Daily Journal:
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
http://blogs.kxan.com/kxanonline/
http://austinist.com/2008/04/08/local_political.php
http://pinkdome.com/
http://www.inthepinktexas.com/
http://www.texasmonthly.com/
Today we had a blogger panel: Eileen Smith, Charlie Ray, and Paul Burka. Elieen Smith is the new online editor of Texas Monthly. Paul Burka now works under her and is also a major text contributor to the magazine. Charlie Ray is now editor of KXAN online.
Last cycle, Charlie Ray and Elaine Smith were both on the blogger’s panel for Campaign Academy because they ran their own political blogs. Today, they have both transitioned into mainstream media. Paul Burks has been writing for magazines for years and is going the other direction. This was a convergence panel.
Eileen and Charlie, both Democrats, started parallel political blogs in 2004 and each created a character to present often opposing points of view. The two authors often had meetings with each other in a space they liked to call ‘the pink room’ to discuss current political happenings. Charlie began his blog anonymously, which allowed him to say things he wouldn’t normally say in public. However, when he realized his blog had influence in political circles and was giving people serious information and a taste of opinion, he decided he should add credibility to his space and give himself a name.
When KXAN hired Charlie Ray, he believed it was the wisest decision to end his persona on Pink Dome. However when Evan Smith approached Eileen, it was because of her blog. They appreciated her insight and liked her blog character and strongly encouraged her to keep up both pursuits (working for Texas Monthly and running her In The Pink blog site). (She blogged about us after speaking today.)
All three talked about the benefits of blogging in the face of a declining print media. A vast majority of intellectually savvy twenty-somethings and younger do NOT watch television, especially for their main source of the news. The internet has given people a way to customize the content that they get, with news feeds, bookmarks and customizable home pages. People do no even actually have to go to a website to read content; it is fed into their home page.
Media has turned into a different style of reporting. It is no longer a one-to-many conversations where the news source decides what news the public is given. News has become people talking to people in groups and communities. The blogs are able to create a community of people with similar interests who wish to dialog. People are no longer willing to wait for their news; deadlines are no longer at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00, people want their news faster, so deadlines must be every five minutes, more precisely whenever you can get the news. Charlie Ray works for a television station (KXAN) but just plain never watches it because he is in the generation who, really, only uses internet.
Reading blogs doesn’t feel like anyone is hammering you with opinion or information, because you generally agree with what you are reading. Either you skim past what you don’t believe or you go and switch blogs. Based on whether or not you read the comments, you can have more angles about the subject. Reading the comments should broaden one’s perspective.
Thought: The filter we learned about in Dr. St. Clair’s class, in which people choose what to believe, a filter that was present in even the old way of thinking, has gotten even smaller. In other words, people are more able to pick and choose what to listen to and what is truth, so they are becoming much more adept at being selective. Will this cause our society to become more narrow-minded?????
They brought up three interesting points.
1) When you blog, you don’t have to wait for a monthly publication. You can get more out, more quickly, showing more progressions of the story. Instead of doing 3 articles once a month, Paul Burka said he can do twenty articles over the month, and as people comment, he can also provide updates in his responses.
2) Blogging anonymously vs. anonymous comments: Are these freedoms good or bad? Does it allow you to be more unrestrained than you should be? It is more of a debate than an answer to a question, because to a certain extent, the freedom allows you to be more honest than you would be if you weren’t being anonymous, but then because you are anonymous, sometimes you don’t take yourself seriously enough and it doesn’t occur to you how far-reaching and how widely read you are being and so you might do damage to others’ reputations, when you figured you were merely talking to thin air.
The anonymity of when people post comments is a double-edged sword as well. People are more honest and more likely to get into a discussion with each other if they don’t have their name attached. But paid staff could get in hot water, for certain kinds of comments!!!!
Charlie Ray and Mark Strama have a running joke about Mark’s ‘inability to dress’. Charlie Ray thinks Mark’s favorite suit is tacky. This happens to be the suit Mark got married in, the most expensive suit Mark has ever purchased. Having recalled that Evan Smith writes a list of ten best and worst legislators, I suggested that Charlie Ray should start a best- and worst-dressed legislators list and then see where Mark fell. Catherine and I stuck up for Mark’s impeccable fashion sense. Eileen said that since Charlie had shut down his blog, In The Pink should strike up that debate. Charlie said they also have a joke about if Mark can’t dress better, at least he should stop looking like Patrick Rose (and give him a break).
