The Political Whore

It sure looks like that could have happened. In a story to be published in our print edition tomorrow, I write about how at least one invoice for a Blair campaign billboard was sent directly to a company owned by developer Stephen Dibbs:

The billboard on Ehrlich Road in north Tampa touting the re-election of Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair reads, in fine print at the bottom, “Political advertisement paid for and approved by Brian Blair, Republican for Hillsborough County Commission, District 6.”

It appears, however, that his campaign did not pay for the billboard advertisement. Blair’s campaign finance reports show no such expenditure. And according to an invoice obtained by Creative Loafing, the bill for the $2,500-a-month roadway sign was sent to North Dale Development, which is owned by Stephen Dibbs, a controversial and prominent developer who has supported Blair in the past.

If Dibbs did pay for the billboard, it would appear to exceed the limits in the state campaign finance law, which caps direct or in-kind contributions to candidate campaigns at $500 and requires disclosure of any contributions.

Among Dibbs’ various holdings is the Bourbon Street Plaza shopping strip center where the billboard is located. It is not clear from the invoice whether Dibbs paid for the board. The invoice was provided to CL by a source who requested anonymity because the source was not authorized to release the document.

The invoice, from CBS Outdoor, which sells the billboard’s advertising space, was dated Aug. 20, 2008, for use of the billboard in the month of August. The 10-foot-by-36-foot sign is highly visible to anyone driving west on Ehrlich from North Dale Mabry Highway. It was still in place last week when CL visited the site.

Neither Dibbs nor Blair responded to numerous telephone and e-mailed requests for comment for this story.

Who paid for this campaign billboard on Ehrlich Road in Tampa?

Read the entire story, which is already on our website.

UPDATE: Neither Blair nor Beckner has spoken to Creative Loafing about this story, but a Tampa Tribune reporter told me Tuesday that Blair has now produced a campaign check cut to CBS Outdoor on Sept. 19 and insists he paid for all his campaign advertising himself. Blair spoke to reporters with the Trib and Times after he was criticized during Tuesday’s county commission meeting about the subject of the story.

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And no, I don’t mean Bardi and Silverman.

Make a notation in your PDA of choice for Thursday night at 9 p.m. for the vice presidential debates between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. I’ll be here (sorry, I was on the road traveling last Friday night for the first presidential debate) ready at the enter key for the veep battle, and I will open a thread just before the show starts.

In the meantime, some reading material background for you to digest so you can have informed and intelligent comments (along with the usual barrage of partisan insults and snarky remarks). This is from the Marist Poll, full text after the jump:

(more…)

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Today’s top political and media news headlines, with updates throughout the day in that little box just to the right:

• More Sarah on the media interview circuit!
• Crist, Cabinet to consider funding final segment of Orlando’s beltway.
• Adam Putnam on why he voted for the bailout.
• Congress slips in authorization for Tamiami Trail bridge to aid Everglades restoration; Miccosukees outraged.
• Oh, and by the way, the Everglades restoration is bogged down and costing us more by the minute.
• Bloodied after her first encounter with Couric, Palin brings her dad to the second one.
• Lawyers delight: Court case deciding which government pays for roads near schools is over. Either way, the taxpayers were paying, so the only ones who benefited were those people racking up billable hours.
• City’s largest union turns down contract with 3.5 percent cost-of-living increase and 3 percent merit raises. How many folks out there got a 6.5 percent bump this year? Raise your hands? Anyone? Thought so.
• The wild, crazy and completely made-up conspiracy theory about Sarah Palin and Eric Cantor.
• Another sign of the impending apocalypse: AC/DC inks exclusive deal with Wal-Mart.
• Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday, man you’ve been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long:

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Our financial reorganization is drawing quite a bit of interest from all over the place (on the same day, unfortunately, that the Tampa Tribune is laying off a few more workers, including editorial page columnist Joe Brown). Here’s a sampling:

It is the unfortunate direction of all print media. Newspapers, magazines, and such media depend on advertising to survive. Why would someone want to pay $10-30 for 3-4 lines of text in classified advertising when a free ad with unlimited text, anonymized response links (so unknowns do not call your home), and multiple photos on a place like Craig’s List [tampa.craigslist.com]? The Tribune, TBT, and Creative Loafing still get more overall local readers, but until they update, they cannot compete. One would think by now the Tribune would even have special links in the ads so that those that pay to list them can have pictures added online.

