August 2008 Archives

To everything there is a season: election season is a time to strain at semiotic gnats (and a time to swat them away). A small media firestorm erupted Wednesday following the release of pictures and viral video showing the stage built for Obama's nomination speech at Invesco Field. And thus the affair of the "Democratic Temple at Delphi" was born.

Many critics immediately seized on the set's neo-classical colonnade as an opportunity to manufacture a public relations gaffe that reinforced the candidate's alleged rock-star persona and messianic pretensions. Others, more sympathetically inclined, like Joshua Marshall at Talking Points Memo, suggested that the backdrop resembled the Lincoln Memorial and was perhaps an allusion to the site of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, intended to mark its forty-fifth anniversary as Obama took to the podium Thursday night. Still others, also supporters of the Democratic ticket, worried that the set would prove a disaster.

The wall-to-wall cable coverage during the convention relied on no end of delegate dance interludes and entertained no end of incessant, anticipatory nattering about what might happen next in its quest to fill up dead airtime. Would middle America accept Michelle? Would the Clintons endorse Obama with sufficient fervor? Would the wounds of disaffected Hillary supporters heal or, eyeless in Denver, would they tear down the walls of Pepsico Center? Would there be any fist bumps?

So, yes, of course the photos of the half-constructed stage were deemed fodder worthy of the inordinate speculation they aroused. And, without a pause from the commentariat to consider what the backdrop might actually look like during the speech, the Greek Temple meme blossomed into a full blown cliché. On Wednesday night, Jon Stewart befuddled DNC Chairman Howard Dean, questioning the wisdom of having Obama speak from the Parthenon. For Friday morning's New York Times, David Brooks took the time in his convention-mocking op-ed to jest that "we were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, 'Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.'"

Laying aside for a moment the debate over whether it is vainglorious to go with Greek revival at present day political conventions, a look at the set as it appeared while Obama stood athwart it, taking into account all of the attendant lighting and decor, will prove instructive:

Courtesy New York Daily News

Here's a shot of the Temple of Segesta in Sicily:

In a comparison of these two pictures, differences abound, but what really shouts out to the observant onlooker is the presence of windows on the stage at Invesco. The same observant onlooker might also recall that while classical architecture was unfenestrate, the American Federal Style—of which the White House is a prominent example—most definitely featured paned glass. Architectural critic Witold Rybcyznski at Slate points out that the backdrop's Ionic character was modeled on the colonnade at Obama's hometown Soldier Field; his set designers didn't even leave their own time zone, much less cross the Atlantic, to find inspiration.

The Obama campaign's heady allusions to war memorials and the seat of government certainly suggest a streak of presumption, but they also negate the charges of religious—not to mention, pagan—presumptuousness of which the candidate has been accused. News analysts would do well to remember the virtues of patience and follow the artisanal rule that has been around at least as long as the masons who built the Colossus of Rhodes: measure twice, cut once.

DENVER — As far as the media were concerned, the most powerful people at the Pepsi Center weren't the various politicos assembled onstage and on the arena floor during the DNCC's proceedings. Those latter have political clout, sure—but the people who had the most direct impact on press members' ability to get stories at the arena were the guards: the guards manning the various security checkpoints leading to the center's inner sanctum; the guards checking badges at the entrance to "the perimeter," nearly a mile from the arena; the guards checking badges before conventioneers passed through metal detectors (and their bags, through x-ray machines); the guards checking badges at the entrance to the Pepsi Center's lobby; the second round of guards double-checking those badges about ten feet further into the lobby; the guards at the entrances to each individual seating section in the arena.

It was those guards who decided how far we—we low-on-the-totem-pole souls who were not delegates or "honored guests" or DNC bigwigs or media bigwigs, but simple storytellers—could go.

Given that the writing press galleries at Denver's main events—the Pepsi Center proceedings, last night's Invesco Field speech—are often situated in areas that provide sidelong-at-best views of the action (the Pepsi Center's gallery was pretty much behind the stage; Invesco's gallery was situated at stage left, its view of the speakers' podium almost completely blocked by the CNN and MSNBC tents), I wondered how hard it would be for a wayward media type such as myself to find a better place from which to view the convention's events. And given the fact that I, like most many some of "the 15,000" who descended on Denver this week, had a basic press credential, I wondered how far that access could take a reporter.

Turns out, pretty far. My lowly press pass got me into, among other normally-off-limits-to-reporters places: an opulent party at Elitch Gardens, the amusement park right next to the Pepsi Center, sponsored by the Democratic Governors' Association. A VIP viewing box at the Pepsi Center. A third-row seat off Invesco's forty-yard line.

