From Salzman’s blog:

As The Denver Post’s Dean Singleton said on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show last week, McInnis is still a plagiarist, even if the plagiarism was executed by his assistant Rolly Fischer. This conforms with the view of Prof. Bob Steele, a journalism ethics guru, who pointed out last year that even if text is given freely to a writer, word-for-word use of it still constitutes plagiarism. And in McInnis’ case, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs did not authorize McInnis to use his words.

Neither has McInnis been cleared of misrepresenting his water-musings articles to the Hasan Family Foundation, which he described as “original,” leaving him open to charges of fraud. Seeme Hasan acknowledged on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show that contrary to what the Foundation stated last year, McInnis did inform her, on a fax cover sheet, that he had hired an assistant to work on the water project. But Hasan says the assistant could have been answering the phones, for all she know. She did not know he would be writing the water musings, and she would not have allowed this had she known, she told KHOW.

It was a radio interview with Rick Wagner that seems to have gotten Salzman riled up on the subject. See a transcript of that radio interview here.

Salzman has written a number of books on the media and was the Rocky Mountain News’ media critic for several years.

[Colorado Statesman]: Were you surprised by [Bennet's] selection?

[Dean Singleton]: Long before Ken Salazar decided to leave the Senate and go to the Cabinet, the governor privately discussed with me the candidates he would consider appointing, and Michael was at the top of his list early on. So I really wasn’t surprised.

I thought that the better choice would have been (Denver Mayor John) Hickenlooper — for a lot of reasons.

And both I and The Denver Post supported an appointment of Hickenlooper. I know a lot of people did, and so I kind of thought the governor, if he listened to enough people, would probably pick Hickenlooper.

But when he did pick Bennet, I wasn’t surprised because he had had him at the top of his list the first time he and I discussed it, which was even before Ken decided for sure whether to take the Interior job.

Among myriad other tidbits in the lengthy interview, Singleton says he urged Republican U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard to run for a third term last year, despite the Post having endorsed his opponent in 2002.

And there will be zoned editions of the Post, Singleton says:

CS: What about The Post moving more towards covering the suburban areas?

DS: The Post will have zoned editions again. Zoned editions are on the drawing board.[...]

Now that we’re down to one newspaper instead of two, it’s inevitable that we will probably go to do some daily zoning, as well.

It was difficult to do daily zoning when there were two newspapers, because of the cost. If you put out a zone in the geographic area of both The Post and The Rocky, you had to generate copy for both. Now it’s just The Post, so it’s inevitable that we’ll do some zoning.

We’ve been talking to advertisers about it, so it’s probably leaked out.

It won’t be like Your Hub, which has 40 zones. I can see four zones, so that we can do a better job of covering the news and, more importantly, a better job of targeting advertising. We realized our need to zone before, but we couldn’t do it with two newspapers. We can do it with one.

Read the entire, lengthy interview for Singleton’s thoughts on future layoffs at the Post (none planned, doesn’t mean it won’t happen), whether Ritter is a strong leader (mixed bag) and whether he reads news online (not much). Special bonus: a lovely drawing of the media boss by state GOP aide Matt Milner.

“I am hearing that the economy and health care are the big issues,” Singleton told Editor and Publisher on a phone call from his Granby ranch.

Singleton, a longtime supporter of the Bush family, says he remains personally undecided, a first for him. “I don’t ever remember being undecided before. I have always leaned toward one of them early on,” he says. “I am having trouble with this one.” He favored Hillary Clinton over Obama during the Democratic primaries.

The media mogul is chairman of the Associated Press and owns 54 daily newspapers across the country, including the Denver Post, the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, The Detroit News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Los Angeles Daily News and Salt Lake Tribune.

Singleton sits on the editorial board of his Denver and Salt Lake properties, but said his preference doesn’t always influence their endorsements, pointing to a 2000 Al Gore nod from the Denver Post. Both newspapers endorsed George Bush in 2004, “with reservations, particularly on the war,” Singleton said.

“I have not been to an editorial meeting where they have discussed it,” he said of both papers. “I don’t have strong feelings [about either candidate] this year. I would really like to see a debate first. There are a lot of people who don’t believe either candidate is the preferred candidate.”

