I finally decided to stop spending so much time on the Internet. Specifically I won’t be “blog-hopping” much anymore. You can go to Blognet News and see all the blogs, both local and statewide, in one step. They offer other services too, such as rating the blogs, and finding out which ones have been linked to the most over the last week.
Orange County blogs have really taken off over the last two years. Although I started this blog before any of them, Red County/OC Blog became the most dominant blog after I took a year off to rest my wrists. I have a lot of writers helping me out now, so I am hoping to write less and let them pick up the slack.
We get ripped a lot at the Red County/OC Blog. That’s alright, but it does irk me when they pretend to be some kind of objective news source. Most of the time it is pretty obvious that the Republican political consultants and insiders at that blog are spinning on behalf of their clients and friends. That is their prerogative, but it certainly isn’t objective reporting.
We saw this during the recent 1st Supervisorial District campaign when most of the bloggers at Red County/OC Blog ripped Janet Nguyen without mercy, while playing up Carlos Bustamante and Trung Nguyen.
To be fair, their blog pen includes Janet’s friend and ally, Adam Probolsky, but he was outnumbered during this campaign. And towards the end he even got in hot water as his editor, Matt Cunningham, who was outed by the OC Weekly when he was hiding behind the anonymous pen name “Jubal,” revealed that Probolsky might have been involved in a shady political independent expenditure that helped Janet at the expense of Bustamante.
Consider what transpired on Election night, when Jubal/Cunningham went to the Bustamante election party with his video camera in tow. He sure appeared ready to record the jubilation, only to see most of the people at that party get up and leave when the results posted and it became apparent that Bustamante had royally tanked.
I used to visit the Red County/OC Blog site quite a bit, then I realized that all I was doing was giving them more hits – and thereby allowing them to charge more for advertising. Now I can follow their exploits at Blognet News and avoid giving them any hits altogether.
I also won’t be posting at any other local blogs going forward. If I have something to say, I will say it here at the Orange Juice.
The one OC blog that I will take time to visit is Liberal OC. They do great work – it is often quite entertaining, particularly their PhotoShop pictures.
OCBlog got a lot less interesting when it stopped caring about local items of interest and turned into a Republican political consultant’s circle jerk, writing about things that only other Republican political consultants could find interesting — like the endless breathless analyses of the latest piece of political junk mail to come “over the transom” from so-and-so’s campaign. If I cared about what these ads have to say, I could look through the giant stack of flyers that ends up in my mailbox every election season — but I’m not a political consultant whose livelihood depends on convincing candidates to buy direct mail, so I toss my stack of flyers gets tossed straight in the recycling bin each day, like most people I know. Why do we need a second chance to read junk mail on the Internet?
Orange Juice could be the best OC blog out there if you just dropped Larry Gilbert — or at least pressured him to post on items that are more relevant to Orange County. His ramblings on everything under the sun should be shunted off to a blog of their own, rather than cluttering things up here.
Art:
Correcting your mistakes could be a full-time job.
….but it does irk me when they pretend to be some kind of objective news source.
Art, for the millionth time, Red County/OC Blog has never, ever pretended, claimed or represented itself as an “objective news source.” I will pay you $100 if you can produce any evidence that I have ever made that claim.
What we try to do is be factual, which is different from being objective.
We saw this during the recent 1st Supervisorial District campaign when most of the bloggers at Red County/OC Blog ripped Janet Nguyen without mercy, while playing up Carlos Bustamante and Trung Nguyen.
“Without mercy”? You’ve got to be kdding. Janet took some criticism, but nothing unusual. We tried to avoid candidate boosterism in this special election.
To be fair, their blog pen includes Janet’s friend and ally, Adam Probolsky, but he was outnumbered during this campaign.
I’m amazed to see you finally conceding one of our blogpen members is a Janet cojnsultant. You’ve previosuly omitted that fact. Second, there were exactly two Red County/OC bloggers who were consultants in the 1st SD special election: Adam and John Lewis. John never posted anything about the race — before, during or after. Adam didn’t post anything about it until after the Feb. 6 election.
So it’s hard to see how Adam was outnumbered by other blogger/consultants.
And towards the end he even got in hot water as his editor, Matt Cunningham…revealed that Probolsky might have been involved in a shady political independent expenditure that helped Janet at the expense of Bustamante.
Funny — you previous comments about that mailer have consisted of “Why cares?” Now it’s shady. Welcome to the ever-shifting world of Art Pedroza.
For the record,I never mentioned Adam’s name in any of my posts on that subject, and never claimed he was behind it because I haven’t found any evidence to base such a claim on. Martin Wisckol is the one who tied Adam to the mailer. Do you ever research anything before you let your fingers dance on the keyboard?
Consider what transpired on Election night, when Jubal/Cunningham went to the Bustamante election party with his video camera in tow. He sure appeared ready to record the jubilation, only to see most of the people at that party get up and leave when the results posted and it became apparent that Bustamante had royally tanked.
