17/2012.

You can send us a check, or use your credit card in our secure payment center. If you want to pay using a credit card by phone, give us a call at 734-930-6854 M-F 9 a.m.-4 p.m. (EST).

When I launched A2Politico.com is 2009, I did so wondering whether anyone would be as interested in local politics as I was. As it turned out, the answer was a resounding, yes! After I ran for office, and was subjected to what can only be described as some of the most abysmally inaccurate, incurious and lop-sided coverage of my race, I became determined to transform A2Politico.com into a local news site that would make a difference in how news, opinions and analysis of local and state politics are covered.

I believe Ann Arbor readers want and deserve a local news site as smart as they are, and I remain determined to provide it. I also believe that readers are prepared to pay for what they consider quality writing, reporting and investigative journalism.

As always, I welcome your feedback, suggestions, questions, rants, raves and, of course, your support. To read more about prices and packages, and to purchase a subscription, click here.

by P.D. Lesko

My kids have nagged me this year because A2Politico.com didn’t cover local sports. I’ve teased them and said “That’s what AnnArbor.com is for.” Today, for the first time, AnnArbor.com posted a list of its most read stories (though no actual page view numbers for each story, alas) over the course of the year. Let’s just say my good-natured joshing was prescient. AA.com’s News Director Paula Gardner posted a piece titled the “Top 11: Most read stories on AnnArbor.com in 2011.” The stats gave the folks at AA.com what must have been a nasty shock: of the 11 most clicked stories, seven were about sports. At the site where executives claimed earlier this year after laying off a large number of reporting staff that they had done so because readers had sent executives “a message” that what people wanted was more in-depth local news and business reporting, stats reveal that the site’s readership uses AnnArbor.com as a glorified sports gazette.

Evidently, AnnArbor.com readers don’t want more in-depth news and business reporting after all.

Not a single original investigation (of the few AA.com did this year), K-12 education piece, culture essay or article about state or local politics made the AnnArbor.com  top 11. One business piece made the cut (Border’s closing). Gardner writes, “The list is based solely on page view totals of the more than 12,000 news, sports and business articles we published this year, as recorded in our third-party tracking system. Many of the stories reflect the University of Michigan football team’s coaching transition. Other major news events are on the list, as is one crime update brief (we were surprised, too).”

At A2Politico, our Top 15 List is populated by original reporting, investigations, and, well, lots of political humor. I was not surprised when I collected the data from our stats program. Among the top read pieces this year, ironically, is the one A2Politico posted about AnnArbor.com’s own editorial room cuts. Editors there did not report on the dismissal of the company’s own employees. A2Politico was tipped by an insider and got the scoop.

I am delighted to see that almost every category we cover (arts & leisure and culture notwithstanding) is included in the list: political satire, local and state political analysis, original reporting, investigations, the media, parenting, interviews, and especially our “Urban Exile” column that reports on poverty, hunger and homelessness locally, state-wide and sometimes nationally.

The numbers to the right of the link indicate how many times the piece was viewed in 2011. Keep in mind that number doesn’t mean individual viewers, but rather the total number of reads.

I want to thank the readers who stopped in 2011 and frittered away their precious time reading the writing of our fantastic contributors. I want to thank all of our amazing writers who spend their time researching, writing (rewriting) and otherwise polishing their prose for the site. In January 2012, we’ll be adding several new writers and expanding coverage. Look for news of those changes at the beginning of January. In the meantime, if you missed any of the top reads, here they are for your reading pleasure.

A2Politico.com will not, however, be covering sports anytime soon. As I’ve told my kids, AnnArbor.com has a lock on that beat.