Showing posts with label Amy Litzinger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amy Litzinger. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Exerpts from Amy's Journal..... 7/7/08
Evan Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Smith is editor and VP of Texas Monthly Magazine. http://www.texasmonthly.com/. He discussed the role of the media in politics today. Most of it confirmed what my professor, Dr. St. Clair, had taught us last semester in Media and Politics.
Mr. Smith said that the media should act as though it has a fiduciary responsibility to report the facts to the public. The vast majority of the American public gets one-sided news. In order to keep his own biases in check, Mr. Smith reads a vast array of publications even those in direct opposition to his own point of view. If one only reads what one already agrees with, they aren’t expanding their view. It is very easy for the media to shape public opinion, if there is only one outlet. The media has abused this power and overstepped its boundaries by using spin.
Both Hillary and Obama were misrepresented by the media. Obama was painted as extremely inexperienced. While he lacks experience in the conventional sense of politics, his community-based experience should have explained why he so easily related to people. Hillary was painted as part of the establishment and ‘anti-change’. However if she were running against anyone else, her views would have been presented as a change from the Republican status quo. The reason why Clinton supporters seemed to be having a hard time supporting Obama is that they never thought they could lose. It is the same situation as what happened in the last super bowl. No one expected Eli Manning to make a miracle pass. In the same way, everyone thought Hilary had the nomination tied up and in the bag. One possibe reason why the Clintons were blind-sided; they thought they had the dream campaigning ticket, with him helping her campaign.
Smith didn’t talk about why Obama had a ‘Eli Manning miracle’, but here is my speculation… He had the miracle because of the youth turnout. No one ever expects youth to turn out in measurable numbers. Consultants and political candidates don’t know how to cater to us. This is unprecedented and all the political pundits don’t know what to do. All the conventional measures and tools cannot be used to determine where we will show up or how we will vote. As Evan Smith said, “this is more than just the average transformational election. The pendulum will not swing back. Politics will never be the same again.”
The media is in love with Obama. They have one characterization of him. Per Smith…“School-girl/ put notes in his locker/ send him flowers/ start a scrapbook in love with Obama”. They feel badly for how they treated Kerry on flip-flopping, plus they were criticized harshly by the public last election, plus they like Obama, so this election they’re giving him a ‘pass’ for any flip-flopping.
These candidates are not moving in the eyes of the press the way most candidates should move. Obama would like to be able to develop his positions as public opinion demands it and as situations change, but the media is getting angry because he is starting to differ from their fairy tale image that they have created for him. The same goes for Hillary as ‘the horrible establishment’, the media wants her to live up to that so much that it shouldn’t include her campaigning for Obama. They want her out of the picture and she keeps trying to fight her way back in.
I agree with Evan Smith’s take on the unity of the parties; the media is worried about the unity of the Democrats, but when you look at each candidates’ platform, the Democrats agree on 98% of the issues. However, when you look at the race as a whole, it’s not the Democrats who should be worried, it’s McCain. Even when the Republican nomination had officially been handed to Texas, he only won by 52%. 48% of Texas does not like where he stands on the issues. A deep red state doesn’t like McCain; he has a problem. He needs to be creating unity, like Obama has.
Even if Obama doesn’t win, the turnout he’ll create will help in down ballot races. Noreiga’s race will help Obama’s race because Hispanic turnout will spike in Texas, not the other way around. McCain will not help with turnout of Republicans because too many Republicans are dissatisfied with the nominee.
I asked Evan Smith if he thinks the media is too one-sided in it’s opinion. I commented that when I read one news source for several months, I felt like the same opinion was being hammered into me whether I liked it or not. If I were reading by choice, I would have stopped reading (yet this was for my term paper on the AAS Democratic election where they clearly wanted Obama over Clinton). He agreed and said this is why most of the public is disenchanted with the main-stream media and has stopped reading it. He told me to ask the blogger panel the same question, tommorrow.
