PressThink: Weekend Update: Blogging the DNC

Weekend Update: Blogging the DNC

Wherein the author shows he can blog like a normal person-- again. I will update this post with stuff I find until my departure for Boston Sunday afternoon. So check back from time to time. (Newest entries on top.)

Rebecca Blood of Rebecca’s Pocket, who has written authoritatively on blogging, decided to volunteer at the convention instead of seeking bloggers credentials. But she has posted an extremely useful list of tips and strategies for bloggers, which I recommend. Among the highlights are:

Make friends with a DNC media liason
Make friends with an experienced journalist
Observe the pros and watch what they do
Choose the role you will play and play to your strengths

And more. My favorite part is this:

It may turn out that the bloggers are completely in over their heads—but even if that turns out to be true, this will by no means have been a failure. If it takes the non-professionals 2 conventions (or 12) to figure out their most effective role, so what? Political parties and the media have been symbiotically working out their dance steps for decades. The only way weblogs can fail in covering the conventions is if they fall into the same dance themselves.

On the cusp: CNN in its online report about blogging: “Just as TV coverage of the presidential race gained its power with the televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, Internet blogging seems to be coming into its own in 2004.” Markos of Daily Kos and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit are quoted.

Talk to the Desk: As promised, although a little late, Campaign Desk, the Columbia Journalism Review product, has added a comment feature. Tom Lang and Brian Montopoli from the Desk will be reporting on the convention.

Keeping Watching on the Bloggers: The disinvited Hyperlincoln is nonetheless keeping a good updated list of speakers and invited bloggers: “dedicated to the best in blogging at the 2004 Democratic Convention… keeping you abreast of the best of the Convention blogging information as it comes in.” Also worth consulting is Feedster’s special convention aggregator. And of course there’s Technorati’s special convention page, which hasn’t started yet.

From the Ooze to the News: “Trash-mouthed, opinionated, relentless political bloggers are bound for both this week’s Democratic convention,” says Marlon Manuel in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: (July 23, reg. req.)

Political blogs have crawled from the Web’s primordial ooze, evolving into a mutant strain of journalism. In the freewheeling online world, bloggers — often partisans — can spin the news till they get vertigo, free from the clutches of (a) an editor and (b) the truth.
But at the Democratic National Convention starting Monday in Boston, bloggers won’t be crashing the party. They’re invited. They’ll breakfast with delegates in the morning and jostle with Dan Rather for news the rest of the day..

Got the Message? “During the convention, Kerry hopes to move beyond his Senate voting record to define himself as a husband, father, combat veteran, tough prosecutor, national security expert, outdoorsman and man of faith, according to a campaign message document.” Nedra Pickler, AP, July 23.

Note how that construction “define himself as…” splits the public in two: those who are reading the AP account and get the inside scoop on the Kerry machine’s self-definition plan, and those outside the scoop at whom the plan is aimed, who are supposed to conclude: “oh, so that’s who he is: husband, father, combat veteran….” The split public has become so routine in political reporting that I don’t think journalists even know they do it.

“He’s got to show that….” I was watching Washington Week Friday night, which this week was broadcast from the Institute of Politics at Harvard. Gwen Ifill, the host; Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Richard Berke of the New York Times and Susan Feeney of NPR, were giving a “convention preview.” Mostly what they meant by this is taking turns at answering the question: what does Kerry have to do at this convention to come out with a win?

I listened to each of them make their points, which basically meant naming some areas where polls showed soft support, and then turning that into something Kerry “has to do” at the convention. “He’s has to show that…” “He’s got to appeal to…” “He has to get over the hump with…” It’s a discourse anyone who follows politics will recognize.

Now if four political consultants were sitting around having a conversation about the upcoming convention, they would ask the same kind of question and give the same kind of answers, and cite the same kind of polls, and strike the same tone. To me there is something strange—and very screwed up— about that. And it was accompanied by a strange emotion: I was embarrassed for Harvard that it would host such a discussion, bring students to it, and call it “talking politics.” It isn’t politics. It is just technique.

