The North Decoder
|  Video
|
| Amanda Tetlak |
| 11/6/2009 |
 |
| This week we`ve been showcasing North Dakota innovators in health, technology, art, and agriculture. Chad Nodland is an attorney by trade, but he spends a couple of hours a day maintaining his blog the North Decoder. Nodland says it all began about four years ago after long-time South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle was ousted from Congress. Nodland says his opponent John Thune paid bloggers thousands of dollars to do research and writing. "I had some concern about some North Dakota politicians possibly being subjected to the same thing and so me and a couple other people got together and decided to do something," says Nodland. It may have started as a way to play defense to stop what Nodland says were unfair attacks against progressive-leaning North Dakota politicians. But it`s since evolved into much more. A couple years ago, Nodland spent time investigating misspending in the WSI office, and we all know how that turned out. "So I went up and read their file and got copies of the interesting stuff in there and I started writing about it," Nodland says. Now, Nodland is taking up another project, possible misspending by the Department of Commerce. Once again, he`s made copies of audits and has made some interesting discoveries. "Payroll problems where it looks like the commerce department is giving money to its employees that it shouldn`t be giving them," he says. "For example, reimbursing them for cellphone expenses they never actually incur." Nodland says what he loves the most about his blog is the feedback he gets, even though it`s not always pleasant. "Some people hate it and some people love it," he says. "Some people think that everything I write is garbage and some people think it`s golden." He says he must be somewhere in the middle. Nodland says another thing he likes about blogging is not having a word, or time limit like in mainstream media. You can visit Nodland`s blog at http://www.northdecoder.com. |
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