Some Council Members Slam Blogs
Staff editorial

The June 27 issue of Saddleback Valley News gave Mission Viejo council members a chance to vent about city blogs. All five were interviewed by reporter Lindsey Baguio.

Dale Tyler’s blog is in its third year of weekly publication. His team members have stayed the course since his blog’s 2005 inception. Brad Morton in November 2007 revived his Dispatch blog, which he wrote for a while in 2006. Morton is the primary writer on his blog.

Morton requires a name from readers posting comments; Tyler accepts anonymous posts if they pass an editorial review. Tyler began accepting anonymous editorials co-authored by multiple writers and from an insider whose name is well known. Ironically, the person who either wrote or forwarded anonymous material now criticizes the practice. Tyler’s blog rejects pseudonyms, and it verifies identities of contributors. Other blogs, including a county blog, require names but get smoked by publishing comments over phony names.

Did council members tell the truth in SVN interviews published on June 27? For the most part, they did not. Councilman Lance MacLean said he’d never been contacted by a blog. Not true; he’s been contacted numerous times. MacLean in the June 27 article first complains that an activist should have called city hall to ask about easels dumped on a hillside. When Baguio confronts him with a blogger’s account of calling city hall about the easels, MacLean changes the subject to potholes and streetlights. MacLean states that not everything written in a blog “is necessarily true or accurate.” When city officials and council members withhold information or refuse to respond to questions, they shouldn’t expect someone else to write their side of the story.

Gail Reavis says she hopes the community doesn’t take blogs seriously, and she contrasts blogs with newspapers. She should note that letters to this blog almost always appear later in SVN. She asks if blogs check sources. Yes, absolutely. She asks if blogs verify that comments are true and accurate. This blog does. Furthermore, Tyler promises he will retract information if someone challenges it and verifies it is untrue. In nearly three years of publication, no one has even presented facts to the contrary of what’s been published.

John Paul Ledesma’s June 27 SVN statements are accurate. He states he’d been contacted by this blog. He adds he’s glad Mission Viejo has “a very active citizenry.”

Trish Kelley complains that one of the blogs publishes “blatant misinformation.” Perhaps revisiting a representative post would explain why she really doesn’t like this blog. Here’s an example: Kelley was campaigning in 2004 at Capo Valley High School against her archrival Gale Reavis. Kelley saw a family approaching the school for a Back To School event. Kelley greeted the family (parents and a child), thinking they had come to help her campaign against Reavis. When Kelley learned they were instead going to help Reavis, she marched into the school and tried to get them kicked off campus. School administrators were summoned to chase the family around, threatening them with arrest. Meanwhile, Kelley and her king of character Bill Klimek continued to distribute flyers opposing Reavis, and such politicking is prohibited on school property. Kelley has never challenged any statement on this blog.

Frank Ury has his own blog, which wasn’t mentioned in the SVN interview. This blog hasn’t contacted him, nor has he contacted this blog. Ury mischaracterizes bloggers as being impossible to satisfy, and he gives a strange example that the city could renovate two parks, leaving bloggers dissatisfied because they wanted three renovated. This blog criticizes Ury for representing special interest (lobbyists and his political friends in other cities) instead of Mission Viejo residents. To his credit, Ury doesn’t claim the blogs have misrepresented what he does.

The story that hasn’t yet been covered in SVN is the attempt by City Manager Dennis Wilberg to control what the newspaper publishes. Wilberg sent a list of his 30 hand-picked shills for Baguio to interview. Instead of relying on people who have the gumption to write a letter to the editor on their own or state an opinion without prompting, Baguio has been directed to go fishing in a vat of Kool-Aid.

The city controls a glut of taxpayer-funded brochures and newsletters but, thanks to the blogs, the truth is still slipping out. What’s next? Some people say the city is in the process of creating its own blog.