Politics
Entries related to things political.
What are the journalistic implications of MSNBC's recent poll?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/31/2004 - 14:22
Books done right
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/31/2004 - 14:15(Originally posted to Greater Democracy)
Monday afternoon, I attended a panel discussion on the role of conservative books. Zell Miller’s name caught my eye, and I thought I should try to attend. I know that some of my friends wouldn’t have been able to sit nicely through a panel with people like Zell, but I went and listened.
Monday Evening Photo Montage
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/31/2004 - 12:47As I was walking from The Tank back to Grand Central to take the train back to Connecticut, I stopped along 42nd street to see Rudy Guilliani on the large screen.
Rudy's comments about appeasing Hitler stood in stark contrast to the Mission Not Accomplished sign above, or the 'For Rent' signs reflecting the continued poor economy
below.
A few people stopped and looked, but most people just kept right on walking.
A little further down 42nd street was to controversial ad, 'Democracy is best taught by example, not by war,' standing in contrast to the Dow Jones newswire proclaiming 'The militia fighters to end uprising.'
Fair and honest elections
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/31/2004 - 11:55(Originally published at Greater Democracy)
Yesterday, I attended a discussion panel sponsored by American Compass, a conservative book club. I will write a more general post about this in a subsequent message.
One of the speakers was John Fund. John is a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, was the chief investigative reporter for syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novack in 1982, and has written a book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy
Why blogs are so important
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 08/31/2004 - 11:05(Originally published in Greater Democracy)
When bloggers descended upon the Democratic Convention, the bloggers were a big part of the news story. Everyone questioned how journalistic bloggers would be, and in the end, the mainstream press seemed to dismiss the bloggers. They didn’t break any important news stories. David Weinberger even questioned a Pulitzer Prize winner how we could adjust for his biases if he wouldn’t even admit to them. The mainstream media particularly rankled at such questions.
Yet all of this greatly over simplifies the process. Everyone does have a bias and it comes through in their writing. An import aspect of blogs are their immediacy. By this, I don’t necessarily mean how quickly things get written. Sometimes bloggers have difficulty getting to a good WiFi hotspot to put up their posts. Sometimes, they spend a bit of time trying to recuperate from their experiences before they can put their post together. However, they have a greater sense of immediacy in the more traditional sense of the word. They are less mediated by editorial boards or efforts to make a very emotional experience falsely seem objective.
