CON GAMES: Pro Publica Wannabe Flunks Test

July 20th, 2010 at 10:03am Michael Conniff 2

I’ve seen some lousy reporting at the Aspen Daily News—including the one this year about a drunken editor trying to bribe a cop—but some of the worst ever can be found in Brent Gardner-Smith’s coverage of the resignation of Hugh Zuker, a candidate for Pitkin County Sheriff.

The story is actually a case study of how bad reporting happens. Somehow BGS got it in his head that I was behind the re-routing of a Joey DiSalvo domain address to the Zuker campaign web site, an event that led to Zuker’s resignation.

And what were his sources? Two rambling, incoherent letters from Michael Cleverly, including this gem: “If Mr. Conniff and whomever is responsible for the hijacking of Joe DiSalvo’s website are candidate Zuker’s idea of top-quality personnel, then the voters of Pitkin County are left to ask themselves what sort of people he’d staff the sheriff’s department with.”

This apparently put my name into play. Then the hyphenated ADN reporter compounded the error by misquoting Zuker about my role in the campaign.

Finally—completing the Holy Trinity of bad reporting—BGS tried to call me once and left this message: “You are now part of this story I think and I want to talk to you about it.”

He never did. I was in meetings in Paonia that started at 3 PM and I never got the message until the next morning. Thus the classic assumption of guilt that comes with the phrase: “Conniff, who didn’t return a phone message left on Monday afternoon….”

A letter to the editor, a mis-quote, compounded by the dreaded “he didn’t answer his phone.”

The truly bizarre element of BGS’s puerile attempt to generate controversy is that I told him point-blank last week that it was the candidate’s wife who had made the mistake. The offending domain registration was in her name. That apparently wasn’t good enough for our local Pro Publica graduate.

As we all know, this is of course typical Aspen Daily News reporting: jump to an assumption about someone and don’t ever let the facts get in the way. We’ve all been there.

There is an equally bizarre footnote to this story. At the Aspen Ideas Festival I ran into Brent Gardner-Smith and he picked my brains about how to monetize his personal web site. He even offered to split advertising revenue with my company 50-50. I gave him some advice and offered to help in any way I could.

Based on what just went down, I have some new advice for Mr. Gardner-Smith: stop trying to pretend you’re a real journalist.

Entry Filed under: Media, Aspen, Colorado, Con Games, Pitkin County

1 Comment Add your own

1. Michael Conniff | July 22nd, 2010 at 8:59 am

This plot thickened nicely with the latest letter to the editor from the hopelessly prolific Michael Cleverly, the source for most of BS's "Investigative reporting." Cleverman, bless him, fessed up to what he called a "misconception" coming from the Aspen Daily News reportage by insisting he not a "paid member of Joe DiSalvo’s campaign."

In fact, Cleverman was a hired gun "paid $2,000 to design a 'DiSalvo Our Next Sheriff' poster." He will no doubt get a 1099 from the DiSalvo For Sheriff campaign, and he no doubt cashed the check. Thus, his posturing as a disinterested citizen interested in only the public good was as fake and phony as his charges against yours truly.

I was a paid employee working for the Zuker campaign, a fact that I disclosed from the start. Mr. Cleverly--who speaks freely of sleaze and "Nixonian" tactics in others, is guilty of a dirty trick or two.

The first is not disclosing his role in the campaign. The second is his claim, based on no evidence, that the Zuker campaign destroyed newspapers, a misdemeanor according to Colorado law.

"In the future," Cleverman wrote, "any opinions I may offer, or responses to calls for apologies, or suggestions that I 'shut up' will also be purely that of a private citizen.

I was the one who called for him to shut up, but only if he was unwilling to apologize for refusing to apologize for accusing his political opponents of a crime they didn't commit.

By all means speak up, Mr. Cleverly. The world all await your apology. In the meantime, rest assured that I absolutely love the poster. You're obviously worth the money.

Best, Con Man!