As print newspapers watch their subscriptions and revenues going down, as more people use the Internet to gather their news from a myriad of new-media sources, the phenomena of the growth of bloggers, political and otherwise, has grown exponentially in recent years.

Trying to figure out what to do to stop the bleeding of eyeballs and dollars made manifest by readers ditching their paper subscriptions for the ease, accessibility and wider, more diverse news choices offered by a legion of Internet Websites, a legacy print paper like the CPD, the nation's 19th largest newspaper, decided that if you can't beat them, you might as well co-opt them. And co-opt is what they did.

The CPD in August hired four freelance Ohio political bloggers to contribute daily pieces to Wide Open.  
Admitting that being an unabashed partisan political blogger is "an integral part of what I do and is completely transparent to my readers," Coryell said that, upon hearing he was one of the four bloggers TCP had hired, LaTourette complained to Editorial Page Editor Brent Larkin and another political reporter who was conducting an interview with LaTourette on a different story altogether.

Coryell claimed that after LaTourette took issue with a $100 campaign contribution the freelance blogger had made to the congressman's current Democratic opponent, Bill O'Neil, of South Russell, DuBail, his editorial boss at Cleveland.com, on at least two occasions discussed the issue with all four bloggers at Wide Open.

POINT, COUNTER POINT

The road to splitsville occurred today, when Dubail asked Coryell, as a condition of his continued employment, if he would agree to never write about LaTourette again at Wide Open, an arrangement allegedly sought by Susan Goldberg, Editor of the Plain Dealer. Coryell said he was fired after he declined to agree to Goldberg's terms.

Goldberg, according to a follow up media release by Coryell, has defended the paper's decision, saying that the CPD "didn't bow to any political pressure" because "had we known that he (Coryell) had contributed to the opponent of a person he was writing about, we wouldn't have hired him in the first place."

In rebuttal, Coryell claims he had never written about LaTourette at Wide Open, has made contributions to other candidates and that two of the other bloggers at Wide Open have also made contributions to candidates for office but have no suffered the same fate of termination. Coryell made his case that the disparity in treatment between him and the others demonstrates that "this event was clearly, unequivocally caused by LaTourette's pressure."

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS INDEED

Two other Ohio bloggers covered the news here and here.

Bill Sloat, a former CPD reporter himself who now lives in Cincinnati and offers a wide and eclectic daily blog, said such a bust up was inevitable as "Liz Taylor ditching a beau."

Sloat, asking who "really thought the match was made in heaven?," a question posed by several bloggers prior to the wedding between old and new media, described the not so discreet distinction between the two camps this way: "The blogs are sluttily bodacious like Mae West, while the newspapers are a stockholders' business."

Details about Coryell's, or the other bloggers's compensation is currently unknown. How long the buzz over this break up will last is anyone's guess. But it demonstrates again the antipathy that exists between established news business and the free spirits represented by the invasion of the bloggers.    

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse Reporter who now serves as the OhioNews Bureau chief for ePluribus Media