I like Creative Loafing because of the activity listings and local stories (the Tribune seems to have little real local content that isn’t focused on car crashes, press releases, or celebrity news). When is the last time anyone recalls the Tribune really doing an in-depth, politically dangerous expose on any subject? They did have a long article regarding accidental arson in Plant City years ago, but I wouldn’t really term that as an expose. — comment on tbo.com

Eric Deggans reports on a dispute between CL and one of the investors who financed the Chicago-Washington purchase last year:

Despite a story on the Washington City Paper Web site quoting Creative Loafing Inc. president Ben Eason saying “this filing has little to do with the acquisition,” documents included with the bankruptcy filing indicate the company had trouble keeping up with payments on a $30-million loan taken last year to pay down $15-million in debts and to purchase the two newspapers.

According to documents included with the bankruptcy filing, Creative Loafing missed an interest payment of $282,219 on Dec. 24, a $10,000 servicing fee on Dec. 31 and an interest payment of $294,369 due Jan. 24.

Also according to the documents, as the media economy grew worse, Creative Loafing negotiated agreements to modify the financing terms with Atalaya Funding in New York and BIA Digital Partners. But last week, Atalaya said the company was in default, though Creative Loafing disagrees, according to the court document.

Creative Loafing has asked the court to prevent Atalaya or Atalaya and BIA from taking control of the company, allowing Eason to focus on reorganizing to better meet its debt obligations and develop the online revenue sources prompting the Reader and City Paper purchases.

From Erik Wemple, editor at our sister Washington City Paper:

The move does contain good news for editorial departments in the chain. Eason announced that cuts to edit staffs at all the papers would be rolled back but stressed that all the papers should proceed with “Web-first” publishing strategies, in which writers and editors customize their content for the Internet and subsequently transfer that content into their print products.

From The Business Journal in Tampa Bay:

The bankruptcy filing comes the same day Creative Loafing sued Atalaya Administrative LLC, Atalaya Funding II LP and BIA Digital Partners SBIC II LP asking a judge to stop a default on $40 million in loans. In the suit, filed with the same court, Creative Loafing said the lenders failed to act in good faith when they refused to negotiate lowering the financial covenants. Without the injunction, Creative Loafing says it has no other options in stopping the default, as it would be “too late to save the debtors’ businesses, reputation, and close-knit and effective management.”

From paidcontent.org at Washington Post:

Likely means the BIA funding went south, somewhere along the line, as of course did the company’s fortunes. The company also denies any connection between the acquisitions last year and Ch 11, and says there won’t be any major layoffs…lotsa spin in there, if you ask me.

From our sister Chicago Reader:

In a telephone conversation with executives of his newspapers, Eason sounded relentlessly chipper, and he emphasized that all his company seeks from bankruptcy is the opportunity to restructure its debts. Liquidation is not being considered. “This is a profitable business,” he declared. “The company has a good cash flow. It has a good market position. Online revenues more than doubled in the last year.” But print revenues have fallen off dramatically over the past year at Creative Loafing and throughout the newspaper business. He said in the past three months total revenues were down 10 to 15 percent from the same months a year ago.

The douchebags at Philebrity:

Food for thought: So Creative Loafing, an alt-weekly chain/parent company thing that mostly covers cities you would not live in with even with somebody else’s dick, totally screwed the pooch and declared bankruptcy so that its papers — including Washington City Paper — can better “focus” their efforts online. You can see where we might be going with this: With the Philadelphia Weekly having been rumored to have slashed its freelance budget entirely (no shit! more on this later!) and the City Paper spectacularly lunching its most spectacular issue of the feckackular year, is this a trend that might look juicy to guys like Paul Curci and Anthony Clifton? Our guess: Not yet, but it will.

The Gawker:

This may be just a foreshadowing of some painful days to come for alt-weeklies in general—we also hear the Village Voice may be on the verge of some layoffs.

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From her press spokeswoman, Kathy Castor’s statement in the wake of the failure of the $700 billion bailout plan in the House:

After thoughtful consideration and review, I voted against President Bush’s $700 billion bailout. The Bush plan does not provide sufficient help to middle-class families in the housing squeeze or taxpayer protections.

