Tag Archives: Billy Dennis

Blogosphere, Peoria Police

There’s a reason you have to have press credentials to see the police blotter

39 Comments

I read Billy’s recent “free” post about how he was denied access to police reports. His post calls into question the police department’s restriction of this information to only those with press credentials.

I wanted to find out what the police department’s policy actually was, so I e-mailed Chief Settingsgaard. It turns out that, rather than an attempt to keep information away from people, it’s actually an attempt to make information available more quickly. The police reports include private personal information such as social security numbers and home phone numbers that can be (and should be) redacted. But rather than hold up those reports until they can be redacted, the police department makes them available immediately to the press, trusting that they will be responsible and “[maintain] appropriate discretion.”

In order to restrict this information to the media, one has to ask, “who are ‘the media’?” Traditionally, that moniker has belonged to the mainstream media, but these days there are a lot more freelance reporters. With news organizations downsizing, and the ease of starting new niche-print or online publication, there are a lot of journalists out there who don’t have traditional “press credentials.” Settingsgaard realizes this as well.

“Obviously the industry is changing and not all reporters are members of the mainstream media any longer so clearly we need to adapt so that persons like yourself and Bill Dennis are not excluded. In the short term I will ensure that access is opened immediately to Mr. Dennis and others like him whom we are familiar with. Long term I will be taking a close look at how to make the system better and either configure the reports so that anyone can view them or modernize our ‘press’ qualification.”

My thanks to Chief Settingsgaard for his quick response to and resolution of the matter.

And as for Billy: That will be $30, please.

Blogosphere

BlogPeoria goes behind a pay wall

31 Comments

Billy Dennis is trying something new in the Peoria blogosphere: You won’t be able to read his original content on the BlogPeoria Project (www.blogpeoria.com) unless you subscribe. Subscriptions are relatively cheap at $3 per month. His post explaining the new system is here.

In a nutshell, blogging is one of those things that most people do as a hobby, in addition to having a “real” job. Since Billy recently got laid off his “real” job (the company he worked for recently closed their Peoria offices), he wants to make blogging his full-time gig. That means he’s planning to do more freelance, original reporting and is hoping that his readers will be willing to pay for the content. Between subscriptions and ad revenue, he believes the business venture will work.

He’ll have no dearth of challenges.

First, even though the Peoria Journal Star is supposedly behind a pay wall, it’s a weak one that’s easily defeated, so their content is still, for intents and purposes, available for free online. Plus, all the TV/radio stations that do news post their news stories on line. And there are the other blogs that will remain free. Billy is consistently going to have to come up with content that is not available from these other sources if he’s going to convince people to pay him $3/month.

Second, Billy will have to overcome his own reputation to a certain extent. People know that he’s capable of doing original reporting, but they also know that he puts up scads of worthless posts, such as “eye candy” and one-line posts that just link to a Journal Star article. So he’s not only going to have to provide good, original content, he’s going to have to overcome negative perceptions people may have about the kind of posts they will get if they subscribe.

Thirdly, several people on a local forum (Peoria.com) have complained that they are getting a virus downloaded to their computer from Billy’s website. Billy is going to have to make sure his site is secure from these sorts of threats. Not only does it anger your customers when their computers get infected, it can also land you on a real-time blacklist which will block your site to any of their subscribers.

Lastly, he’s going to have to edit his posts. Hideous misspellings and grammatical errors are fine for a free blog. But if you’re paying for content, you expect it to be professional and polished.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I think Billy’s plan can work. One person can do quite a bit of reporting if they have the time to commit to it. I think Billy could do $3/month’s worth of reporting easily. And if he gets more subscribers, he could pay freelancers to submit more original works and really build up the site. Having content behind a pay wall would allow him to offer syndicated comics and puzzles if he gets enough revenue to pay for it.

There are lots of possibilities, and I wish him the best of luck.идея за подарък

Peoria Pundit

Stupid things that have come out of Billy Dennis’s blog

16 Comments

If you haven’t noticed, Billy Dennis has been on a crusade against Rush Limbaugh. Lately he’s taken to putting up post after post after post of “stupid” Rush Limbaugh quotes–about one an hour. I thought, just for fun, we’d turn the tables and see if there are any “stupid” Billy Dennis quotes we could find. It just so happens there are a few:

“Yes, you can ask 100 mothers, and 99 percent of them would be APPALLED that a 20-year-old female babysitter bought alcohol for a 14-year-old boy and seduced him. The percentage of 14-year-old boys who feel the same way? Eh, not so much. Anyway, she’s been charged with a crime because mother[s] vote.”

