One half of the teams at Random Hacks of Kindness Philadlephia, held June 4-5, 2011. Photo by by Philip Neuffer for Technically Philly.

This weekend, I spent at least 30 hours in a windowless room of Drexel University for Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia, an international globally-minded hackathon brought to Philly by computer science PhD student and West Philly homeowner Mike Brennan.

It was actually a total hoot.

After a cool reception Friday night at co-working space Indy Hall over local and imported beer (for the kickoff of Philly Beer Week), Saturday morning featured a keynote by a local representative of legendary web anonymity tool Tor, brainstorming and team creation.

By the end of the first day, we had six teams working on at least that many projects. Watch below a tour of the teams I gave toward the end of the first day.

Read over at Technically Philly what came out.

From there, the teams built projects, some well into Saturday night, most returning Sunday for more. In addition to organizing the reception and helping with registration, promotion and the like, I was a judge, along with a NASA open data specialist, a representative from consulting firm SecondMuze and the dean of Drexel’s computer science program.

Philadelphia City Councilman Bill Green introducing a Resolution formally calling April 25-30, 2011 as Philly Tech Week, flanked by Councilman Brian O'Neill at left and Councilman Wilson Goode at right, with Sean Blanda and myself, in City Council chambers the morning of April 7, 2011.

With the passage of Resolution 110218, Philadelphia City Council officially named the last six days of April officially as Philly Tech Week, as celebrated with a reading of the resolution in council chambers Thursday morning.

There, my colleague Sean Blanda and I, two of the three co-founders of Technically Philly and organizers of Philly Tech Week, received an embossed copy of the resolution from Councilman Bill Green, who introduced the legislation, and Councilmen Brian O’Neill and Wilson Goode, who co-sponsored the measure. I addressed council briefly to note two things: that (1) technology and the Digital Philadelphia vision is more than just gadgets and (2) the Philly Tech Week resolution featured two dozen groups and organizations because the technology community is so broad.

These resolutions can be a little silly, but they do serve as validation of the interest and growth of the technology community in Philadelphia. It was an honor to represent the community, even though we’re only a small part of its growth.

Below, watch my brief remarks and see the notes that I should have prepared.

What my written remarks would have looked like if I had taken care to have actually made them:

Thank you for this opportunity and for highlighting the technology community. Thank you Councilman Green for introducing the resolution and for the rest of council for supporting it.

Most importantly, I want to highlight that we’re not just talking about gadgets with this technology community.

Think about the Digital Philadelphia vision that former City Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank and the Division of Technology have highlighted: technology can make this city better by creating jobs, improving access for lower income communities and making government more transparent and efficient.

Secondly, I want to point out how many proper nouns are in this resolution. There are so many different corners of the technology community of Philadelphia that are still coming together to collaborate to make this region better.

For more than two years, we have been a part of that collaboration with technology news site Technically Philly. Now Philly Tech Week will do so in a bigger, broader way. Thank you again for recognizing so early how powerful this community can be.

After finding interest from Green’s office, I wrote the resolution hoping to show how inclusive and industry-diverse the community is.

Sean and I with all of City Council

One half of the influential round table at the unveiling of a proposed William Penn Foundation news innovation involvement.

Forty leaders in Philadelphia media were on hand last week for the unveiling of a structure to develop more public affairs journalism in the region, as proposed by a university research center on behalf of the William Penn Foundation.

From 8:30 a.m. to after 2 p.m. on Jan. 7 inside the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission conference room of the American College of Physicians Building in Old City, a series of discussions focused on bolstering the next generation of news gathering in Philadelphia around community-building and replacing competition with collaboration.

Explicit details were left slim to encourage a dialogue, but loosely defined, Jan Schaffer, the executive director of American University-housed J-Lab, recommended an aggregated content hub that could be supplemented by a limited editorial team. The funded sustainability of that recommendation was not detailed, but rather suggested to be put off for three years until an appropriate level of support was developed, she said. Hers were only recommendations for the Penn Foundation. No action was announced, nor taken.

Rather, Schaffer, a former Philadelphia Inquirer business editor and Pulitzer Prize winner, led a fact-finding research project for the better part of 2009 on behalf of the Penn Foundation, which included more than 60 interviews and ran from July to October. The day was her chance to gauge response. She has not yet submitted a formal proposal but, she said, expects to do so this quarter. Last week’s open unveiling and ensuing feedback would inform her final suggestions, she said.

