Blogs
For Vicki and John
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 21:23For all of you that know Vicki Cosgrove and haven’t heard, she and her husband are facing difficult times and prayers and financial support are sorely needed. Please read this diary on DailyKos, recommend it, pass it on to your friends and do what you can to help.
Beyond that, please think about lighting a candle for Vicki and John.
(Cross posted at Howard Empowered People)
Seeking clearer political thinking and speaking
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 20:03Back in February, I received an advanced copy of Jeffrey Feldman’s book, Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (And Win Elections). I started reading it and really enjoyed it. I wanted to find the best time to sit down and write up my review.
In March, I wrote a blog post about how the Edwards family is dealing with Elizabeth’s cancer. The blog post went up a few hours before the news conference where they announced that Sen. Edwards was staying in the race, despite the return of Elizabeth’s cancer. I started off by talking about Feldman’s book.
It is a great book that I hope anyone interested in politics spends some time reading.
We would do well to spend more time reading speeches of former leaders. The first speech analyzed is George Washington’s first inaugural address. He spoke about being called by “the voice of my country”. Feldman talks about the “humble servant” frame, of great leaders responding to a call by the country and a recognition that they it takes much more than just a great leader to solve our country’s problems, it takes the strength of the American people.
Inviting the public into the newsroom
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 16:07On Saturday, April 7th, the New England News Forum held its first conference in Lowell Massachusetts. After registration, coffee and initial networking, the participants headed off to several different breakout sessions. The first session I attended was “Letting the Public into the newsroom: Joining, shaping the conversation.”
The panel was made up of Steve Fox, who is working with newassignment.net, Rory O’Connor and Mike LaBonte who are hosts on NewsTrust and Jon Greenberg of New Hampshire Public Radio.
I’ve been a volunteer host on NewsTrust for quite a while and have been doing some paid freelance programming for them, so I’m well acquainted with NewsTrust. I had a wonderful discussion with Jon about what NHPR is setting up for covering the New Hampshire primary during the networking prior to the session, and while I hadn’t met Steve Fox before, I’ve been following newassignment.net very closely. I’ve written about it on my blog, in particular about their planned collaboration with Huffington Post.
The session started off by going around the room and everyone introducing themselves. There were editors, producers, professors, and wonderfully wise group in the audience, the sort of audience that is a good reminder of why it is so important to invite the public into the newsroom.
During the introductions, Arnie Arnesen, of Political Chowder framed the discussion very nicely with the question, “How to raise the level of curiosity in our public discourse?” Jon Greenberg spoke to this a little in terms of touching on how news is relevant to the lives of the readers.
Pack blogging, journalism, and sense making
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/05/2007 - 19:55Recently, Jay Rosen and Arianna Huffington announced a new joint venture in campaign journalism, an effort citizen journalism into the mix to counter the pack journalism that Timothy Crouse described in his book, The Boys on the Bus.
I wrote my first comments about it in a blog entry entitled Perspectives in which I wrote,
However, I worry that it might be the same rich white ivy school educated young men that I run into on the blogs and the conferences across our country. I worry that the discourse might end up being not substantially different from the nasty, horse race, Coke or Pepsi type coverage that we see in the traditional mainstream media.
Jay responded over at PressThink, “We’re going to try not to do that, Aldon, because that would be unfortunate, boring and dumb.” Since then, Jay and I have exchanged emails about promoting diversity in the project and I look forward to talking to him face to face about this soon.
Beyond the diversity, there is the issue of pack journalism. I figured I should go back and read The Boys on the Bus, which has helped keep me sane and focused as I fight the latest cold that has been brought home. It is a fascinating read for me as I think about how technology has changed, but the pack mentality has stayed very similar.
Shays does something right!
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 04/04/2007 - 10:01The other day I received an email from some of my disenfranchised activist friends in Washington DC. They were encouraging me, and others to write to our congress people to support HR 1433 To provide for the treatment of the District of Columbia as a Congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, and for other purposes..
Before I wrote my email to Rep. Shays, I thought I should take a closer at the bill. It has an interesting set of co-sponsors. From California, it has Maxine Waters, Henry Waxman and Darrell Issa. Talk about crossing the political spectrum! It has Steve Rothman from New Jersey, Jerry Nadler from New York, John Conyers from Michigan, and even Steny Hoyer from Maryland.
So, who is supporting this bill from Connecticut? So far the only cosponsor is Rep. Shays. So, I’ve actually sent Rep. Shays a message complimenting him on this. Perhaps other people in the State can get the rest of the Connecticut delegation on board.
(Cross posted to My Left Nutmeg)
