Check out their employee listing. In any case, what about her husband? By the way, does anyone know his name, and if he's a Common Sense Coalition member or not. I'd love to see a list of how many WSJ employees are also Common Sense Coalition members.

She announced her retirement from the WSJ in July.

Thanks for that info. However, her husband, Chuck Martin, is an editorial writer at the Wisconsin State Journal. I guess I'm interested in why a group that has done so little, has gotten a pretty significant amount of coverage in the paper.

That's possible, but is he a member of Progressive Dane? If so, he should disclose his membership (or close relationship if he has one) as a disclaimer for any article that he writes on PD.

Also, you have to look at their influence. Progressive Dane has a pretty big role in city politics, which justifies more coverage. So far the Common Sense Coalition has issued a few press releases. If issuing press releases justifies coverage, thats a pretty sad statement on the state of reporting in Madison.

The main point of my argument was that an editor of the Wisconsin State Journal has ties to the Common Sense Coalition. Just because she just joined now, after her retirement, doesn't mean that she had no association with them whatsoever before she retired. It's not likely that she suddenly realized her affinity for the group after she retired. I believe that my question, does the favorable coverage the CSC has received have anything to do with her association with the group is still valid even if she waited to officially join until after she retired.

I don't think that my argument is predicated on her actually being an official member of the CSC. We would be naive to think that she had no intentions of joining the group until after she retired.
What did I write that makes you think I assumed that? My point is that because of their close relationship, she has more access to the WSJ editorial staff than someone who has no relationship. If my sister, or wife was the CEO of a local company and I started writing stuff about that company, in the interests of transparency I believe that I should disclose my close relationship.
I don't need to be married to know that one's husband, wife, partner or boyfriend/girlfriend often has significant influence, over the views of the other person in the relationship. I don't think you can trust anyone to be objective in such situations.
Sharing the same viewpoints is not required for a conflict of interest. Access and influence are enough.
That's fair enough, I just think that close relationships should be disclosed. I wrote a post about NOTAR, a local group opposing a asphalt plant. My parents are members of NOTAR. I disclosed that my parents were members at the end of the post. That's all I'm asking the WSJ to do.
So, you think any group that forms to talk about such things would get approximately equal coverage?
The difference is, this is a blog. No one here is getting paid to write anything. Perhaps I should have researched it better, and if I had time to do so, I would have. It's pretty silly to hold a blog which is essentially commentary/opinion to the same research standards as a newspaper that has people who are paid to do such research. I'm not saying that blogs and bloggers shouldn't be held accountable when they make mistakes, but they should definitely be given more leeway than a newspaper when it comes to research. When the WSJ prints an editorial that gets facts wrong they barely, if ever print updates/retractions/corrections. A good example of this is their editorializing on the minimum wage. They usually offer quotes from Craig Garthwaite, who doesn't even have a degree in economics and has no valid credentials to talk about the effects of raising the minimum wage. The only mistake in what I originally wrote, as far as I can tell is that Sunny Schubert joined (or is planning to join) the CSC after she retires/retired. The Wisconsin State Journal website still lists her as an employee and so that's what I went on. As soon as it was pointed out that I was incorrect I made the correction. As I have already explained though, I don't think the validity of my line of questioning rests on when she retired or whether she joined the CSC while she worked for the WSJ or after.

I have a feeling that the line you most object to is

I don't think its sexist to speculate if someone's husband or wife is a member of an organization their spouse belongs to. Most people in relationships are together at least in part because they share the same ideals. That doesn't mean that they have to, but I don't think it's a sexist or invalid question to ask. You seem to be saying that it's inappropriate and/or sexist to wonder or speculate if married people share common ideals.

Shane, I was going to have this discussion at our meeting, but I think it may be important for the sake of transparency and so readers can get a sense of where we are coming from. I would be careful here. Dane101 walks a thin line and exists in a grey area. While we are a "blog" we at times also hold ourselves up as something more because we play watchdog to other news organizations. We can't criticize them for being lazy if we aren't going to hold ourselves to the same standards. If we are going to write hard news pieces analyzing organizations in town and scooping stories, then we need to commit responsible journalism. We can break the rules of structure, but we need to make sure we don't throw out baseless facts (for the record, I don't think you have, and as far as I know all of our contributors have been quick to come clean if we make mistakes).

Where I am going with all of this, be careful throwing out the phrase "The difference is, this is a blog." It is an important distinction, but because of some of the things we have sunk our teeth into, we are certainly that and more.

Ok, let's say for a second that you agree with hmmmgrrrr, and think I'm wrong about the whole transparency/conflict of interest thing.

What about the other argument that I make, which is completely independent of the other one, that the Common Sense Coalition has done nothing worthy of so much attention. I mean, come on, is the standard for what is newsworthy in Madison so low that you can release a bunch of press releases and get 7-some articles/editorials written about your group in a matter of 2 months? The only newsworthy press releases so far have been the one about the group forming and the one where they made budget recommendations for increased police funding. I guess part of the problem is that there's really not that much going on in Madison this summer so I can understand them writing stories about things that are marginally newsworthy but I would hope that they would apply the same standard to all groups that are doing press releases.

Meanwhile, none of the papers have even attempted to ask the question of where their original funding came from or why they (the founders) lied about the formation of the group. They are on the record claiming that no such group was forming and then a few weeks later they release a press release saying they are forming. How did the papers let them get away with that, or is lying about such things so common as to not be newsworthy?