The ramifications of what Schaffer proposes could have a historic impact. That is, if anything happens at all.

Those attending the five-hour, not-for-attribution session were executives from the Philadelphia Daily News, Philly.com, Philadelphia magazine, WHYY, the Philadelphia Business Journal, the Public School Notebook, Plan Philly, Phawker and other publishers, including the New York Times, in addition to representatives of Temple [one of whom shared his thoughts here] and Rutgers universities, the University of the Arts, the Penn, Knight, Pew and other foundations and nonprofits and supplemented by a handful of other journalism stakeholders. The three co-founders of Technically Philly were present, including myself, who was also there on behalf of NEast Philly.

It was, indeed, as powerful a collective of news gathers as one could find in Philadelphia, and I was honored to be among those included.

Seated on the outside of four long conference tables made into a rectangle, there were moments of conflict surrounded by long periods of skepticism and doubt around the successful partnering of so many disparate groups.

CONVERSATIONS OF THE DAY

Below watch Schaffer begin an overview of her recommendation.

Schaffer highlighted the many possible news gathering partners of Philadelphia (both traditional, independent and new to the role), offered that anything that would be created shouldn’t be for everyone nor should it compete with the daily newspapers. It remained unclear what the next steps would be and who would lead them.

“How to build and house this will be up to all of you,” Schaffer said.

In addition to Schaffer, others spoke about community building, how Chicago and Bay Area news collectives have partnered with the New York Times and why partnering with the city’s creative economies is important.

Fellow Technically Philly co-founder Brian James Kirk addressed the group with his own research on what other metro markets have done by way of online news. See his slides here.

But in many of those cases, big money was put up to create region or metro-wide institutions that, inevitably, competed with some other news gatherer. It was made clear that no one wanted to fund something that would rival Philly.com, the Inquirer or other existing media.

So, perhaps a real concern is how unlikely it may be that a room full of legacy media players could suddenly offer anything innovative in the name of news. With so many competing interests,  the answer may be very unlikely.

The father-son team that founded neighborhood blog Frankford Gazette was present, and son Jim Smiley shared his notes from the meeting, including this:

“Not once did I hear about increasing the voice of the originators of local news. The civics, the cdcs, the community groups. I didn’t hear anything about outreach. I didn’t hear anything about letting them talk. I heard more of letting them continue to talk through journalists. I guess I expected more.”

ONE PITCH ON RECORD

The morning discussions were dominated by the old guard of Philadelphia media. It turned combative at times and was circular for most. At lunch, there were more than three quiet pieces of encouragement tossed Technically Philly’s way to offer something in the way of perspective from Web native, young journalist entrepreneurs.

Schaffer asked that she be the only one quoted on the record in any discussions of the day. The exception offered here is to share the only two thoughts Technically Philly did offer.

After lunch, Schaffer looked to bring in more voices to the conversation. She called on a Temple professor to give a sense of what his students were seeing as their future. Not long after, he chose to deffer to the building’s southwest corner, where I sat with Sean Blanda and Kirk.

Blanda gave something of an impassioned plea.

“I have every reason not to do this,”  he said of building Technically Philly. I’m not quite certain he won’t mind my saying that he got behind on credit card and student loan payments building our targeted site. Since taking a full-time job in B2B media that has him commuting four hours round trip twice a week, he doesn’t sleep much.

He’s supposed to be part of the future, and we get lots of praise for that. That means mostly nothing. We’ve brought in less than $10,000 in revenue since monetizing in October. Understand: we’re quite pleased with that growth for a part-time, un-funded news startup that is less than a year old, but it can’t sustain anyone.

We made very clear what mechanism we think could create the next generation of news: News Inkubator, a business services hub and collaborative newsroom for media startups in Philadelphia.

With great reservations about involving myself in the conversation, I raised my hand and said just that — trying my best to not sound as if I was trying to simply personally gain.

“Everyone here is talking about helping the next generation of journalists, of making certain they are there and trained to cover our communities in future,” I said, paraphrasing to make me seem more coherent. “But we’ve only talked about maintaining, not transcending.”

News can make money online. We can pay people to cover communities, once we rid ourselves of the debts of legacy media. Kirk highlighted a dozen of sites doing just that — and I recently wrote about hyperlocals across the country joining in.

If the William Penn Foundation wants to impact the future of news, they need to mitigate the risks surrounding building that sustainable news product.