The trick, for reporters now heading to St. Paul, is getting past the guards without them getting a good look at your press pass. Which comes down to behaving like an Important Person would. Which comes down to a combination of not making eye contact with the guards (Important People are too busy to acknowledge non-Important People); walking quickly (Important People always need to be somewhere, you know, five minutes ago); and, of course, turning around your credential badge so the word "press" isn't visible (since Important People, with the exception of the aforementioned BigWigs, are generally not members of the press). Given the crowds and the controlled chaos of the convention floor, more often than not, doing that will get you where you want to go.

I was both pleased and alarmed by this discovery. Pleased, of course, because venturing out of the press-box bubble allows one to witness history with those storied "real people." And alarmed, of course, because the checkpoint security people are supposed to provide, you know, security. Their job isn't to make journalists' lives harder; it's to maintain the order that will, in turn, maintain the safety of the conventions' participants. If I, a lowly reporter, could get into places I wasn't technically supposed to access, what about someone out to bear more than witness?

With the media struggling to learn about new GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell offers this now much-recycled fact--NPR profile--Palin's favorite meal is moose burgers.

McCain prefers shrimp, and pizza topped with pepperoni and onions, according to the Chicago Tribune.

As Katia mentioned last night, black commentators like Cornel West and Julianne Malveaux took Barack Obama to task for not paying more tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on the 45th anniversary of his “I Have a Dream” speech.

The two academics, West and Malveaux, guested on Tavis Smiley’s PBS show (the New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh profiled Smiley in early August), and were asked whether or not they thought Obama delivered:

Malveaux responded, “Not at all. My heart’s broken, actually. I hoped to hear more about King… That he could not mention the name of Martin Luther King Jr., that he was reduced to some preacher from Georgia, was a disappointment.”

Cornel West said: “It’s clear that when you run from history, run from memory, it’s hard to be empowered to change history to create a better future and to build on memory so that this becomes a great memory itself in the future.”

A few minutes later, Malveaux added: “Reverend [Jesse] Jackson has said there’s a baton that has been passed from Dr. King to Reverend Jackson to Barack Obama. … But I think the brother dropped the historical baton, even if he carried the policy baton.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the Atlantic, rightly takes them to task for failing to look past the “kissing of the ring” outlook. Here’s his defense of the light MLK reference in Obama’s speech, which I think is very well articulated:

Half the reason for having John Lewis, for having the film of MLK, for having MLK's kids is so that Obama is free to focus on winning the election. I don't think you do that by making the speech a paean to MLK—God bless him. How many votes is that going to get you? When you're on the battlefield, you don't pause put down your sword and shield to praise God for allowing you the privilege of being there. Do that after the battle's won.

Robert Caro’s excellent New York Times op-ed on Wednesday argued (as others have) that if Thursday night’s moment had its roots in any historic speech, it was “the one that made Martin Luther King cry”—Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 address to Congress introducing a voting rights act. And in a different take on Coates’s thought, Caro suggested that the documentation of the historic moment occurs not on the strength of rhetorical references, as West and Malveaux would have it, but on the rather unassailable strength of its own unfolding.

The forty-fifth Democratic National Convention is over. It featured
some dramatic moments, and fine speech-making. But, unfortunately, there was also a surplus of what I would call pseudo-journalists—the pundits who predict and bloviate and act as though they know what's in the minds of the candidates and their strategists.

I yearn for the good old days of Walter Cronkite and Huntley and
Brinkley. Walter took as his mission to inform the public, not impress people with his brilliance or wit.

We had a professor at Columbia named Roscoe Ellard who told us, "Facts are beautiful things. You just let them hang out there like clothes on a line—they'll tell your story."

The members of the punditocracy are not content with such a modest role. Some behave as though they're the story, not Obama or Biden, McCain or Palin. A major party for the first time nominated an African-American for president. This was history. It would seem to be story enough. If our responsibility is to relate stories, what more do we need?

The opinionators clamored for our attention at this convention. At one point they even peddled a false rumor that Hillary Clinton supporters might be planning a major protest on the convention floor. It wasn't true. But it kept the yackkety-yackers going for a few days. The beauty of this kind of phony story is that you can get a lot of mileage out of it—first, you spread it around and then devote a day or two to knocking it down.

