Mystery man Fero talks to academy

In a single article, The Statesman called our Tuesday lunch speaker Kelly Fero “shadowy," “invisible," and “clandestine."
Political consultant/ex-paid journalist/renegade blogger Fero talked with us about role of media in society. I think he was supposed to talk to us about press releases, but after Strama used Obama as an example of a candidate that knew how to “massage the media” (ew?) our group sort of exploded into debate. We talked about the rhetorical importance of an article’s lead. How in merely choosing the order of facts in her story a reporter can exhibit her values. Then we talked about the obligation of reporters to their community. By the way when I say we talked I do mean We Talked. Fero never actually lectured us. He just sat down and let us ask questions. Some of us believed that newspapers ought to be a source of facts to the public. The idea of objectivity is fairly new and American. In Europe a newspapers particular slant is common knowledge, and in the 19th and 18th century newspapers practically embraced their slant: advertising themselves as abolitionist or conservative rags. The idea of objectivity seems blatantly false, and misleading. Reading one account is never enough to get the full picture.
Another motif in Campaign Academy discussions is immigration. There is a lot of righteous indignation over the Republicans' use of immigration as a wedge issue. Fero said that it was “sad” that immigration had “gone from an issue that candidates dropped six months after election to a potential wall."