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Archive for the 'MSM' Category

Quit Speculating And Poll It, Already

Published by Not Paul Begala on October 5, 2006 in Barack Obama, Democrats, Guest Bloggers, MSM, National Politics, Polling and White House '08. 2 Comments

[We're not sure if this will become a recurring feature at Blog P.I., but our mystery correspondent/Dem strategist Not Paul Begala returns this morning with another new post. His posts will appear under his own byline from here on out, assuming there is a "here on out."]

The Washington D.C. crowd loves absolutely nothing more than speculation. It’s like heroin to political reporters, staffers, big party donors and anyone who has a stake in presidential politics. You just don’t feel right in the head until you’ve had your next fix, or in this case, heard the political buzz. And we should lump the political blogosphere into this group, as they display many of the same qualities of the DC crowd in following the big dance. They rumormonger, traffic in gossip and meticulously navel gaze about every politician’s move that has even a whiff of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Michigan/Nevada — depending if you’re a Republican or Democrat — coming off it.

And there is always, always someone who “should get in” or “has a chance now” that hasn’t entered the fray. There’s always somebody who isn’t in that the media wants in because frankly, new people in the contest is the very definition of news. Anyone running already is old news.

Enter the 2008 fascination with Sen. Barack Obama. Jon Alter is the latest to emerge with the inside news about a potential Obama run. He’s been on Oprah, he has a book, he helps Democrats, he raises money for his Senate account instead of the PAC (check out Claire McCaskill’s statement last week), blah, blah, blah.

You want to make some real news instead of just wild speculation and this weak “oh, I heard this” crap you guys are doing now? Put your money where your mouth is. Poll it! Because let’s face it, the only reason you process-obsessed hacks really do polls is to make news).

ARG, Quinnipiac, Zogby, Hotline-Diageo, Claremont-McKenna you listening? Add the damn question to the mix. Find out how many people in NH and Iowa know his name, find out if he beats any of the big dogs in the Dem primaries like Clinton, Edwards, Gore or Kerry.

You are notorious for polling ridiculousness like Bloomberg for President, so poll Obama and kick this feeding frenzy up a notch. It certainly can’t hurt his book sales any.

Revisiting The YouTube Election

Published by William Beutler on August 20, 2006 in Blogging Officials, Campaigns, George Allen, Lamont v. Lieberman, MSM and YouTube. 1 Comment

I was a bit grumpy when Slate’s John Dickerson covered the rising prominence of YouTube in political campaigns as if he was the first person to think of it, but now that it’s Ryan Lizza’s turn to remark upon same for the New York Times, I think it’s time to accept that it’s conventional wisdom already (fast, maybe even faster than YouTube’s own meteoric rise). After all, the Times is nothing if not a lagging indicator.

Lizza doesn’t add a whole lot to the discussion, though he does wring his hands in a manner of which previous commentators have declined:

Some political analysts say that YouTube could force candidates to stop being so artificial, since they know their true personalities will come out anyway. “It will favor a kind of authenticity and directness and honesty that is frankly going to be good,” said Carter Eskew, a media consultant who worked for Senator Lieberman’s primary campaign. “People will say what they really think rather than what they think people want to hear.” But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.

I don’t know the answer to this question; my fallback response is: Some of both. More interesting, I think, is why the two consultants split on the question. Some might guess that Democrats are quicker to embrace new campaign techniques whereas Republicans are slower to deem them necessary, and there may be some truth to that. The GOP had no GOTV strategy to speak of until 2002, although they’ve more than caught up since.

But I think it has less to do with party ideology than recent party (or factional) fortunes, and you’re more likely to embrace (and talk up) a new technology if you need it to deliver for you. In 2004, Dowd helped fend off an unprecedented new media assault on President Bush, so he’s got all the more reason to downplay its positive effects. But there’s also iconoclasts like John McCain, who face uphill battles inside the Republican party, and as of late has been courting conservative online activists to that end.

What interesting things Lizza does have to say about YouTube’s impact is arguably just as true about mere text-based blogging:

These days journalists are concerned not just about being cut out, but about being part of the show. Reporters often suffer the wrath of bloggers in the same way politicians do. At a recent conference of political bloggers in Las Vegas, reporters more than once reminded one another to be discreet in their conversations because anything overheard was fair game for bloggers to post. Now, as the campaign trail turns into a 24-hour live set, members of the press corps may find themselves starring on YouTube. “At least one big-time journalist will have their career or life ruined because some element of their behavior that was heretofore private will be exposed publicly,” predicted a senior adviser to a potential 2008 presidential candidate.

If you think YouTube is necessary for that, well, tell that to Dan Rather.

