The Washington Post busts the Madison County Record.

The Madison County Record, an Illinois weekly newspaper launched in September that bills itself as the county’s legal journal, reports on one subject: the state courts in southern Illinois. A recent front page carried an assortment of stories about lawsuits against businesses. […]

Nowhere was it reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce created the Record as a weapon in its multimillion-dollar campaign against lawyers who file those kinds of suits.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce created the Madison County Record.

“We wanted to educate [the people] that their county is the laughingstock of the country” because of the large number of lawsuits filed there, said Stanton D. Anderson, chief legal officer for the chamber, which is a part owner of the Record. […]

Through a common acquaintance, Anderson met Brian Timpone, 32, co-owner of a small chain of community newspapers in Illinois. Over the summer, Timpone agreed to become the Record’s publisher with the chamber as his silent benefactor. The chamber has poured about $200,000 into the 6,000-circulation broadsheet and expects to invest more, Anderson said.

The chamber hopes the Record’s influence will spread beyond Madison County and help push tort reform nationally. Anderson distributes the Record to interested companies and business trade associations. Timpone sells subscriptions to law firms and companies across the nation — some of which have cases pending in the county.

$200,000 and the Chamber is only part-owner? Not a bad gig if you can get it. My hat’s off to Timpone

Seriously, I remember the days when the Chicago Federation of Labor owned a popular music station, WCFL. But the Chicago Fed never hid the fact that it owned “Super CFL.” Its slogan, “The Voice of Labor,” was repeated throughout the day and they did some labor-oriented programming (mostly at times when nobody was listening).

Timpone said the chamber doesn’t dictate the paper’s news content and he defends the stories he runs as genuine news. He said he chose not to divulge the Record’s connection to the chamber in print because “I was afraid we’d be prejudged. I thought, ‘Let people judge us by our actions.’

Actually, the paper isn’t too bad, although its bias is pretty clear in editorial comments and story choices.

Interestingly enough, the Post’s article hasn’t been picked up by any papers in Illinois that I could find , although Reason has an Op-Ed up.