Access Journalism Protects the Powerful
And Jeremy Pelzer just gave us a great demonstration
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Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com’s industrious politics reporter who appears often on CSPAN as an Ohio politics knower, was among the first people in the state to notice that Ohio Republican hobgoblin megadonor Virginia Ragan had donated $10,000 to State Rep. Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington).
Here is what he said on Aug. 1st, 2022:
Pelzer never clarified why he found Ragan’s donation interesting enough to mention the decades-long puppet master of Ohio House politics for the first time in his 16-year Twitter career.
Here’s what The Rooster said about that donation on August 1st, 2022:
Time rolled on through the election to late November, and the Republicans held a vote on their preferred House Speaker. Pelzer covered this vote on November 22nd in an article entitled “Ohio legislature could become even more conservative under House Speaker-elect Derek Merrin.” The article included the following (emphasis mine):
Until now, Merrin has been a comparative outsider even among House Republicans. The House GOP caucus vote to pick Merrin as the next speaker – which attendees said he won only by a few votes – came as a surprise to most around Capitol Square.
One of the first signs that Merrin won the Republican caucus vote, conducted behind closed doors in a Statehouse committee room, was when Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, ran into the hallway shouting with joy.
“I think on all things [related to] conservative policy, I think you’re gonna see an increased likelihood [of passage],” Baer told cleveland.com later. “Because you now have somebody who not just believes in it, but is capable of making the case to his colleagues and to the public about why this is needed.”
Merrin, thanks to his father’s Baptist empire, entered politics at age 19. He is the literal opposite of an outsider. Baer, Merrin’s biggest lobbyist ally and one of the most repugnant bigots in state politics, is identified by Pelzer only by his job title. Maybe a casual reader of Ohio politics news might think nothing of Pelzer’s treatment of Baer, but to anyone with a basic understanding of the Center for Christian Virtue, this is a gift. Anything less than criticism of their anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ+ agenda is a tacit endorsement.
Notice also that Baer apparently felt comfortable enough to talk to Pelzer exclusively. If Pelzer had chosen to portray the Center for Christian Virtue accurately, would Baer continue to give him exclusive interviews? When given the choice between keeping sources happy and talking, or writing a more accurate description of a lobbying outfit that is a legal hate group, which would you choose? You’re a journalist who moved up in his career from covering Wyoming politics to Ohio. You’re probably hoping to do well enough here to move somewhere that has public transportation and a Mayor brave enough to send his kid to school with the poors. You have a family and obligations like everyone else who works for a living. And so you would refer to Baer and CCV exactly as Pelzer did here.
But that’s the problem with access journalism. None of them can write what they should, even if they want to, because they risk losing their sources and by extension their jobs. And the party operators know it.
When you look at it that way, it only makes sense that Pelzer wrote about the Speaker race as a done deal. Merrin’s camp told him it would be. So when some crank blogger no one had ever heard of began rousing rabble about a picture of Merrin and Wes Goodman being Republican blackmail, Pelzer likely saw no reason to ask questions. No reason that would benefit him personally anyway. If he did ask Merrin or Baer about the photo, they certainly would have shooed him away without much problem.
Pelzer offered no other reporting, as far as The Rooster can tell, on what he has since tried to pass off as a days-long plot against Merrin, when we now know for a fact that the plot featuring two young, up-and-coming state legislators likely began on Oct. 16th, 2017, in Bonita Springs, Florida. At the latest, the plot began months prior, when Ragan pre-planned Derek Merrin’s political funeral and made a $10,000 deposit.
Meanwhile, knowing what we know now, I guess we can only speculate why I wanted to find Goodman, a disgraced state representative who resigned for “sexual misconduct” (getting caught fucking a man in the office from which he legislated his anti-gay agenda) in 2018, and who currently manages a 3.5-star Brooks Brothers at Polaris Mall in suburban Columbus, on Dec. 7th, 2022:
I eventually obtained Goodman’s number through his private résumé. He blocked me this week, though I asked him about his relationship with Merrin on Dec. 30th. He could have told me I was crazy, that it was just some bad-faith picture by a pool taken to make him look bad. I would have printed the denial despite not buying it. But he didn’t. Merrin’s office never got back to me either.