They need to fund a vehicle that would encourage other Technically Phillys and NEast Phillys. It doesn’t have to be News Inkubator, but it could be.

If Sean and I ever thought there would be any reception to our words, it was quickly dispelled. After we spoke, the conversation devolved into a handful of others making specific pleas for their own ideas and initiatives, before the session was tabled not long after.

SERENDIPITY

It was as the meeting was coming to close, a handful of participants having already left and only crumbs and plastic plates left from lunch, that something particularly nagging was shared.

It was brought up by a leading foundation executive and then echoed by others.

What is being lost, they said, in the mashup of the Web and our news and the crumbling of print is finding coverage by chance. You went to the newspaper for the Eagles score but were stopped by the public affairs story, they said. Anything that can’t replicate that might not be worth investing in, the foundation executive intoned.

It’s a wonderful power, indeed, of flipping from jump to sidebar to section in the printed newspapers of our past. Serendipity, indeed.

But I take great issue with this assessment that that is lost on the Web. So, too, it seems, did others at the meeting.

Scanning social media — Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and the like — afford me the opportunity to find a wider breadth of news and information than I think I could ever have from print alone.

Navigating the Web by visiting individual sites on a traditional browser from your personal computer is certainly changing. In most early-adopting Web communities, it certainly seems accepted as a given that there’s wonderful serendipity online.

That that was a primary issue — indeed, the closing issue of the day — was a disheartening one for me. It felt then that perhaps those in the controlling roads of mitigating loss in the creation of news innovation aren’t as closely following discussions and trends as I’d hope, at least it didn’t seem so in Philadelphia on that day.

I left without much hope for anything dramatic or truly innovative to happen with any great speed in Philadelphia anytime soon from any outside party represented at the meeting. I left thinking that if my news startup can’t fund my lifestyle now, I ought to find another path because no outside help is coming anytime soon.

Technically Philly will continue building, but we certainly know we are just a very small piece in a much larger ecosystem.

A panel held by Refresh Philly on the Future of Local Politics on the Web at the Comcast Center in Center City Philadelphia Nov. 2, 2009. From left: Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce CEO Rob Wonderling; pa2010.com contributor Benjamin Barnett; Young Philly Politics contributor Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg and myself who moderated. Photo by Sean Blanda

Whether Web technology and social media can have a major impact on local politics in a place like Philadelphia or if they remain secondary tools, became the major topic and a divided one at a panel that served as the November Refresh Philly meeting.

The hour-long panel discussion, which I moderated, was entitled the Future of Local Politics and the Web.

• Panel member Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, a co-founder of progressive policy online forum Young Philly Politics, seemed dogged in his assessment that the Web remains a supplementary tool to traditional campaign field operations.
• Panel member Benjamin Barnett, the micro-blogger for statewide campaign news site pa2010.com spoke about the role the Web could have in boosting the profile and followship of otherwise limited candidates, most notably citywide Republican candidate in heavily Democratic Philadelphia.
• The third panel member Rob Wonderling, the new CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, was careful not to overstate the role the Web can play on a municipal level but split somewhere in the middle by noting its role in championing transparency and responsiveness of government.

While that discussion remained most present during the event, there was plenty more to be had. Below some other take aways, video of the event and questions I didn’t have time to ask.

“You first have to convince people that the election matters and then you’d also have to convince them that you’re a candidate worth choosing over the other guy,” Urevick-Ackelsberg said in dismissing that a Republican candidate, like city controller candidate Al Schmidt who won a perhaps surprising endorsement from the Philadelphia Inquirer without much of a murmur online, could use the Web more aggressively and overtake a machine backing of incumbent Alan Butkovitz.

“But someone like Al Schmidt has no other option,” countered Barnett. He should be cultivating ever voter he can online, in addition to the face-to-face interactions he’s been chasing during civic association meetings all over the city, as I’ve seen in the Northeast.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Wonderling seemed skeptical about the use of the Web to overcome challenges local campaigns face.

*Below, I ask him if a candidate needing to drum up support — like, say, the Philadelphia Republican city controller challenger Al Schmidt example from above — could more heavily rely on the Web to reach more voters.

Below watch a small snippet of Wonderling comparing his use of social media and the Web in his two campaigns — in 2002 and then 2006. “Technology:” Wonderling said, “it is a tool, a communications tool.”

“My 16-year-old son will never buy a TV when he is old enough buy one,” Wonderling added. So campaigns need to find other ways to bring their message to voters of that demographic, he continued.