Self-credentialed: Journalist and blogegr Adele M. Stan, who was invited and then disinvited, decided she is going to the convention anyway. Noting the 80 percent male roster of the credentialed group, she writes:

So, I’m heading to Boston with my iBook. From whence I’ll blog, who knows? You see, the great thing about blogging is, you don’t need no stinking badges. Whatever happens to you, wherever you wind up, whoever you meet, that’s what you write about. So, I’ll be writing the story that presents itself, as it happens. Stay tuned.

Global Dominance: The Boston Globe isn’t worried about expectations. Jon Friedman of CBS Marketwatch reports on editor Marty Baron’s plans to dominate the story:

Baron, in his characteristically understated and plain-speaking way, hungers for the delegates, journalists and hangers-on to leave town knowing that the Globe is a truly national paper.
“We want them to think that this is the paper they have to read — a reference point,” Baron said in a telephone interview earlier this week….

“With 15,000 journalists in town, we are on display,” conceded John Yemma, a 15-year veteran of the paper “We’ll bring our A-game,” said Yemma, the 51-year-old point editor for much of the Globe’s convention and political coverage.

Similarly, Baron shrugs off the pressure.

“Certainly these are papers with more resources — but not here. Nobody will have more resources than we will,” he said citing the more than 100 staffers who are working on the convention.

Losing the Expectations Game? Matt Stoller of BOP News, who is heroically volunteering with the DNC in the bloggers’ operation, says he is “getting deluged with calls and emails wanting to know about the Convention and what bloggers are going to be doing there.” It’s getting a little crazy, he says:

Bloggers know how to levitate. Bloggers can see through walls. Bloggers can talk to the unicorns that are observing and protecting humanity at all times, unseen. Bloggers are also invariably prone to spin, lies, rumor, and innuendo, hapless against the wily ways of campaign consultants and PR people. Bloggers are real journalists, unconstrained by the normal rules of fashion. Bloggers are not real journalists, but they look great in blue. All of them. Bloggers are editors plus sprinkles and whipped cream. All bloggers want is to be loved by the establishment. Bloggers hate you.

Matt points to Kos, who agrees: “I know the conventions are stage-managed snoozers and all, but really, the media hype over bloggers covering the convention is getting ridiculous.”

Given the number of reporters I’ve spoken to the last two weeks, expect a crush of stories over the next few days about bloggers at the convention. And really, it’s not that big of a deal….Now, it turns out that Technorati will be feeding blogger commentary to CNN. I suppose that means the pressure is up. And I have to admit that I’m getting nervous about the expectations game. We bloggers are losing it. We’re expected to turn a stage-managed four-day infomercial into compelling theater. That’s a tough assignment for anyone to fill.

Atrios is on the case too, but English has no punctuation mark for the opposite of an exclamation point!

Not sure how interesting it’ll be, really, to people who read blogs. For an event like this, the role of the mainstream press is mostly to serve as a filter for people who don’t really watch it themselves or who want someone to tell them what they’re supposed to think about the whole thing. While bloggers can potentially provide an alternative filter, in this case I’m not sure what additional value it provides….I suppose this is one of those “dimishing expectations” posts. I hope I can provide some exciting inside scoop coverage of the convention. I’m glad bloggers are invited, but given the fact that there will be 15,000 media people there, I find the presence of 35 odd bloggers to be not all that much of a story, at least before the event.

I’m getting concerned about this, too. I have mentioned the same ratio— 15,000:35—to every reporter I have talked to (lots of ‘em, to be truthful) but I have a feeling that, after this weekend, when a bunch of pieces are going to appear, everyone is going to be tired of hearing about those upstart bloggers.

Then we’ll see a round of news stories and weblog posts about the hype, and how ridiculous all that is. I’ve even mentioned this predictable cycle to reporters and they just laugh. But I won’t be able to claim innocence. Anyone who says, “just make sure they spell your name right,” doesn’t understand the perils of publicity.

Wanna Keep Up? Dave Winer has created a great resource at conventionbloggers.com— a live list of latests posts by those blogging the convention. “It’s got the freshest posts from bloggers who will be on-site at the DNC next week, not just the credentialed bloggers, we include delegates with blogs.”

Journalist to DNC bloggers: I’ll be right there with ya. Tommy Stevenson, associate editor of the The Tuscaloosa News, sent me a preview of his column to run Sunday. It’s not online yet.