I published the Merrin/Goodman story and photo at noon on New Year’s Eve. Merrin’s political life was on the line, and there was a seemingly innocuous but actually damning picture that at least insinuated the career bigot was a closeted gay man.
Meanwhile, here’s how Pelzer spent his New Year’s Eve:
And here is how Baer also spent his New Year’s Eve, hours after my public post and three minutes after Pelzer’s revelation of 48-hour-old information:
Two tweets, three minutes apart—just hours after I dropped the Merrin/Goodman photo and story.
Pelzer then had nothing else to say on the race for the third most powerful political office in the state until Jan. 3rd, the culmination of what we now know was a long-planned plot against Merrin. He shared:
Why was it going to be a “shit show,” as the legislator put it? It’s a journalist’s job to answer that question, not just record a quote.
Meanwhile, here’s how some random crank off the street, who had been blogging about a seemingly insane, behind-the-scenes conspiracy for days, saw the field the morning of the vote:
We all know what happened next. Speaker-Elect Derek Merrin, the product of an ultra-wealthy holy roller’s anti-gay Baptist empire, fell through a trapdoor on the Statehouse floor 48 hours after his father died and 24 hours before his 36th birthday, as his theocratic lobbyist allies looked on in horror.
Every legacy publication called the result “shocking.” In retrospect, the result was only shocking if your job depended on your not asking certain questions.
The Rooster is allowed to ask whatever questions tickle the fancy of President Xi Jinping’s Patriots Caucus. So I asked Merrin about the photo, on camera, after I staked his loser ass out for 90 minutes immediately after his loss. He tried to avoid his perp walk for a random freak with rabid badger eyes, a Hawaiian shirt, and an iPhone, who was lingering near the entrance to the only hallway exit. But he failed:
Merrin could have told me the same thing he later exclusively told Pelzer on the record. That the result was due to unspecified dirty tricks from his Republican opponents who capitalized on the death of his dad in the final days of the campaign.
He could’ve said all that for the camera, and The Rooster would have posted it all the same.
He didn’t. Because, for whatever reason, Merrin did not want to discuss that allegedly irrelevant photograph on the record. And because he reserves access for journalists like Pelzer, who, as discussed earlier, treat turds like Merrin with kid gloves, because their jobs depend on it.
While every legacy outlet was busy describing the election as “shocking” — to me, the random blogger who wasn’t forced to play nice with Republican miscreants, it all made sense, apart from why none of those outlets was addressing the Republican leak of the Merrin/Goodman photo.
I understand that the sordid plot to foil Merrin’s bid sounds crazy to anyone just stumbling upon the Ohio legislature swamp for the first time. I also thought it was crazy, but I at least thought I had done enough legwork to get one of these nerds that cover this bloodsport to ask Merrin about the photo on the record.
The picture had no impact on the final outcome of the vote, according to them, so what would be the harm? The damage was done.
I was a fool to not realize that the harm is in biting the hand that feeds you access.
Where did Merrin turn when he wanted to sell this fable that the campaign against him began in the final days before the official vote, when some random blogger had clear evidence the plot began five years ago and the picture entered the fray hours after the Republican-only vote?
When it came time for Merrin to sell his “my daddy died” sob story (as if he wouldn’t have done the same thing to any of his rivals if given the chance), he didn’t turn to The Columbus Dispatch, the largest paper in the state. He didn’t turn to his hometown outlet, The Toledo Blade, which the odious Block family owns.
No, Merrin needed a safe place, on the record, to peddle a sob story to a reporter he knew would write it exactly how he needed it to read. A reporter who knew which side his access bread was buttered on.
On Jan. 6th, three days after Merrin fell through the floor, Pelzer ran this exclusive interview with Merrin (emphasis mine):
In an interview with cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer, Merrin, a Toledo-area Republican, also said he tried to reach out to Stephens and his fellow Republican supporters, only to get a non-committal response. He also said he held discussions with House Democrats and agreed to many of their requests, though Democrats ended up uniting with Stephens’ GOP allies to elect Stephens speaker on Tuesday.
