Comments (0) Best Political Blog - 2008

FaceTheState.com

It seems like just yesterday that Brad Jones was pissing off young liberals at the University of Colorado at Boulder as the snot-nosed president of the College Republicans. But just look at him now: all grown up into the snot-nosed twenty-something managing editor/owner/spokesman/shadowy frontman behind FaceTheState.com. What was launched exactly one year ago as a Colorado-centric news aggregation site has expanded into a clearinghouse for right-of-the-aisle editorials, news items and, increasingly, actual investigative reports. Jones's overtures into an area long the sacred province of journalists has rankled longtime reporters, liberals and legislators, who point out his work as a Republican consultant and question the backgrounds of his unnamed staff of writers. But like it or not, no one can deny the website's headline-grabbing successes, from revealing Democratic representative Mike Merrifield's "e-mail from hell," to breaking news of Governor Bill Ritter's discussions with union reps about a statewide collective-bargaining order, to scooping other media outlets with the revelation that Democrat Michael Garcia had exposed his junk to a female lobbyist. The representative resigned soon after — but Jones isn't about to go away as easily.