OTHER QUESTIONS

Despite the platform, the time and what seemed like a genuinely engaged audience, I had to leave aside some questions I wanted to discuss:

• Is the political social media and otherwise Wed-backed movement overblown entirely? Pres. Obama is credited with revolutionizing online campaigning, but he’s also known for a massive, engaged and organized field operations team. Are the two connected?
• How might the 1999 mayoral campaign of Sam Katz — a progressive, business-centric Republican who lost by fewer than 9,000 votes to Democratic black machine candidate John Street — be different in today’s climate of Web tools for promotion and organization?
• Are municipal campaigns ignoring the potential to build their own audience, and bypassing the media, as shown to be powerful nationally by Sarah Palin’s near personal derailing of the health care debate with her “death panels” Facebook note?
• Can the transparency proclivities of the Web overcome the fracture or altogether loss of the city’s trustee media?
• Can the Internet get more people involved in the electoral process?
• Shouldn’t the Web used a great deal more in government and administration if not policy and campaigning? (This is was partially answered, with nods given to the idea that the political establishment in the city doesn’t want to erode its power by unleashing that power.)

MEDIA AND TRANSPARENCY

Below, watch Wonderling give a sense of some value to how the Web might force candidates and their campaigns to be more responsive and attentive to voter reaction online. “It creates an environment, I think, in campaigns in the future where there will be greater transparency,” he said.

Part of Barnett’s answer: “There has to be room for this,” he said of Web-based niche news.

“I don’t think you can replace local media with volunteers,” said Urevick-Ackelsberg.

PBS Mediashift has a timely post on political use of the Web to bypass traditional media.

CRITICISMS OF MODERATION AND CLOSE

I pledged to limit my blathering and let the bright panel do the heavy lifting. While I did that to some extent and tried to sum up points as the conversation wore on before moving on elsewhere — as I tried in the above video — I did find myself expending too many words to ask a question.

After Wonderling speaks in the above video, I ramble for at least 40 seconds before asking Barnett a fairly straight-forward question: is there a comparison to be made between campaign transparency in the future through the Web and a devotion to openness that many tried news-gatherers devote themselves too?

I think the best moderators say, likely, the fewest words, so that’s a big area in which I need to develop.

I was pleased with the conversations that were brought up, but a few topics didn’t make it due to time constraints — we finished by 7:45 p.m. in respect to the pivotal game five of the World Series, which may have done its part to keep the crowd to a modest 35-40 ,out of more than 60 registered.

Here’s to many more events like this in the future and the continued hope we can all learn something and improve our city and our country and our world… or something like that.

Many thanks to Roz Duffy, Refresh Philly, the panelists and the audience.

*All video taken by Sean Blanda.

You missed the national BarCamp for NewsInnovation conference this past Saturday, held at Temple University in North Philadelphia — even though I encouraged you to come.

I sure didn’t. As I posted about the week prior, I was in Annenberg Hall on April 25.

It seemed to be a personification of online communities and conversations I’ve been following only online — like the value of personal branding, which was the focus of the first hour-long session  I attended, how valuable journalism school really is (why it might not be) and why news organizations and journalists need to add value.

I made it to four sessions, spoke at two and helped divvy out the sponsored food during the long day which officially went from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., though I was out of the house before eight a.m. and not home before 11 p.m. (after a bumping after part).

These conferences are structured around creating dialogues and allowing anyone to speak on something important to him, so nobodies like me led sessions next door to ones held by executives, editors and reporters from places like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, GateHouse Media, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly.com, McClatchy News and, likely more than I don’t know about. I mean, gees, the whole growing crew at Publish2, which develops tools for what it calls collaborative journalism, showed up.

See the complete schedule here.

I learned some things, and I’d like to share them.

I was really proud of Sean Blanda, a good friend of mine who organized a major national event. There aren’t a lot of 22-year-olds who could do that, but the state of news industry requires more like him. He also did Philadelphia a great service — getting help from the GPTMC and having all BarCamp volunteers, myself included, wear Phillies hats to show some pride to those visiting outsiders.