[…]
“That’s when the foot on the gas pedal went into play,” Merrin said. When Merrin was asked how he felt about that, he replied, “How do you think I feel?”
Merrin said that while at the hospice, he made 40-50 phone calls “trying to put the rebellion down,” as well as trying to hire new House staffers.
Merrin is lying about the timeline of the final push. That much is clear.
But notice the subtle shift into passive voice in that emphasized part. It’s Pelzer asking, “How do you feel about that?” like he’s some cut-rate therapist in a Twitter sketch and not a reporter with the hottest exclusive interview in the state. He lays the groundwork for Merrin to paint himself as the unfortunate victim of big mean Republicans who stole his lunch money.
Of course Merrin made 40-50 calls trying to poach Democrats once he got wind of trouble brewing. He wasn’t too proud to beg, even though he had previously bragged to reporters that his “united caucus” didn’t need Democrats.
Merrin either didn’t know or didn’t realize Virginia Ragan already bought the Democrats’ alliance through House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) for that exact scenario in the summer of 2022 when she donated $10,000 to the opposition leader. Despite the fact that Pelzer knew about Ragan’s $10,000 donation to Allison Russo, he didn’t circle back after the speaker vote to ask Russo if she had any comment on Ragan’s possible influence. Pelzer also had no further context to offer his readers as to why the Democrats appeared, like cavalry over the hill, in this “days-long plot” to politically assassinate Merrin.
New Speaker Stephens’ nonexistent “moderation” is only a lie to peddle the tale of the bipartisan coalition whose single primary concern was personal ambition. The glue that bound the fellowship was “Fuck Derek Merrin.”
Why is the Ohio legislature so toxic? Well, for one thing, the journalists assigned to report on this sewer sludge are condemned by their wage labor to never rise above the sludge themselves. No one - not Pelzer nor any other reporter whose livelihood depends on their access to power - will ever ask the questions they should. The swamp things of the legislature are just fine with that dynamic.
Merrin’s supporters didn’t expect the Goodman/Merrin photo to go public. That’s most likely because the Ohio GOP figured out long ago that the nerds churning out political content for a reasonable salary in this state ain’t got the heart, or the inherited wealth, to wallow in the mud with them. And that’s also why Merrin and Baer chose Pelzer as their unofficial spokesman throughout the speaker campaign and aftermath. They could have chosen anyone, but by limiting access they then had leverage over whomever they bestowed the honor upon.
Pelzer didn’t believe what appeared to be a wild internet conspiracy, most likely because Baer told him that the Merrin vote was a sealed deal, and Pelzer wanted to maintain his lines of communication with the upcoming Speaker. He ain’t got sewer blood coursing through his veins like The Rooster. This newsletter is fueled by unaddressed trauma, Liquid Death water, and an ever-burning desire to see my enemies fail, not always in that order. Pelzer is motivated by earning a salary and possibly advancing his career. He is not the biggest problem in the snake pit by any means. He’s just a self-identifying “mild-mannered” guy trying to cover the most reprehensible reptile show in America.
Ohio politics is boring to most average people precisely because of the system that controls reporting on the arena. Reporters working for The Columbus Dispatch and cleveland.com usually can’t cover the important topics, because it might piss off a source they really need. The Rooster doesn’t shy away from pissing off people in power - that’s a guarantee. I do it all for the Patriots Caucus, because for some reason you freaks love to see me roll in the mud.
Merrin and his Christofascist pals at CCV almost slithered through the Speaker vote sewer with the same uncritical media coverage they expect and enjoy. But this time, there was an insane communist blogger lurking in that very sewer, who spoke every intricate tic of their hobgoblin language.
There’s a lesson in here about independent journalism that I think is obvious enough to shelve for later. The last thing to do is to say thank you to Theodore Decker, who is leaving The Columbus Dispatch. In a farewell twitter post yesterday, Decker deemed The Rooster a “rabble rouser,” which I will try my best to continue to deliver on. Decker will always be welcome at my landlord’s spare hearth.
If there was any justice in this world, the Rooster would be winning top prizes in journalism someday
A lightning bolt into the world of access journalism. Hopefully something caught fire.