January 18, 2006

You Gotta Comment?!?

A BATTLE IS RAGING in Columbia Heights. The fight I'm referring to is not a dispute over luxury condos or some gourmet bistro forcing out a family-owned restaurant. No this is about a new website called Columbia Heights News.

Rather than welcoming this new voice to the community, commenters on the Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan listserves on Yahoo! have been pelting the site with charges of plagiarism, intimidation and use of a false identify. The suspicious critics want to know who is behind the effort?

Well this dustup has not been settled by a forthcoming answer to that question. According to Columbia Heights News, the site "was created and is being managed by a husband and wife team." But they won't really say much more.

Skepticism has been further fueled by the fact that the site liberally quotes various corporate sources who do not ordinarily speak so freely to small and very new news outlets. (Don't get DC Bubble started.) Maybe "the husband and wife" are, in fact, sponsored by the corporate entitites themselves some wonder.

As one commenter noted, Columbia Heights News "purports to offer a wide variety of neighborhood news, but in reality focuses only on drawing a large national chain retailer to the area." In fact, they are behind the effort to save the Columbia Heights Whole Foods. Hmmmm.....

Have June and Ward Cleaver moved to 14th and Irving or has a public relations campaign been outed?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I doubt very seriously the folks maintaining the site are living in Columbia Heights. If they are, they are only serving as a front to one or more Corporate sponsors who are behind the site. Notice that there is nothing even remotely negative written on the website - it's a pure puff piece, no "hard" news. Might as well be owned by the welcoming committee of the 14th & Irving Chamber of Commerce.

Anonymous said...

Absolute BS. Get a life already. This is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I've ever heard.

Anonymous said...

CH News is a bunch of corporate tyes tryig to take over our neighborhood...good riddance to whole foods and to the whole lot of them.

Anonymous said...

This is a ridiculous non-issue. Columbia Heights News is basically a blog, like this one. It is traditional in the blogosphere to be anonymous.. just like the creator/writer of THIS blog!?! I feel bad for the couple that started up CHN, because instead of a warm welcome, they received a harsh and hostile reception from the Columbia Heights Yahho group (or at least certain conspiracy-minded personalities from the listserv). Crazy. If you want to complain about corporate shills holding sway over public policies, try diverting your energies in the direction of the Bush administration and its cronies (eg. Cheney energy task force).

dcbubble.blogspot said...

for the record DC Bubble would love to sit down with any reader of this blog who is willing to buy him/her the cheesecake promised the editors of columbia heights news....

Anonymous said...

its obvius dc bubba is robert marvin. he's starvin for atension.

Anonymous said...

Yo DCBUBBLE. YOU STOLE MY FIRE! I was the first to write about this in DC Metblogs. check the dates man. give me some friggin credit!

youre just like chn. probably part of some evil developer underground network. if you want money do real blogs like me. else go into the big black strappin adult entertainment industry. trust me theres a hell of a lot more money in it! take a hike bubble.

Anonymous said...

Hey Wayan--

How about that time you ripped off DailyCandy DC and then deleted the comments that called you out on it! That was awesome! Maybe you should have given them some credit first before asking others to give some to you, eh?

Anonymous said...

Interesting...

I didn't post the comment starting with "Yo DCBUBBLE. YOU STOLE MY FIRE! I " and even a cursory review of the comment's writing style compared to mine shows two authors. Like I would ever use the word "friggin"? Please.

Just seems I'm so cool, everyone wants to be like me.