When I discovered that select bloggers will be covering the political party conventions this summer I silently cheered. Silently because there was no one around to hear me and I discovered the news online on, well, a blog site….
On my own personal favorites list I have more than 180 such blogs, divided roughly into six groups: leftwing, rightwing, Iraq, polls, story, and media and newspapers….

But if you think blogs are just vain exercises in self-expression, think again. Often stories that the conventional media has missed or played little attention to are forced into the mainstream from the blogosphere….

The decision to include these new media mavens in the press corps at the conventions has been met with resistance in some traditional press circles (“They’re not real journalists!”), but as for myself, once I get focused in on the convention I plan to be right there with them, television on and computer in lap.

Posted by Jay Rosen at July 23, 2004 6:50 PM Print

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...

Thanks for the link-love Jay.

This is what it's about, people working together to create new stuff.

I know some people think it's dorky, but I actually believe it.

See you in Boston!

Posted by: Dave Winer at July 23, 2004 7:02 PM | Permalink

Jay,

What did I tell you? I know I'm one of the Eeyores, but that's because sometimes I'm *depressingly* right.

There is is NO NEWS in the convention. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

So the Beast Which Must Be Fed, the ravenous need for something, anything, to hype, turns on to the merest smidgen of novelty - *B*L*O*G*G*E*R*S*!*!*!*

To quote the BlogGod: "It's even worse than it appears".

P.S.: Sure, blog like a normal person. Get a cat.

Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at July 23, 2004 7:44 PM | Permalink

Jay: I may have used the phrase, spell my name right, but I well know the perils of publicity. It may backfire. Kerry may not get the "bounce" he wants out of the convention and the hype about it ahead of time may make it harder to do so. But he will be reaching down to a new generation (Y?) through a new medium. As well as to us old fogies who have become enamored of seeing ourselves in print on this electronic device. Even if they do not say anything different than traditional columnists (not reporters), they will reach people who may not be reachable by traditional media. With the increasing merging of electronic devices into one hand-held connection and computer, I think this may be the political wave of the future. Could it mean that we get away from sound bites and have some healthy dialogue again?

Posted by: Chuck Rightmire at July 23, 2004 10:33 PM | Permalink

Global Dominance: The Boston Globe isn't worried about expectations.

I wonder if they've thought about the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

I'm sure the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wasn't worried either. Hate to see another Jewell episode because the local paper felt pressured to stay ahead of everyone else.

Posted by: Tim at July 24, 2004 1:18 PM | Permalink

Jay,
I think part of what is so surreal about the Harvard discussion you describe is not just that it presents political advertising strategy as politics, but that it is so unselfconscious concerning its own place in the story. They are on TV talking about competing narratives that the campaigns want to get played on TV.
It is eerily parallel to the "poll effect." Polls are supposed to measure what the public thinks about policies. But the effect frequently gets reversed. Polls tell the people what they should think about the policies because some are winners and some are losers, so decisions are often made before we even get to hear what the policies were.
Similarly, here, the event is turned upside down from an occasion which might inform us, to an advertising logic based refusal to engage any of the issues and policy alternatives at stake.
For all the talk about what the effect of the campaigns on TV might be, what we get on TV is this false-reflexivity in a journalistic vacuum. If the conventions are empty, the "discussions" are consistently even more so.
Why is it that policies are assumed to go without saying, but the color of a tie or haircut just can't be remarked upon enough? Is it a question of not having policy visuals? Or is it that advertising has proven itself to be the story and the media is just not very good at covering advertising and marketing?

Posted by: Ben Franklin at July 24, 2004 3:57 PM | Permalink

Just to make sure everyone understands, Jewell was NEVER arrested for the 1996 Olympic Park bombing. By anyone.

There is a case study online for anyone unfamiliar with what happened.

Posted by: Tim at July 24, 2004 5:48 PM | Permalink

Boston E-party (reg. req.)
Trash-mouthed, opinionated, relentless political bloggers are bound for both this week's Democratic convention and the GOP's in August

By MARLON MANUEL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/23/04

"Political blogs have crawled from the Web's primordial ooze, evolving into a mutant strain of journalism. In the freewheeling online world, bloggers — often partisans — can spin the news till they get vertigo, free from the clutches of (a) an editor and (b) the truth."

Posted by: Tim at July 24, 2004 6:04 PM | Permalink

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