And Lizza’s “to be sure” section is particularly weak:

Then again, YouTube’s impact on politics may be exaggerated. For one, the site’s users are generally young and not highly engaged politically. “Most social networking sites cater to younger audiences, 18 to 24,” says Michael Bassik, vice president of Internet advertising at MSHC Partners, which advises candidates on media strategies. “For the most part, it’s not political conversations taking place there.” And maybe the Allen video wasn’t all that shocking after all. Jeff Jarvis, author of the BuzzMachine blog and an Internet consultant to The New York Times Company, doesn’t think all that much has changed. “Is it news that politicians say stupid things?” he asks. “Of course not.”

As for the former point, arguing that just because political videos don’t draw the same traffic as, say, that especially compelling video where a young woman took one picture of herself each day for three years is a straw man if I’ve ever seen one (and I suspect Lizza has quoted Bassik out of context). All such a video has to do is be “out there,” and YouTube undoubtedly accomplishes that.

As for the latter, well, tell that to Senator Allen.

P.S. Ohio’s Psychobilly Democrat makes a similar argument to that of my penultimate paragraph, noting: “The networked natured of blogs, that one links to another’s content, makes the blunders more accessible to more people across greater ranges of space.” To which I would add, it’s more evidence that all politics is national.

English 101

Published by William Beutler on July 26, 2006 in Democrats, Language and MSM. 3 Comments

Via Skippy, this AP report by Susan Haigh leads me to wonder if Eric Alterman wasn’t onto something:

Some Democrats, however, said privately Monday that a Lamont primary win could help the other Democrat candidates. They speculated that Lamont could help drive turnout and enthusiasm on Election Day should he defeat Lieberman on Aug. 8.

Since when did the AP start using the noun “Democrat” for the adjective “Democratic”?

Spit And Vinegar

Published by William Beutler on July 24, 2006 in Al Gore, MSM and Misquotations. 1 Comment

In Sunday’s Washington Post, writer Michael Grunwald has a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek column suggesting that the numerous Democratic 2008 hopefuls consider Al Gore a potential running mate. In doing so, he invokes one of the most famous put-downs* of the vice presidency:

John Nance Garner famously said that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit, and for Garner (who served under FDR) it probably wasn’t.

The problem is, this isn’t what Garner said. I can’t prove this as the moment, as Bartleby.com is still using the 1919 edition of Bartlett’s Quotations. But angry letter-writers to both the LA Weekly and Salon.com agree with me, and Google confirms (Exhibit A, Exhibit B) that the prevailing version is “a bucket of warm piss.” I mean, think about it for a second: Who would have the time to fill a whole bucket with spit?

This was hardly the first time I’ve seen Garner misquoted, and I decided to ask Grunwald himself if this was an editor’s call or his own decision. He got back to me in short order:

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know the original quote was “warm piss.” I certainly would have gone for the accurate version if I had, although as you undoubtedly know, “warm spit” is how the quotation has come down through the ages, probably because (according to my quick google search) the reporters who wrote about it at the time all used the euphemism.

He’s certainly right about that, and to this day some newspapers try to keep cursing at least out of their print editions, even when the word is an integral part of the story. The New York Times struggled with President Bush’s recent reference to an even less savory human excretion — not the first time a mic has caught his mild expletives, either — while the Post let the president speak for himself. As in Garner’s day, the mass media still worries about offending the masses’ sensibilities.

Grunwald also isn’t the only knowledgable person to get this quote wrong. TCU history professor Michael L. Collins has passed the saying along as “a quart of warm piss.” Earlier this year Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (the Post’s sister publication) pointed out the “piss” vs. “spit” discrepancy — apparently Garner wasn’t pleased with the bowdlerized version — but somehow got “bucket” mixed up with “pitcher.”

How serious is this, really? Well, the quote is funnier in its original incarnation, and depicts Garner’s orneriness more accurately. To be sure, the euphemism doesn’t withhold any significant facts, but for those who do know the actual quote, it probably does hurt a newspaper’s reputation, or that of the reporter, to see “spit” in print.

Absent the explanation — which is why I asked Grunwald first — it sounds like the Post is keeping an inconvenient truth (ba dum) from its readers. It may be wrong to suggest that a paper which will hide the ugly truth on small things will also hide the truth about larger things; I don’t think it necessarily follows, certainly not as a matter of logic — but that doesn’t mean people won’t think it. It’s a small thing, but accuracy is still the best policy.

The Post should run a correction, but they’ll probably judge this below the threshhold of what matters. After all, the “spit” quote has a history of its own. What the Post really should have done is make comments available on political stories already.

*The other, and my personal favorite, is from Sen. Daniel Webster, who rejected Zachary Taylor’s offer to run with him (the two had both sought the Whig nomination) in 1848, saying:

I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.

Taylor went on to win the election, but died soon after, which would have made Webster president anyway. Instead we got Millard Fillmore.

How Many Divisons Has Bill Keller?

Published by Olly Ruff on July 17, 2006 in Blogs vs. MSM and MSM. 0 Comments

Some controversy over the New York Times publishing photographs of Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters in Iraq, presumably taken by someone who had gotten close enough to, in principle, kill them instead. Actually, I’m not sure if “controversy” is the word. Is it controversial these days to assert that the NYT sides with terrorists? It must have been so, at one point in the dim past, but now it’s more or less a truism. (Or at least a very resilient meme.)