Oh, I couldn’t resist adding number 16, Chris Savage’s excellent piece about the credit card and other financial shenanigans of former Ann Arbor City Administrator Roger Fraser. Fraser, you may recall, is now at the Michigan Treasury Department evaluating the finances of Michigan cities to determine whether the towns might benefit from emergency managers.

by P.D. Lesko

A2Politico appreciates you taking a break from cooking, eating and sports to stop by to see what we’re up to today. We’re all cooking, eating and watching sports. In October, A2Politico hosted 27,000 readers. As always, we count on you to help us by casually mentioning to friends, enemies, current crushes, and old flames that A2Politico has some of the smartest writing and reporting around. We do. Our contributors are a brainy bunch, including one over-achiever who has an MBA and two who have J.D.’s. If you want to know more about our writers, visit this link. Our readers, of course, are equally as smart. Then again, we all have to be ready for the next thing Pete Nicely is going to throw at us in our Lanx Satura column. One of my favorite recent comments from a reader was a complaint about the use of “Lanx Satura” as a title. If you can’t deal with a little Latin, why are you here? Maybe for the snacks?

In November 2009, A2Politico.com hosted 2,976 unique visitors. In November 2011, we’re on track to host over 10 times that number of unique visitors. This year we have had readers pop by from the web servers at the U.S. Departments of State, Education, Justice and the EPA, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the Executive Office of the President of the United States (probably a cat walking over a computer keyboard), the Michigan Legislature and mainstream news outlets including the New York Times, NPR, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, the office of the President of the University of Michigan, and readers at a host of Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton. We also have readers who regularly access the site from Hooters.

Over the course of the past months, the site has posted some terrific reads, pieces that, collectively, have been shared thousands of times via social media. Our work has been linked to by the Container Recycling Institute, The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, The Michigan Messenger, The Washington Independent, and in the case of A2P contributor Chris Savage, his work has been picked up by national political analyst Rachel Maddow. Politico.com writer Ben Smith recently dubbed A2Politico contributor Pete Nicely, “social media’s latest political satire sensation.” In September 2011, the Columbia Journalism Review posted a piece titled, “A2Politico: Accountability Journalism in Ann Arbor, Mich.” The Huffington Post invited me to write for their site again (I covered the races in the U.S. 1st and 15th Congressional District races for the HuffPo in 2010). I’ll be contributing to the new “Detroit” channel. Here’s a link to my latest HuffPo piece; it has been shared 202 times on Facebook and twice on Twitter (what’s up with that, Twitterheads?!?). If you’re feeling extra nosy, here’s a link to all of my HuffPo entries.

I’m proud to say that beginning in December 2011, A2Politico’s content will be syndicated by the same company that syndicates Pulitzer Prize winning ProPublica, the Neiman Journalism Lab and OpenSecrets.org (one of my all time favorite follow-the-money-in-politics web sites), among others. Of course, you’ve been syndicating our great content daily. Reddit tags intimidate me, but Reddit.com is at the top of our referrer list now, having overtaken Facebook and Twitter. It is a sign of things to come? You tell me. I’m just delighted that A2P readers feel like so many of our pieces are worth sharing on social media.

So, while the lot of us are off celebrating, I thought since you dropped by you might like to read some of the site’s most popular posts from the past 12 months. Get a piece of pie (or two) and settle in; you’re in for a some terrific reads.

I’d like to wish A2Politico’s readers a happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be back on Friday with more original content, some of which may be in Latin, so as Margo Channing purrs in a famous film, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” [For extra credit, name the actress and the movie. Oh, and I used a common misquotation. What's the real line? The answers are here.]

Answers to other questions, some of which people really wish A2Politico would stop blabbing about, appear below:

Lanx Satura [Sat-ahyuhr]: Why America Hates Liberals (Yes, You Do)

Lanx Satura [Sat-ahyuhr]: How to Talk Dirty to a Tea Partier – w4m (Ann Arbor)

The Politics of Trains: If You Think Trains Are About Transportation & The Environment, Think Again

Ann Arbor Dems Who Supported Governor Rick Snyder Get Some Recognition

Savaged: Michigan EFM Outsources Water Treatment to Company Indicted By DOJ For Felony Violations of the Clean Water Act

The Politics of Garbage: Single-Stream Recycling Stinks For More Reasons Than You Think

Savaged: Michigan EFM Outsources Water Treatment to Company Indicted By DOJ For Felony Violations of the Clean Water Act