That’s funny, Art: I don’t recall seeing your or talking to you on Election night, so how you know what I was doing or thinkg is a mystery to me. I was invited to two election night parties — Carlos’s and Mike Lawson’s — and went to those. I’m pretty sure I brought the camera, but never hauled it out. FYI, the crowd at Carlos’ party was pretty steady even though it was apparent from the first results that he wasn’t going to win.
Matt Cunningham, who was outed by the OC Weekly when he was hiding behind the anonymous pen name “Jubal,”
Read your archives, sometime, Art. Foir a loooong time it never bothered you that I used a pseudonym.
In any case, OC Weekly was the third instance of my identity being “outed.” My appearance on Inside OC — in which the attempt to disguise my appearance was completely futile — was the first, and Powder Blue Report subsequently “outed” me based on that was the second. My ID was an open secret at that point, in any case. When the OC Weekly wrote their article four months later, it had been on the stands for a day-and-a-half before I received a single call — or the blog a single comment — about it. So don’t give the Weekly too much credit.
I used to visit the Red County/OC Blog site quite a bit, then I realized that all I was doing was giving them more hits – and thereby allowing them to charge more for advertising.
I assume you’re kidding, because the number of times you visit has zero impact on our traffic. If anything, Art, your visits to Red County/OC Blog benefit your blog, because you inlcude your URL in all your comments. Check out your own stats, Art — Red County/OC Blog is by far the single biggest referrer to traffic to O-J. If you want to decrease your traffic by boycotting Red County/OC Blog, by all means, do so.
Adios!
Anonymous #1.
Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. As you know “you” have the option to scroll past them at any time.
I respectfully disagree with you on the subjects which I address that ranges from my going to the Registrar’s office to cover the First District BOS recount with text and photo’s taken, attending the latest BOS meetings for the same story and photos of both leagal teams, OC voter apathy, transportation, the recent overview of the “OC 2007 Community Indicators” 70 page booklet, the pending Jaramillo cell with cell phone priviledges to the 2008 primary Orange County races for the 71st AD and 33rd SD.
Where do you live anyway.
in Nome, Alaska?
Oh Larry, just for that, I think you should do a news story from Nome, Alaska.
Art, how does it feel knowing you really get under Jubal/Matt Cunningham’s skin? All I hear coming from him is “Waaa Waaa Waaa”. What a chillon.
All I hear coming from him is “Waaa Waaa Waaa”.
Actually, what you “hear” are facts — which to you may sound like “waaa, wa waaa wa wa.”
Ryan Gene.
Great suggestion.
For the record, I support drilling for oil in ANWR, the Artic National Wildlife Refuge that is located above the Artic circle. This park is not exactly the best destination for your “summer vacation.” If nothing else I would urge approval of said drilling to keep OPEC’rs on their heels as they play us like a fiddle.
Friday’s Anchorage Daily News contained an interesting story about lobbying where Alaska experienced a 57 percent increase in money spent on lobbying last year to $26 million. Roughly half of that sum was by those connected to the oil and gas industries.
BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc spent $5.9 million followed by Conoco Phillips who spent $3.4 million.
And for Mr or Mrs “anonymous.” This story does impact those of us living in Orange County who use private or public transportation.
Have a great week. You deserve it!
And for Mr or Mrs “anonymous.” This story does impact those of us living in Orange County who use private or public transportation.
Larry: Uh-huh. By that yardstick, an article about Florida orange growers raising the price of juice would be relevant to Orange County, because there are people in Orange County who eat breakfast! They will be impacted!!1! Also, the story is about oranges, and we live in Orange County! Ha!
The pain I feel, being trapped in the vise grip of your unassailable logic …
Anonymous. I wouldn’t call it pain but on our way to meeting a friend in Buena Park on Sat we passed a service station where we always buy our fuel when in that area. On our return, three hours later, the price jumped by five cents per gallon. You bet our failure to drill in ANWR impacts Orange County.
Isn’t this Orange County, named after our former orange groves? If so why do we need to get our “orange juice” for you rbreakfas from Florida?
In fact, you get it freely from the Orange Juice website every time you sign on. Find something of value to trash my posts. Perhaps faulting my use of spelling and grammer would be a good place to begin.
By “blog-hopping” do you mean your reading or writing habit?
If you mean reading, I would highly recommend Google Reader. (I used Bloglines up to a few months ago – until Google Reader became better.) Reader allows you to read all the weblogs of interest from a single web page – much more efficient.
Art – yawn.
Art,
Thanks for the kind words.
And regarding feed aggregators, I use netvibes.com and I’m quite happy with it.
Lets recap the recent election and the role of Jubal:
1. Posted on Janet Nguyen’s “supposed” eminent domain which was only a vote on “a parking reciprocal agreement”
– a,) Jubal did not mentioned that Mark Leyes also voted in favor of getting rid of the agreement
– b.) Jubal did not mentioned the different between an agreement and “taking away someone’s land”
– c.) Jubal – why didn’t you talk about Carlos’ millions of dollars of Eminent domain votes in Santa Ana
2. Posted on IEs against Carlos and made all sort of claim against Janet
We
Thanks for the BNN plug. I am glad we have you as a reader.
Best,
Dave Mastio
http://www.blognetnews.com/california