Part of the objection this time seems to be to NYT Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally using the term “incredible courage” to describe a person whose job involves running around a war zone, attempting to take pictures of the war while it is happening. Fair enough. But mostly this is a prime example of the good-natured visceral attacks the NYT now receives on an almost-daily basis, and that have been going on long enough to become a sort of rhetorical five-finger exercise for righty bloggers. Beginning with a disagreement over the paper’s editorial direction, it only takes a hop and a skip to end up speculating along these lines:

If NYT editors had learned of the 9/11 plot beforehand, would they have warned the government? Or would they have set up videocameras to get the best possible shot of the first plane hitting the tower? An outrageous question? I think not. In light of this photograph, it seems like a perfectly sensible question.

It’s hard to know exactly how to respond to that, except to say that this is a question that seems quite a considerable distance away from “perfectly sensible.” However, in the blogs-versus-MSM narrative, the one thing that’s better than calling the Big Media dinosaurs a bunch of bought-out corporate mouthpieces is accusing them of high treason.

You Heard It Here In The 12th Comment

Published by William Beutler on July 13, 2006 in Comment Sections and MSM. 1 Comment

Jim Brady and the Washington Post’s online arm have been out in front of its rivals and most newspapers across the country when it comes to engaging the blogs, teaming up with David Sifry’s Technorati 11 months ago to deliver blogospheric commentaries on their own stories on their own site. Now, even after the blog-fueled Deborah Howell and Ben Domenech debacles — both of which brought hundreds, if not thousands of unwanted e-mails from enraged progressives — Brady & Co. are pushing forward with a plan to bring even more comments to the virtual pages of WashingtonPost.com. E&P reports:

Washingtonpost.com, taking a bold step, has enabled user comments on many of its stories for over a month now — and the move has been deemed a success by the site’s editors. But soon the feature will be put to the test as it is extended to every article on the site, including those in the Politics, World and Nation sections. The comments feature initially debuted in the Sports section, with registered users allowed to post their own commentary directly below individual stories and respond to one another, as on blogs. Soon, the paper opened up the Metro and Style sections to comments as well, in addition to several weekly sections.

At the risk of violating Wolcott’s Law, I wrote at the time of the Howell controversy that the Post could cut down on flippant, angry comments by instituting comment registration. Many blogs do it, and it’s less cumbersome than requiring moderation of all comments. The Post has made a wise decision here. And they’ve implemented further safeguards:

A profanity filter automatically removes the more obvious abuses of the commenting function, but editors are still needed to keep users from posting personal attacks against the journalists and other commenters. Brady says that a feature where readers can flag abusive comments posted by others acts like a tip sheet for the staffers monitoring the site.

The filter may be a lost cause, unless they’re prepared to add hundreds of alternate spellings (and mastered 1337speak to boot). But the next sentence underscores why this experiment will surely prove valuable:

So far, comments have been both “high-level” and on-topic, says Brady, and in many cases the newspaper’s journalists have, in fact, learned more about issues based on reader comments.

That admission should bring a tear to the eye of anyone who has pounded the keyboard in frustration over the MSM’s frequently high-handed approach to bloggers.

While the New York Times hides its could-be-influential Opinionator blog behind a firewall and the Los Angeles Times has retreated in wake of its Wikitorial and Michael Hitzlik fiascos, the Post continues to solidify its place, as Jay Rosen proposed, that it is the best newspaper in the country.

(For the origin of this post’s header, check out the sidebar here.)

It’s Short for “Web Log”

Published by William Beutler on July 10, 2006 in MSM. 4 Comments

Is about the only thing missing from CBS News’ mind-numbing writeup of a presumably mind-numbing “report” by tech correspondent David Pogue:

A blog is like a diary or a daily opinion column that you post on the Internet for all to see and comment on. Blogging has become incredibly popular in the last couple of years, because it’s easy to do, it’s free and it’s a great way to leave your little stamp on the Internet, says CBS Sunday Morning contributor David Pogue.

One presumes it was written this way not because Pogue’s lips move when he reads, but because some significant percentage of the U.S. public doesn’t know what a blog is (particularly the ones watching network television).

Pogue gets some credit for quoting Meg Hourihan, one of the creators of the revolutionary Blogger software — and then loses most of it by quoting Ana Marie Cox, who is no longer a blogger (well, not that anybody knows about) but nevertheless remains the Larry Sabato of the blogosphere (perhaps more charitably, the Norm Ornstein). When there’s nobody else to quote, there’s always that girl everyone still calls Wonkette.

What this all means is that we are probably in for another couple years of stories like the one above. Maybe the MSM will collapse before these stories end, but probably not. And while they’re at it, I guess they might as well go ahead and keep pointing out what “blog” is short for.