AnnArbor.com Is A Failure Because Tony Dearing Was “Clueless” Argues Former AA News Reporter

Urban Exile: Voter ID Laws Disenfranchise Many More Than Just the Homeless

Savaged: Thousands Rally at the State Capitol Building, Detroit Newspapers Decide it’s Not “News”

Influential Right-Leaning Political Analyst Declares Snyder’s Governorship A “Failure” In Washington Post Op-Ed

WHISPER: AnnArbor.com Slashes Staff, Fires Paid Contributors, and Loses Lead Blogger Ed Vielmetti

New Research Shows Sharp Increase in Childhood Poverty in Michigan. Gov. Snyder Responds By Announcing Junket To Asia

Snyder Tied For Title of Most Unpopular Governor in the United States

Savaged: Snyder Treasury Appointee Who Implements EM Takeovers Abused City Credit Card, Ignored Auditor Warnings & Plunged Town Into Deep Debt

As Budget Woes Mount, City Managers/Staff Spend On Extravagant Meals & Luxury Resorts At Taxpayer Expense

The Parent Trap: The Entitled Nation

“Retired” Ann Arbor City Employees Earning $100K+ While Collecting Taxpayer Funded Healthcare/Pension Benefits

The A2P Foodist: The Moral Crusade Against Foodies

The Politics of Demographics: Why All The Political Hand-Wringing and Fuss Over Gen Y?

By P.D. Lesko

When I opened reporter Erik Schilling’s email to me, I had to read it twice. The Columbia Journalism Review News Frontier Program had assigned him to write a piece about A2Politico. The Columbia Journalism Review? For those not in the field of publishing, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism offers one of the most respected, if not the most respected journalism programs in the United States. Faculty members are leaders in their fields, and many have won numerous journalism awards including Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim Fellowships, the duPont-Columbia Award, National Magazine Awards, and National Book Awards. The school was set up with money given to the college from Joseph Pulitzer in the 20s and became the first school of journalism in the world. The list of grads is a Who’s Who of news reporting and publishing.

The Columbia Journalism Review is headed by Victor Navasky, former editor of The Nation. The publication, founded in 1961, is one of the most influential magazines covering the field of journalism.

Via a phone interview, I answered Schilling’s questions, and the result was a piece titled, “A2Politico — accountability journalism in Ann Arbor, Mich”

Schilling and I spoke at length about the need for local investigative reporting in general, and particularly in Ann Arbor. We chuckled about the fact that A2Politico.com has been censored by Ann Arbor city government for quite some time (Schilling called the city’s move to keep city employees from accessing A2Politico from city computers, when they can play on Facebook and read AnnArbor.com, “A badge of honor.”). When I began A2Politico in late-summer 2009, it was quite different than it is today, and in another year I have plans to change the site even more. The guiding principles by which I’m working are simple: A2Politico will provide thoughtful, provocative writing, as well as accountability reporting. The New York Times published a piece last Sunday in which the author argues that observation and punditry rule now, and intellectualism is on the decline. “The Elusive Big Idea,” argues that:

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

It is no secret, especially here in America, that we live in a post-Enlightenment age in which rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors, and perhaps even in society generally, to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy. While we continue to make giant technological advances, we may be the first generation to have turned back the epochal clock — to have gone backward intellectually from advanced modes of thinking into old modes of belief.

I couldn’t disagree more, and I am betting that there are tens of thousands of people in our city and state who not only value thought-provoking prose, ideas and news coverage, but who are hungry for it. A2Politico writer Chris Savage and I had an interesting conversation about what I refer to as “vanity reading.” Some people are inclined to read news sites with which they agree. That’s not how A2Politico has built up its readership: in fact, local music man Jeremy Peters once Tweeted that there was an “out and out Republican in @A2Politico.”