I assisted hundreds of Tampa Bay families at my foreclosure workshops this summer and I understand the need for direct, immediate action. The Bush plan failed to provide such action.

I will work to ensure that this freewheeling deregulation that has brought our great country to this serious day does not happen again. I strongly support the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigations which begin this week, and will push for accountability for those responsible for the damage to our communities.

Congress should go back to the drawing board as soon as possible this week to tackle the issue.

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Our parent company filed a Chapter 11 reorganization case in federal bankruptcy court this morning, the result of a slowing economy exacerbated by debts it took on in May 2007 in buying the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper alt-newspapers.

CEO Ben Eason

“I don’t see this as bad news,” CL’s CEO Ben Eason said at a noon staff meeting in Tampa. Many other media companies have been hurt in this economy, and others are successfully reorganizing their finances or changing the terms of their debt to cope, he added.

Eason addressed staff in Tampa this morning to announce the legal action after the media company’s board voted early this morning to file in bankrtupcy court in Tampa. He was upbeat about Chapter 11’s ability to ease the debt crunch the newspaper chain is facing as it tries to increase its online presence while at the same time dealing with falling print revenues because of the housing crisis and resulting slower economy.

“This company has got cash,” he said. “This is not a cash issue. This is not a management issue. It’s strictly the economy tanking.”

Eason continued: “This company is not a sinking ship. We have an excellent shot at coming out of this with a fresh start” and redrawn debt repayment terms.

Eason added that employees and vendors would continue to be paid and the newspapers in six U.S. markets would continue to publish weekly. No layoffs or other changes are anticipated as part of the Chapter 11 case, he said.

Ironically, CL was poised across all its newspapers to make cuts in its editorial budgets by the end of October in an attempt to free up more cash to make debt payments. With the debt issue on hold because of the bankruptcy court action, Eason said he has told editors those cuts now do not have to be made. The cuts had not been revealed here in Tampa, but in Washington they had been the focus of stories in the press for about a month.

The bankruptcy filing was caused by an inability to generate enough revenues in the current advertising sales slump nationally to satisfy the debt payments and terms of the debt taken on in the purchase of the Chicago and Washington papers last year.

Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code shields a company from its creditors while it puts together a reorganization plan that must be approved by the court. While it is possible that the court could take many different actions — from dissolving the company to forcing its sale or breakup — Eason said those actions are highly unlikely in CL’s case. “We’re going full steam ahead” in growing the newspapers’ online presence, he said. “Just watch us.”

Among the largest unsecured creditors is Fayetteville Publishing Co., which prints the Tampa Bay edition and some of the other papers in the group. The Georgia Department of Labor, the Georgia Department of Revenue and the IRS are also among the creditors. The listing of creditors on a bankruptcy filing doesn’t indicate, as some news accounts suggested, that Creative Loafing was not paying its vendors or taxes, Eason said; it is merely a court-required list of those companies that do business with CL.

Creative Loafing was founded in 1972 by Debby Eason in Atlanta and later opened several other papers in the Southeast. Ben, who owned the Tampa paper, acquired the rest of the family newspapers in 2000.

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“Elmore James got nothing on this baby.” — George Harrison

• The First Amendment in action.
• Battling Rez Disease.
• Saving the Republican “brand.”
• The “Castle Doctrine” goes on the road.
• Dinosaur media.
• Steve Dunleavy hangs up his tabloid pen.
• McCain lied more during the debate than Obama did.
• Rescue vs. Bailout?
• This American Life told ya so.
• The DCCC is not spending $$$ in the local Congressional 9 race against Gus Bilirakis.
• Charlie Crist is a poodle.
• The view from north of Kennedy of the next mayor of Tampa.
• Palin got special favors and gifts in Alaska.
• Ever want to see a bunch of Brits on ukulele playing the Theme From Shaft? Yeah …

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Live blogging is now open. I’m going to go eat some dinner and I’ll be back with some pre-show “Great Moments in Debating History” in a little while.

Please feel free to fight amongst yourselves for a few minutes …

I’m back, and here we go with Great Moments in Debating History:

What if Kitty was raped and murdered?

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