—Billy Dennis, arguing that statutory rape is not so bad for boys, August 4, 2011

“There’s a movement afoot to deny pediatric care to children who’s [sic] parents choose not to immunize them. Good. Failure to immunize is bad for individual kids. If enough children in any one area do not immunize, it can be wildly fatal. So, if you commit an anti-social act of failing to immunize your kids, you should be denied the benefits of society.”

—Billy Dennis, from a post titled “Let Them Die” supporting death and the denial of medical care for children because their parents didn’t immunize them, August 4, 2011

“Putting a committed environmental activist on any landfill committee makes about as much sense as putting members of the Flat Earth Society on a committee that designs spaceships.”

—Billy Dennis, calling environmentalists ignorant and impediments to landfill oversight, December 21, 2009

“Folks, the last thing that District 150 needs is for every chronically truant kid to suddenly start putting in time in school, draining time, energy and resources away from kids who want to learn. …[I]f someone is determined to remain an uneducated serf, let ‘em. Plenty of dropouts means a large pool of cheap labor, so maybe it won’t cost so much to have someone pump my gas or flip burgers at my favorite fast-food restaurant.”

—Billy Dennis, opposing enforcement of truancy laws and encouraging exploitation of the uneducated, July 15, 2004

“I have a suggestion for someone who cannot abide humor based on sex: Stay home. Turn off your television. Hide under your bed. You will be safe there.”

—Billy Dennis, defending sexual harassment by former deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, July 15, 2004

These are all quotes from the man who wants to see another pundit taken off the air for making stupid and insensitive remarks. See, Billy employs mockery and scorn in his writing often because, he says, it’s “fun” and “effective writing” that gets his point across and causes more people to pay attention. But when a radio host does the same thing, Billy is incensed. Ironic, huh?

In looking back over Billy’s posts, I was most struck by all the offensive free speech he’s actually defended over the years. There was Ted Rall’s racist editorial cartoon where he called Condoleeza Rice the n-word. Billy’s response: Ignore him. Then there was shock-jock Howard Stern’s regularly offensive content. Billy’s response: “Leave content alone. No one is being forced to listen to Stern. Radios and televisions have off buttons, people.” There are more examples which all follow the same reasoning. So it’s no small departure for Billy to be doing what he’s doing now: Leading a campaign to boycott Rush’s local advertisers and try to get WMBD-AM to take him off the air because of something stupid Rush said.

It makes one wonder, why now? Why this? What is it about Limbaugh’s offensive content that is so much more egregious than Rall’s or Stern’s (or his own)? Why does he defend keeping all other offensive content on the air and in print but seek to silence Limbaugh? It’s a glaring inconsistency.

My guess is he’s just doing it for hits on his website, which brings in more advertising revenue. And you know what that makes him? Well, I’d better not say…. 😉Художник

City of Peoria

Quote of the Day

2 Comments

Think about that next time there’s a burglary in your neighborhood, or when you hit a huge pothole this winter. Maybe you can call council member Ryan Spain and ask him to send over an economic development specialist to help.

—Billy Dennis, in response to the City’s decision, upon Spain’s motion, to spare an Economic Development Specialist while simultaneously cutting police and public works personnel.
City of Peoria

Stimulus money should be used for infrastructure

36 Comments

I have to agree with Billy Dennis. The stimulus money Peoria received should be used to improve infrastructure, not put a new roof on a private organization — even a private organization as laudable as the Center for Prevention of Abuse.

The Center does wonderful work here in Peoria, and I don’t begrudge them asking for stimulus funds as it’s not easy to raise money, especially in the current economic climate. But they simply don’t take priority over improving infrastructure in South Peoria. The Center already has numerous benefits by virtue of its not-for-profit status. It doesn’t pay property taxes or sales taxes, and yet it wants tax money to help buy a new roof. Meanwhile, taxpayers in South Peoria continue to live with substandard basic services and have their needs put at the bottom of the list.

“After 23 years, it’s time to say, ‘let’s get this done,'” Martha Herm, executive director of The Center for Prevention of Abuse, was quoted as saying in the Journal Star. There are a couple problems with this statement. First, it assumes that the Center is somehow entitled to public funds; it’s not. Second, South Peoria has been ignored far longer than 23 years. If we’re going to base this merely on time spent waiting for public investment, South Peoria has everyone beat.