I wrote this in response:

Now to answer the question: Is there an out & out Republican in @A2Politico? You bet your G.W. Bush Bobblehead Doll there is. As I wrote in another post, I voted for Ronald Regan. Twice. My maternal grandmother referred to President Franklin Roosevelt as, “That man.” My family is full of conservatives, Republicans, and we come from stock who voted for (and against) the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. I have relatives who were Federalists, as well. Confederate soldiers? Look no further than the southern branch of my divided Family Tree. Vets from the War of 1812? Look no further than another branch of my family tree.

I’m now a long-time convert to the Democratic Party who, thanks my upbringing, is bilingual in my political persuasion, and grateful for the ability. I voted for President Bill Clinton. Twice. Sometimes, when people can’t easily peg you, it’s hard for them to know what to do. When the tots were babies, it drove people crazy not to be able to discern whether the tot in question on the playground was a boy tot or a girl tot—totdrogyny. My politdrogyny made our blogger pup, who needs to know what’s what and who’s who, perhaps feel a bit confused and maybe even threatened.

Here’s something to chew (and comment) on. These are a few of those who follow A2Politico on Twitter:

The National Review Online [flaming conservatives]

Michigan Liberal [flaming progressives]

Sam Marvin [Chair, UM College Dems]

Gov. Jennifer Granholm [you decide]

Robert Macomber [GOP political consultant]

MSU Democats

A Local Blogger Pup…

…who, when s/he grows into those lofty progressive principles, may (I hope) realize that as long as “Republican” is used as a dirty word by progressives, and “liberal” as a dirty word by conservatives, bipartisan politics will forever end up on the cutting room floor.

The list of who follows on Twitter has grown, but stayed just as mixed, politically. The site has visitors who access it through the web servers in the White House, and the Republican National Committee offices. That dichotomy pleases me no end.

Schilling’s coverage of A2Politico.com was thoughtful. He writes, “The site would attempt to fill in the gaps she saw in the Ann Arbor News’s coverage of local government. She envisioned it as being characterized by a high volume of public records requests and little appetite for the former daily’s stodgy prose. Two years later, Lesko says, that work is beginning to pay off. A2Politico now averages 20,000 visitors per month, and has a string of scoops and hundreds of originally reported stories to its credit….She gets a regular stream of news from records requests of the city and state governments, and a number of stories, like one in May that laid out a series of extravagant expenses by city officials, are firmly steeped in the tradition of muckraking journalism.”

In 2009, I posted a piece that asks the question, “The Politics of Muckraking: Does A2 Need Watchdog Journalism?” The responses to the piece were interesting. David Cahill, husband of First Ward City Council member Sabra Briere writes, “Yes, ‘Chicago on the Huron’ really needs muckraking. Keep doing it!” Cahill stopped commenting after A2Politico outed Briere in January 2010 for withholding important information about John Hieftje’s attempts to secretly shop around a proposal from the locally-connected Valiant Group to develop a convention center atop the underground parking garage being built on Fifth Avenue next to the main library months before the RFP to solicit proposals had been issued by Council.

Here is a snippet from the CJR feature, and a link to the piece in its entirety. Enjoy.

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — When the daily Ann Arbor News announced in July 2009 that it would be cutting back publication to two days a week and firing a vast majority of its staff, the college town of Ann Arbor, Mich. suddenly became, after 174 years, a city without a daily newspaper. That’s when Patricia Lesko, a higher-education book publisher and thirty-year resident, saw an opening. She launched her own news site, A2Politico, within days of the newspaper’s closing. Lesko assumed that the end of theAnn Arbor News as a daily publication meant that residents would be soon be searching for an alternative, if they hadn’t already. The Ann Arbor News, Lesko says, “was dubbed ‘The Snooze.’ They never really pursued investigative or accountability journalism. It was always lacking.”

Lesko had already read the work online of other web news start-ups like Voice of San Diego and she was inspired. A2Politico, she said, was crafted on that model, though she founded her site in July 2009 as a for-profit venture, powered initially by her own investment. The site would attempt to fill in the gaps she saw in the Ann Arbor News’s coverage of local government. She envisioned it as being characterized by a high volume of public records requests and little appetite for the former daily’s stodgy prose.

To read the rest of Schilling’s piece, click here.