That said, here are some broad take aways I had:

• Advertising cannot be king — This was a major point in both of my presentations (for Technically Philly and for NEast Philly) and something I’ve come to strongly believe, but BarCamp was the first time I shared the tenet with such a powerful and knowledgeable crew. The conversations surrounding the future of news organizations seem stuck on recapturing lost advertising revenue. We’re talking about the same amount of advertising dollars in the world, but the Web has brought on a glut of new, more targeted sources to take those advertising dollars. We need to talk about alternative revenue opportunities. This is something I’ll post more about in the future.
• Everyone has valid Web ideas –  We talk a lot about how the Web is democratic, but it was interesting to see the dynamic at BarCamp. Reporters and editors with titles, citizens with blogs, students and communication directors all were engaged in the dialogue on what is good, what is right, what is important for news. The BarCamp format was perfect for this stage of news, where suddenly the most senior news executives have as good a sense of the future as your  neighborhood Twit-head… well at least as near as any industry could be at this point.
• Major news organizations are still important — There was a very real divide between corporate and anti-corporate news heads. Despite some very notable exceptions, the couple hundred attendees were mostly revolutionary anti-establishment types. I believe the future will be full of tiny, community-specific for-profit news sites, but I also think there will be a couple dozen or less larger international, national or broad regional news companies. I think at least some will need to be nonprofits, but the point to be made is that we can’t cast away all the old brands. That’s something  I picked up from a presentation from Steven King, an editor for Web innovation at the Washington Post who had a memorable trip visiting BarCamp outside of the Annenberg building.

Below see what organizer Blanda speak to Jason Kristufek — who deserves credit for really spearheading the news-based BarCamp platform — about the success of the natonal news BarCamp.

Read some thoughts from other people who are smarter than I am:

• BCNIPhilly rocked by Sean Blanda
  
• SwineFlu and the Changing News Ecology by Daniel Bachuber
• News Innovation viewed from Twitter by Amy Gahran
• Why beatblog and why news should be social by Pat Thornton
• Yesterday’s BCNI by Karl Martino
• BCNI Philly ranks #3; brings me “tweeps” by Whitney Rhodes
• Linglestown Gazette: Around lower Paxton with b2 by Bill Bostic
• Summer Plans, UWIRE 100 and BarCamp Philly by Emily Kostic
• BarCamp suggests our situation isnt beyond repair by Howard Weaver
• The Future of News at BCNI Philly by Jean Marie Evelly

An audio component was included in that above piece for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism blog. Someone managed to edit my rambling answers into a brief clip:

Check out all the other coverage people made for BarCamp, or follow the enormous coverage on Twitter by combing through #BCNIPhilly — because even Poynter did.

Sean Blanda (left) and me at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France on Oct. 12, 2008.

I’ve been backpacking Europe.

I returned last week and have been getting out from underneath the transition since then.

Though this is a blog on being a young journalist housed on my professional site, I can’t help but share some of the blogging and podcasting I did on WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com.

My travel buddy Sean Blanda and I didn’t ignore the traditional tools of reporting while traveling.

Indeed, one of the most regular posts we had on our site were foreign perspectives. We interviewed folks we came across on the road – backpackers, vactioners, locals – asking them about their thoughts on Americans, the United States and the world from their view. We got some really interesting material.

In Budapest, we met a young man from Portgual. He was working in the Hungarian capital and, though he was nothing but kind to me, he had his doubts about American values.

Thomas, a Belgian libertarian, told us he is “more American than most Americans.”

I took concepts I knew and made broader conclusions to create fresh, interesting content, like a post on Europe’s obsession with graffiti, a Philadelphia development.

But, the new media practice was constant, too. While both Sean and I regularly blog, it was the first time it was my “job.” So you’re damn right I took seriously writing search-friendly heds, like: “What documents Americans need to travel in Europe.”

We developed social networking accounts – on Facebook, MySpace, Youtube and elsewhere. I took photos and video, edited them both and used my digital imaging interests, from beautiful photographs to simple blog-post header images.

All this was done on the road. We were never anywhere more than a few days and we didn’t have access to all the tools we wanted. We had simple equipment, little time, and limited Internet. A challenge indeed.

Set aside the video, photo and image editing I did, our podcast involved actually being in front of a camera. No small feat and certainly not one I claim to have done particularly well. But, in this age of trying stuff out, I tried stuff out.

See all our podcast episodes here, and all the video we posted on our blog here.

Check out our last episode abroad below – split in two parts.

Part One

Part Two

There is certainly ample room to grow, but I was excited about all we did that I can clearly see have professional implications, with a newspaper or a nonprofit or the communications department of a company.