City Council, City of Peoria

Hotel plans still shrouded in mystery

5 Comments

It’s the worst-kept secret in Peoria. Despite not getting anyone to speak on the record, information about the proposed hotel on the Pere Marquette block has been leaking like a sieve to the Journal Star and bloggers. Unfortunately, since we don’t have any official word, we don’t know how much of that information is accurate.

There’s something else we don’t know: what public incentives will be requested for this project. According to Billy Dennis’s source, “Public financing accounted for roughly 40 percent of the cost of building [East Peoria’s] Embassy Suites,” and “Project investors are hoping to secure a similar percentage of public financing for this project through a tax increment financing project agreement.” An ancillary issue is the request to move Big Al’s, with their “grandfathered” status and adult use and liquor licenses, presumably to 414 Hamilton Blvd.

And, of course, there is a sense of urgency for this project. According to the Journal Star, this whole project “could go before the City Council for consideration on Nov. 25.” That’s in two weeks. And, according to Billy Dennis’s source, any delays “would kill the $100 million project.”

Oh yes, the project has been estimated to be $100 million. So, going back to the earlier rumor that approximately forty percent of that would be “public financing…through a tax increment financing project agreement,” we’re talking about $40 million in public incentives. I’m not sure how a TIF is going to provide that amount of financing (consider that the proposed museum is in a TIF, is a similarly-sized development, and would arguably be built by now if they could get $40 million out of their TIF). I also don’t know how the city could afford to give $40 million to a private developer when the budget is already in a deficit.

I’m not sure about a lot of things, because when you get down to brass tacks, the citizens don’t really know anything about this project. We’re being told by many bloggers that this is the greatest project for downtown since the civic center (how do they know that?) and that the city should move heaven and earth to make it happen or else. Or else? Or else no small number of detrimental things will happen: the civic center will fail, downtown hotels will lose occupancy, Caterpillar won’t use Peoria’s hotels anymore, tax revenues will go down, downtown will deteriorate, no one will want to develop in downtown Peoria ever again because it’s so hard to do business here, etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Peoria is evidently on the precipice of oblivion and this hotel deal is its only savior. And that deal itself is tenuously held together — either the developers get everything for which they ask when they ask for it, or the deal’s off. No negotiation, no public input. They make the decisions and take your tax money, and you better thank them for it.

The Journal Star got it right:

We appreciate that negotiations like these can be sensitive and there’s a lot of financial risk involved and not all of that can or should be played out in a public hearing. Nonetheless, there is one overriding principle at work here: If you want the public’s support and especially the public’s money, the public needs to know a little something about the business government is doing on its behalf.

Right now, the public is in the dark. And this huge project might come before the council by Thanksgiving? Sorry, but that can’t be.

City Council, City of Peoria, Peoria Pundit, Radio

Council coverage falls off without Ahl; blogs pick up slack

10 Comments

It used to be that you could count on WCBU to cover any city council meeting held on a Tuesday night, including important budget discussions like the one happening tonight. But since former news director Jonathan Ahl left the station, coverage has fallen off. It appears now that only regular city council meetings (twice a month) are carried.

That’s unfortunate, because the council meeting tonight covers important budget issues facing the City of Peoria. What’s being discussed tonight is at least as important, if not more important, than the business taking place at the regular council meetings. Why have they stopped being covered?

Fortunately, there’s still one media outlet that’s covering the event live — Billy Dennis’ Peoria Pundit blog. All Billy needs to do is figure out a way to provide a live audio stream through his blog in addition to his running summary.

The Peoria Chronicle

Site news: Comment toolbar added

Leave a comment

Anyone who leaves comments on blogs knows that, if you want anything other than plain text, you have to know a little HTML coding. But not everyone knows that, or wants to learn it. And so, I’ve had some requests for a toolbar on the comment box that will allow commenters to bold, italicize, and add hyperlinks to their comments.

Well, you’ve got it. I had a hard time finding a WordPress plugin that would give the comments box this functionality. But the “blogfather” Billy Dennis found one for me. My thanks to him. Also, thanks to the person who wrote the plugin. I hope WordPress will build this into a future update, as it seems like an obvious upgrade to make.

The only thing missing from the toolbar is a “blockquote” button, which would have been helpful. But I think the tools that are provided will meet most commenters’ needs. Let me know if you have any trouble using it. If your comments don’t show up, it’s possible that it got caught in the Akismet spam filter (especially if you used hyperlinks). Just send me an e-mail and I’ll rescue it. If, for some reason, this toolbar “breaks” the site, I’ll deactivate it.

Hope you find this upgrade helpful. Happy commenting!