So What Is This ‘Wide Open’ Blog?

Wide Open is, I believe, a first-of-its-kind Old Media-New Media relationship.

Jean Dubail, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Assistant Managing Editor/Online, does a fine job of explaining it in the blog’s first “official” post (links added by me):

Today the Ohio blogosphere and the traditional media come together in a new, more collaborative relationship through WIDE OPEN, a new blog hosted by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

Written by four of the state’s leading political bloggers — Jill Miller Zimon, Tom Blumer, Jeff Coryell and Dave — WIDE OPEN will be a no-holds-barred discussion of Ohio politics we hope to continue through the 2008 election and beyond. Our hope is that you, too, will participate through the comments.

To anticipate and answer a couple of obvious questions:
– No, the four won’t be censored. Their entries will not be edited. What they say and how they say it is up to them. Our role is to provide the forum for the four to interact with each other and the public.
– Yes, they can criticize the PD or cleveland.com if they think we deserve it.
– Yes, they will be paid.
– Why these four? Because they bring a wide range of viewpoints and well-earned reputations for thoughtful discussion of issues.

Between this blog and OPENERS, which is written by Plain Dealer reporters, we hope you’ll feel as well-informed about Ohio politics as it’s possible to be.

Given how I’ve “occasionally” taken my rips at Old Media from time to time to time to time ….. to time, up to and including yesterday, it may seem odd that yours truly is involved in the Wide Open enterprise.

Not at all.

It has been very clear from Jean’s very first phone call that when the PD says “collaborative,” it means collaborative. Unlike a certain local paper, whose first official reference to an Ohio-based blog in a (very weak, IMO) news story, at least as far as I can recall, occurred earlier this month — and, even then, the reference was to a blogger who, up until last December, was an Old Media journalist (a very good one, as he is now a very good blogger) — the Plain Dealer appears to have recognized the need to adapt to the Brave New Media World, and is doing something about it.

The other thing that fires me up is the opportunity to compete in the arena of ideas, and to expose people throughout the state, and perhaps even the nation, to what I believe are superior free-market and freedom-oriented ideas and perspectives they haven’t seen, or seen enough of. Of course, as always, that’s a two-way street. I believe all four of us arrive well-equipped for the exchanges that will occur between ourselves and with commenters. So let the games begin.

We’re hoping to try some extended New Media things in the very near future. We will of course keep you apprised.

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UPDATE: Thanks for the Wide Open and BizzyBlog plugs from Indians-celebrating Hugh Hewitt.