GO AFTER THE FRICKIN’ CONFLICT OF INTEREST THE COVER UP AND THE LIES!
Okay, that was my vent. A judge has granted a hearing for the Argus vs. the Scab. I have said that the Argus has a case if they go after the blatant conflict of interest with every single councilor KNOWING in advance of the vote that Matt Paulson was an investor and that he gave to every single person sitting on the dais’ campaigns. The worst part was the council and the Scab hid it from the public. That’s deception on the highest level, not only by council but by the Scab. On top of it, the only blogger covering city politics for 20 years gets told in a nasty text message from one of the owners that him and the other main writers are the only owners . . . until they weren’t.
If the Argus argues this on the original premise of not posting investor info in advance, they will lose the case. Go after the conflicts.
Remember the game of connect the dots? We will get to that in a moment.
It all started with a thot I had Friday night while listening to announcements from the Levitt stage.
Is Matt Paulson trying to build a local media empire to influence city hall policy even more?
It all started over a year ago when a local (seasoned) journalist told me that there are plans in the works to combine all the small local independent or semi-independent media outlets and freelancers into one organization, or at least under an umbrella of cooperation. I don’t need to list these orgs, if you read this blog, you read their sites also. This plan was later confirmed to me from another associate, but told me the plan still has some kinks in it and setbacks. I didn’t blog about this because frankly when I first heard it, I was rooting for them and said it was a great idea, let’s just see if it will work.
While many of these indies have talent, they don’t have a lot of capital, they need outside investors to make this work and they need to sell a butt load of advertising to pay everyone’s salaries.
Then walks in Matt Paulson.
But let’s play that game of ‘connect the dots’ I spoke about earlier;
• Matt Paulson has funded every campaign of all of the current 8 councilors and the mayor and many past councilors.
• Jodi Schwan leaves the Argus to start her own business website.
• Patrick Lalley, Reposa, Ellis and Sneve leave the Argus to start their own independent sites, with a small kink, Market Dweebs owner, Matt Paulson has quietly been investing in the Dakota Scout, something the council and the SOS failed to inform the public about.
• In one of the most unethical moves by city council they approve the Dakota Scout contract for legals without releasing the investors names.
• I learned Friday night at the Levitt that Paulson has hired a local popular TV anchor to work at Market Dweeb.
I’m not sure what shoe will drop next but if I were KELOLAND, DAKOTANEWS or the Argus, (nevermind, they are already a sunken ship), I would be nervous about my advertising dollars and the whole integrity of the media locally. While I like local independent journalists, I’m not sure I care for their investors, who seem to be buying up city hall candidates and now local journalists so he can control the narrative even more.
Art censoring little . . .
As a community we should be very nervous and cautious of how this potential media merger will occur, but like everything else this Dweeb touches, it will all be done in the dark of the night, because that’s how the fourth estate does things these days.
Still waiting for my offer Matt 🙂 The Scab could really use a cartoonist that used a different medium besides crayons.
UPDATE: David told me this week he did a video interview with a local videographer and after it is edited, produced and posted to YouTube I will share.
I got word yesterday that all charges against David were dropped before the hearing.
Ever since this happened I have had several conversations with David about the incident. Initially, as I understand it there was three charges against David, two were dropped pretty quickly but the 3rd charge didn’t get dropped until this week.
I told David after he gets the all clear to send me a guest post about his side of the story.
One of the reasons I never posted about this when it happened is because I know David, and didn’t think he did it, but felt it must go thru the court system before I comment on it.
I think the media owes David a massive apology jumping to judgement. Domestic disputes occur several times a day in this community, why isn’t the media reporting on that? Oh because David is ‘weird’. Funny how the media will report a candidate for mayor alledgedly involved in a domestic assault situation but won’t say anything about Marshall Selberg ILLEGALLY living out of his district for a year. I guess the David thing is a bigger story.
Once again, our Food Truck media in Sioux Falls can’t see the story in the forrest.
They did a good segment on all the corruption going on at city hall. Stehly said that the city directors and developers are running the city. Duh. I wonder how their annual HIGH TEA meeting went this year.
l3wis 
