Free . . . And His Lovely Wife by Connie Schultz

first place.
    The Plain Dealer
’s blog allowed
Plain Dealer
political writers to file dispatches from the road throughout the day, encouraging political junkies to visit the newspaper’s website regularly. It also provided a forum for audiotaped interviews with candidates. Paul Hackett’s interview with the editorial board, which was rescheduled after he canceled the first time, was taped and then posted on
Openers.
    Immediately, Sherrod’s campaign staff protested because, several weeks earlier, Sherrod had initiated a meeting with the
Plain Dealer
editorial board to discuss what he considered to be their unfair coverage of the campaign. An audiotape of that spirited discussion, though, had not been posted on the website.
    Despite the suspicions of the campaign staff, this oversight was not, as it turned out, evidence of malice or a conspiracy against Sherrod. When a staffer called
Openers
editor Jean Dubail to ask why, his answer was simple: No one had taped Sherrod’s interview because it was not yet common practice. I knew Jean well, as both a respected colleague and a friend. I didn’t for a moment doubt his word.
    Nevertheless, Hackett’s audio did give him a leg up on coverage, which rankled some of Sherrod’s staff. Privately, I worried that we were becoming hypersensitive to every hiccup in the press.
    Much more disconcerting to me personally was
The Plain Dealer
’s decision to link to local political blogs on
Openers.
One of the links on the site was ardently pro-Hackett and regularly bashed Sherrod and me, at one point running a post referring to my “tits” in response to a lighthearted column I’d written about blogs. Another blogger predicted that DeWine supporters would “dismantle Connie and leave pieces of her bleeding at the roadside.”
    In early February, I sat at my desk in the newsroom and let sink in what was unfolding. With one click,
Plain Dealer
readers could devour whatever lies, mischaracterizations, and attacks bloggers felt like writing about us on any given day.
    I understood that no newspaper covering Ohio politics could ignore the blogs. I also understood it was time for me to leave.
    I talked to Karen Sandstrom, my longtime friend who had become my supervisor at the paper the previous year. She was sick over some of the blogs, but, like me, felt that
The Plain Dealer
couldn’t ignore them. She was sympathetic, but she also knew that I had already been struggling mightily over what I could and, increasingly, could not write about in my column.
    â€œI wrote about
pantyhose,
” I said, wincing at the recent memory.
    She smiled. “It was very funny.”
    â€œI can’t do funny all the time,” I said. “I can’t stop writing about all the things that really matter.”
    â€œNo one said you had to,” she said, but she started nodding her head as soon as I began rattling off the list.
    The war in Iraq was a cornerstone of Sherrod’s campaign.
    Overworked pharmacists were trying to help senior citizens make sense of the new, impossibly complicated Medicare prescription drug plan. Great column, but Sherrod was holding news conferences in pharmacies around the state blasting the Republicans for passing legislation that was driven by the drug companies.
    Voter registration, which I had championed in a series of columns in 2004, was off-limits, even as Republican secretary of state Ken Blackwell, now a candidate for governor, tried to push for more restrictions. His Democratic opponent, Congressman Ted Strickland, was Sherrod’s close friend.
    â€œYeah,” Karen said, nodding her head. “Doug would never let you write about that now.”
    I stared at her for a moment, then silently nodded. We both knew what was happening.
The Plain Dealer
’s website wasn’t the reason I had to leave. It was just the final push I had known was coming: The website had forced me to lift the shade from