He told E&P the Post plans to unveil its endorsement Oct. 19.

The Ritter editorial was decidedly more angry and personal in tone than the paper’s call to settle the disputed 2000 presidential election and a 2005 call to temporarily suspend state tax restrictions and rescue the state’s economy  by passing Referendum C.

This time, Singleton ordered up an editorial that referred to the governor as “Jimmy Hoffa,” “a toady for labor bosses” and “a bag man for unions.”

“The language used and the placement demonstrate a certain hysteria that stems from Mr. Singleton’s personal dislike of organized labor,” Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said Sunday. “I think the degree of the personal attacks is a bit surprising for a newspaper of this caliber. To stoop to this level is unbecoming.”

Dreyer said the governor “extended the courtesy” of telling Singleton and Post Editorial Page Editor Dan Haley about the executive order the day before it was issued last Friday.

“It was apparent two minutes into the conversation that Mr. Singleton was not happy,” Dreyer said.

Singleton did not return an emailed request for comment Sunday. In an email, Post Editor Greg Moore said, “I don’t have anything to do with editorials.” Moore declined to discuss the decision to put the editorial on the front page, which is almost always reserved for news.

In an interview Sunday, Haley said he wrote the editorial. He called the decision to do so “a collaborative decision between the publisher and myself.” Singleton serves as the Post’s publisher and apparently decided to put the editorial on the front page.

“The tone reflects how serious his (Ritter’s) decision is,” Haley said. “We think he is in danger of losing (support of) the business community. The business community is vital to his agenda. We think this is a turning point in his administration. We didn’t like the content of the executive order, and we didn’t like how it was done.”

Ritter released his executive order on Friday afternoon via emails sent to reporters.

Haley said the editorial was meant to “initiate some public dialogue.”

Some of that dialogue could be about the editorial’s personal shots rather than unions.

A source inside the Post newsroom said that most staff members were not aware of the tenor of Sunday’s editorial and only learned of its placement late Friday afternoon.

“I didn’t have any conversations with anyone about it,” said one staffer who asked to remain anonymous. “I heard Greg tell some people it was going on the front page. All I knew was Dean was pissed off. So pissed off that he put an editorial on the front page. Who does he think he is – Hearst?”

The language in the editorial was so raw that the staffer predicted some distress among people in the newsroom.

“You can be opposed to what the governor does,” he said. “But this name-calling stuff is embarrassing.”

Dreyer agreed that the language was not as professional as an editorial that opposed the governor’s order in the Post’s rival, the Rocky Mountain News.

“It’s fair to criticize the plan and the governor,” Dreyer said.

But, he added, there are ways to disagree without getting personal.

Dreyer took issue not only with the name-calling in the editorial, but with what he said were misrepresentations of fact. The executive order will not, as the editorial states, “drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees.”

The order requires no one to join a union, Dreyer said. It compels no one to pay union dues. The order does not allow workers who choose to join unions to strike. Nor does it let those in unions have binding arbitration of disagreements with the state.

“This is about improving the delivery of services to the public,” Dreyer said.

Critics counter that it is payback to unions by Ritter for having vetoed a law during the last session of the General Assembly that would have made it easy to establish unions in the state.

Singleton’s visceral reaction did not surprise journalism scholar John McManus.

McManus, an author and professor, runs a San Francisco-area media watchdog group called GradetheNews.org. McManus says Singleton’s hatred of unions revealed itself in his handling of a series of newspapers he bought recently in the Bay Area.

“He established something called the Alameda News Group for the small papers he owned,” McManus said. “ANG papers were unionized.”

When Singleton purchased the much larger Contra Costa Times, McManus said, Singleton merged the nonunionized Times staff with the ANG to form the East Bay Area News Group.

“Then,” McManus explained, Singleton said, “We now have more nonunion than union employees. So we will no longer negotiate with the union because it doesn’t represent a majority of workers.”

That tactic seems to have worked, McManus said.

Whether Singleton’s angry front-page editorial will succeed in taking down Ritter is another matter.

  “The governor is an even-keeled, thick-skinned, moderate person,” Dreyer said. “We’re going to focus on what this plan truly is and what it does and doesn’t do.”