Mr. Smith said that the media should act as though it has a fiduciary responsibility to report the facts to the public. The vast majority of the American public gets one-sided news. In order to keep his own biases in check, Mr. Smith reads a vast array of publications even those in direct opposition to his own point of view. If one only reads what one already agrees with, they aren’t expanding their view. It is very easy for the media to shape public opinion, if there is only one outlet. The media has abused this power and overstepped its boundaries by using spin.
Both Hillary and Obama were misrepresented by the media. Obama was painted as extremely inexperienced. While he lacks experience in the conventional sense of politics, his community-based experience should have explained why he so easily related to people. Hillary was painted as part of the establishment and ‘anti-change’. However if she were running against anyone else, her views would have been presented as a change from the Republican status quo. The reason why Clinton supporters seemed to be having a hard time supporting Obama is that they never thought they could lose. It is the same situation as what happened in the last super bowl. No one expected Eli Manning to make a miracle pass. In the same way, everyone thought Hilary had the nomination tied up and in the bag. One possibe reason why the Clintons were blind-sided; they thought they had the dream campaigning ticket, with him helping her campaign.
Smith didn’t talk about why Obama had a ‘Eli Manning miracle’, but here is my speculation… He had the miracle because of the youth turnout. No one ever expects youth to turn out in measurable numbers. Consultants and political candidates don’t know how to cater to us. This is unprecedented and all the political pundits don’t know what to do. All the conventional measures and tools cannot be used to determine where we will show up or how we will vote. As Evan Smith said, “this is more than just the average transformational election. The pendulum will not swing back. Politics will never be the same again.”
The media is in love with Obama. They have one characterization of him. Per Smith…“School-girl/ put notes in his locker/ send him flowers/ start a scrapbook in love with Obama”. They feel badly for how they treated Kerry on flip-flopping, plus they were criticized harshly by the public last election, plus they like Obama, so this election they’re giving him a ‘pass’ for any flip-flopping.
These candidates are not moving in the eyes of the press the way most candidates should move. Obama would like to be able to develop his positions as public opinion demands it and as situations change, but the media is getting angry because he is starting to differ from their fairy tale image that they have created for him. The same goes for Hillary as ‘the horrible establishment’, the media wants her to live up to that so much that it shouldn’t include her campaigning for Obama. They want her out of the picture and she keeps trying to fight her way back in.
I agree with Evan Smith’s take on the unity of the parties; the media is worried about the unity of the Democrats, but when you look at each candidates’ platform, the Democrats agree on 98% of the issues. However, when you look at the race as a whole, it’s not the Democrats who should be worried, it’s McCain. Even when the Republican nomination had officially been handed to Texas, he only won by 52%. 48% of Texas does not like where he stands on the issues. A deep red state doesn’t like McCain; he has a problem. He needs to be creating unity, like Obama has.
Even if Obama doesn’t win, the turnout he’ll create will help in down ballot races. Noreiga’s race will help Obama’s race because Hispanic turnout will spike in Texas, not the other way around. McCain will not help with turnout of Republicans because too many Republicans are dissatisfied with the nominee.
I asked Evan Smith if he thinks the media is too one-sided in it’s opinion. I commented that when I read one news source for several months, I felt like the same opinion was being hammered into me whether I liked it or not. If I were reading by choice, I would have stopped reading (yet this was for my term paper on the AAS Democratic election where they clearly wanted Obama over Clinton). He agreed and said this is why most of the public is disenchanted with the main-stream media and has stopped reading it. He told me to ask the blogger panel the same question, tommorrow.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
A Future Candidate?????????
Gary Mauro has suggested that all of us could be future officials, so we're always on record. While I fully understand that everyone should always be aware of how they are perceived, there are several logical reasons why I should never run:
Obama, do you need an apprentice?
- My life is issue-based, so I would run an issue-based campaign
- I stay on message
- I care too much
- I love rhetoric
- I listen
- I'm unheard of, outside obscure circles
- Let's try something new
- Give people what they need, then what they want
- Young people are smart, AND COOL!
- Everyone counts
Obama, do you need an apprentice?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
