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Dakota Free Press Gets Press for Bollen Hearing Coverage

We bloggers get our occasional mentions and calls from the press for commentary. But how many blogs do you see cited for straight-up reporting?

KSOO finds my coverage of Joop Bollen’s initial hearing worth quoting:

Beth Warden, "Attorney General Present for Joop Bollen's Day in Court," KSOO Radio, 2016.04.03. Screen cap, 2016.04.04.
Beth Warden, “Attorney General Present for Joop Bollen’s Day in Court,” KSOO Radio, 2016.04.03. Screen cap, 2016.04.04.

Don’t be fooled: the South Dakota Blogosphere isn’t just a press release repository. Some of us do some real journalism. And on a story of such import as the corruption of South Dakota’s EB-5 visa investment program, we need all the real journalism we can get. Back to work….

14 Comments

  1. Nick Nemec 2016-04-04 09:22

    Some blogs are part of what might be termed “the new media” others are not.

  2. Mary, Quite Contrary 2016-04-04 09:49

    :)

  3. Porter Lansing 2016-04-04 09:57

    Hear, hear Mr. Heidelberger. Your blog is a ray of honest light shining over the darkness of the Pierre majority. Our Democratic Party is growing like oats while those fat Republicans are bleating like goats.

  4. Porter Lansing 2016-04-04 10:23

    Republicans will be so embarrassed by the nat’l campaign they’ll not even self-identify. They’ll come up with some Evan’s-like term for themselves. Be it Libertarian (a Republican who really just wants to smoke pot) or be it Conservative or be it Bourgeois, it’ll be a full sprint away from the Trump/Cruz meltdown of a once valiant group of America’s boosters. Gone are the days of Reagan. Gone are the days of compromise. It’s now “nuts in the ruts” of FoxNews, Karl Koch and some “college about war”? It’s On haybillies …

  5. John Kennedy Claussen 2016-04-04 13:44

    It was more than just journalism. As I read your account, I felt as though Capote had been present at the proceeding, but unlike mere verisimilitude we also had the assurance that you were actually in the court room at the time and reporting it as it was… :-)

  6. Porter Lansing 2016-04-04 14:28

    Excellent comment, Jack. #PT109

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-04-04 21:26

    Porter! Nice to hear from you again. And yes, let’s see what we can do to turn Trump-shame into recruiting, if not for our party, then at least for interest in good, honest news and facts.

    Thank you, all. I’m glad you appreciate the work I do here. And John KC—Capote? That’s quite the comparison! I will do my best to report accurately what happens in the trial (here! in Aberdeen! hardly five minutes by bike from my house!), but, given the complicated material, I’ll try to tell the story as interestingly as possible. With a cast like this, with all the political intrigue, and with details like a failed slaughterhouse and Egyptian artifacts, how can the story not be interesting?

  8. grudznick 2016-04-04 21:54

    I don’t think Mr. Lansing has been reading that political reporter for all state government goings on, Mr. Mercer. I don’t think oats shrink like the SDDP is shrinking. Oats grow. Like Independents and the GOP. Warts shrink from sunlight and putting a balm on them.

  9. John Kennedy Claussen 2016-04-04 22:12

    Capote indeed! Especially the following sentences from your blog piece on the initial hearing concerning the charges against Joob, which read:

    “He wore a dark charcoal suit, black-and-white striped necktie, and a small AG pin that looks like a sheriff’s star on his lapel. Jackley wore a wedding band on his left hand and another ring on his right pinky. He and his assistant, Brent Kempema, greeted and conversed with Bollen’s local attorney Reed Rasmussen quietly and genially. As the small room filled with spectators, reporters (Aberdeen American News, SDPB, AP, Hub City Radio, SoDakLiberty, KELO, KSFY, KDLT), and defendants in the court’s other 55 cases for the day (all wondering, ugh, why cameras today?), Jackley chatted lightly, smiled, and occasionally chuckled quietly with Kempema and the female assistant at the state’s table.”

    These word made me think of the detail Capote expressed in “In Cold Blood.” Although, this is not a capital case with the massive intrigue to surround it, your descriptions of the hearing allowed me to feel as a reader as though I was there too, or wanted to be at least. Well done!

  10. leslie 2016-04-04 23:26

    In Cold Blood. wow

  11. Porter Lansing 2016-04-05 04:50

    You said it absolutely correctly, Grudz. And you said it twice, in fact. When you opine, “I don’t think.” you’ve captured your situation to the letter. But after that, you’re as mentally muddled as ever, gravy brain. You embarrass your Republican Party as much as your candidates do.

  12. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-04-05 09:37

    Thanks, John KC. That’s the value I wanted to add. I don’t think we learned any new information about the charges in the hearing. AG Jackley didn’t add much new detail (at least not for those of us who’d already read the charges and the probable cause affidavit). I thus had room to add value in a different way, to give people more sense of being here.

    Plus, I didn’t get the money shot of Joop smiling on the way into the courtroom—I went inside to hold a good seat!—so I had to differentiate my product in the marketplace. :-)

  13. Ed 2016-04-05 09:52

    Thank you, Cory, for the informed and insightful work you do and good luck in your campaign against Al Novstrup. Thank you for the courage and resolve to take him on. How ironic that at the same day Bollen was in court the Brown County Republicans were holding their annual “Lincoln” day banquet cheering the “leadership” of Jackley, Rounds, Thune, Noem, and their beloved Novstrup’s who kept telling the public that there was no substance to the EB-5 scandal and there was no need for any further investigation. Honest Abe Lincoln must be spinning in his grave when he sees his name invoked by a political party that he would not be a part of today.

  14. caheidelberger Post author | 2016-04-06 16:55

    Thanks for the encouragement, Ed! Maybe I’ll have to wrestle the Republicans and claim Lincoln as my ideological progenitor… or maybe I’ll just remind everybody that the Republicans were wrong, that the EB-5 scandal is real, and that we need better oversight in every corner of state government.

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