Sink $50 million of Ohio’s money into a rare-coin fund operated by a major campaign contributor connected to top state politicians and the White House, add a few missing coins, and you’ve got a story made for the “blogs” — the thousands of cyber journals available online for all to see.

Mix in cheap vacations for the governor’s staff, convicted felons, and finally the news that up to $12 million of the state’s coin money is missing. Suddenly, it’s a national story, capturing headlines in hundreds of newspapers, including the front page of the New York Times.

In the days after The Blade first reported on April 3 that the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation had given prominent Toledo-area Republican fund-raiser Tom Noe $50 million to invest in rare coins, hundreds of online “bloggers” began hashing out the story in cyberspace, while coin enthusiast message boards considered the ramifications to the popular hobby.

“It was really the absurdity of the entire situation that drew me to the coin scandal,” said a Columbus blogger who uses the pen name, The Ticked Off Ohioan, in an e-mail to The Blade. “It’s mind-boggling that people in our state government actually approved an initiative to invest public money in something as risky as rare coins.”

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