So, I’ve set up a travel blog and podcast. Couple that with my other interests and experiences and someone really ought to hire me for a job I actually want – preferably in Philadelphia, the best city in the world.

Four months ago I graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia.

I was honored enough to be named student commencement speaker. Read text of the speech here.

Only now have I gotten video of my speech online. Have a watch below.

Alumnus and Board of Trustees member Bill Cosby spoke also, after a four year hiatus from Temple commencements – after more than 20 years as the school’s featured speaker. Former University President Peter Liacouras first brought him into the fold, sexual harassment allegations pushed him out, and – I like to think - a commentary piece written by my friend Sean Blanda brought him back. He makes sure to get a laugh at my expense, watch that.

[Error]

I submitted to Newsweek a piece on meeting and warming up the crowd for the Cos – it was rejected, but why shouldn’t I force you to read it, too?

Bill Cosby told me I shouldn’t worry. No one was going to remember anything I said anyway.

In May, I graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia and was honored to address my peers and their families as our student commencement speaker. For my portion, I urged Temple graduates of 2008, in addition to those of the past and those yet to come, to stand by our obligation to leveraging our intellectual capital in the communities that surround the university’s Main Campus in central North Philadelphia.

Temple’s gift is that it is surrounded by neighborhoods that aren’t as near to any other university as large and as influential. I hope my fellow graduates and I remember and forever appreciate that, I said.

Cosby – the seminal 20th-century entertainment icon turned controversial race commentator – addressed my fellow graduates after I did.

“I told Wink,” Cosby said to nearly 10,000 new-alumni and family members. “Wink, don’t give that speech. Nobody’s going to remember a thing you said, Wink.”

He told me something similar before we went on.

“Nobody will even be listening,” he assured me. Read the rest here.

Indeed, the university’s commencement was great – better than my individual College of Liberal Arts event - not only because of Cosby or even the privilege of addressing my fellow graduates, but being in our school’s basketball stadium – the Liacouras Center – with 8,000 people, and all the excitement that Temple graduations have come to represent.

A great way to end a memorable and important time of my life.

In December 2007, Easton police Chief Larry Palmer, left, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, center, and Capt. David Ryan are shown during a late afternoon news conference. (Courtesy PennLive)

KYW News radio Harrisburg bureau chief Tony Romeo kindly agreed to show me the rough ropes of radio reporting and production on Monday. Below hear my report – with his lede – and the script – with much credit to Tony.

The Democratic candidate for Attorney General today challenged the way his incumbent opponent has handled the so-called “Bonusgate” investigation of the Pennsylvania legislature. Christopher Wink reports…

[CLIP] “I think that this investigation has been botched from the beginning.”

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli told the Pennsylvania Press Club that Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett ruined any chance at a thorough investigation of House and Senate lawmakers of both parties. Morganelli criticized Corbett for seizing potential evidence from House Democrats without doing the same for other caucuses.

[CLIP] “And I know I go into house number one and take out the boxes and the computers, and tell houses number two, three and four ‘I’ll be back 18 months later for your evidence,’ it’s not going to be there.”

The Corbett camp dismisses Morganell’s claims. A campaign spokesman says Morganelli doesn’t know the details of the ongoing investigation. Corbett has maintained that he is investigating all four legislative caucuses, but he has so far has only charged House Democratic insiders.

See how Tony handled it. Thanks again to Tony Romeo – it’s not a stage name, check this 1995 piece he wrote for City Paper on the matter.

Photo courtesy PennLive.com.

Details of the long-rumored “Bonusgate” scandal dropped this afternoon. I helped a bit with the reporting for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story written by Dennis Roddy and was charged with cutting some audio for the paper’s Web site.

Hear Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett at his 2 P.M. news conference…

HARRISBURG — Attorney General Tom Corbett today filed charges against a dozen figures in the payroll bonus scandal, including former House Democratic Whip Michael Veon and current state Rep. Sean Ramaley.

Reports by two grand juries — one in Pittsburgh and another sitting here — laid out an array of accusations, including a conspiracy to deliver more than $1 million in state-paid bonuses to House employees who worked on political campaigns. Mr. Ramaley, 33, D-Economy, was accused of working full-time on his 2004 House campaign in Beaver County while drawing a taxpayer salary as a member of Mr. Veon’s staff.

…

Continue reading on Post-Gazete.com. More audio to follow.

Photo by Dennis Roddy, courtesy of the Post-Gazette.