I spent a lot of time with the New York delegation. If Hilliaryites were plotting a last-ditch insurrection against Obama, it would have been obvious. It wasn't. Indeed, it was clear that Hillary supporters were planning no such thing. As Congressman Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan, an avid Clinton backer, put it: "I'd rather have nominated Hillary but the welfare of the nation now demands we work for Obama."

Could not one of those yackers left his lofty perch and actually
talked to some Clinton delegates on the floor?

Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, said: "Anchors at conventions used to serve as omniscient narrators; at this convention, they mostly served as human V-chips blocking live speeches with their own palaver and predictions."

Yes, I yearn for the good old days when John Chancellor and other
floor reporters tried skillfully to get the real story. At this
convention we had great visual effects, including a real fireworks
display after Obama had delivered his verbal fireworks, but not so long ago there was suspense. Now it's a choreographed spectacle, an infomercial.

The campaign strategists design it. Journalists are at their mercy.
The bloviators enjoy getting the material.

As anyone who has slavishly been following the Republican running-mate roil for the last month knew, McCain was destined to pick one of these three men: Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former Democrat Joe Lieberman.

Right?

Well, no. In Dayton, Ohio, just hours ago, John McCain named the little-known Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential selection.

That whirling sound is the political press doing its best to sleep off its DNC hangover while working the BlackBerries and phones to produce profiles of the person who, save Hillary Clinton, is now the world’s most famous female politician. (Sorry, Nancy.)

It’s a turn on the dime for the great mentioner. This morning, I did a quick LexisNexis search tallying the number of times that some potential picks were mentioned from June 1 through this Wednesday in newspaper and wire service articles, along with the words “vice” and “McCain.”

706 Mitt Romney

519 Tim Pawlenty

486 Joe Lieberman

342 former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge

325 Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

153 former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina

105 Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

86 former E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman

As you can see, Palin is way at the bottom. The pick, wrote Jonathan Martin of The Politico, is “perhaps the most shocking in recent political history.” So how did the political press get this one so wrong?

Reporters writing about the Obama and McCain vice presidential nominations repeatedly mentioned that both camps’ processes were the most opaque ever conducted. That lack of information didn’t stop pundits from offering lists pulled from a combination of reporting, and informed speculation.

Of course things do get out—any time a politician’s staff is needed to pull together vetting documents, there’s an expanding circle where leaks can and do originate.

And those leaks get ink. And Palin didn’t get much. And she’ll be the nominee.

Whoops. And so, today, how many journalists and readers are regretting the time they spent writing and reading about, well, nothing?

This just in: Jill Burke at KTUU, the NBC affiliate in Anchorage, confirmed that GOP VP Sarah Palin was a sports intern with the station.

A background in journalism bodes well for vice presidential candidates: Al Gore was, among other things, an investigative reporter for The Tennessean.

One of the challenges the U.S.-led coalition faces in the war in Afghanistan is controlling the narrative surrounding its actions. Often, the accounts given by officials differ so sharply from those of local eyewitnesses that the coalition’s portrayal of events seems disconnected from reality. The recent bombing controversy in western Afghanistan is only the newest case. By examining how various stories diverged over the days after the incident, a clear pattern emerges: the coalition has a problem with damage control.

The undisputed facts are fairly sparse: in the early pre-dawn hours of Friday, August 22, a small joint American-Afghan force came under attack in a village called Azizabad, in the Shindand District of southern Herat Province. While offering support to the embattled unit, an AC-130 gunship fired into a cluster of buildings. Beyond this, the facts become murky, even contradictory.

On Saturday, August 23, Voice of America reported that, while Afghan officials complained that the strike had killed “at least 70 people, including women and children,” a U.S. coalition spokesman claimed that a battlefield assessment indicated only thirty Taliban were killed, and that a follow-up investigation was under way.

On Sunday, August 24, The Washington Post published a story noting that a U.S. military spokesperson maintained that thirty Taliban insurgents died during the fight. Local officials, including a spokesman for the western regional command of the Afghan National Army, claimed they found the bodies of sixty children and nineteen women among the dead.

This was a potentially explosive issue—civilian deaths in Afghanistan have led to violent riots before, most infamously the “traffic riots” in Kabul in 2006—so local and international groups traveled to the area to investigate.

By Monday, August 25, they were counting the dead in Azizabad: a local human rights group claimed “at least 78 people were killed” during the clashes and the air strike, while the Ministry of Interior claimed seventy-six people died, including fifty children under the age of fifteen. The Ministry of Defense adhered to the new U.S./NATO line of twenty-five dead militants and five dead civilians (probably a clarification of the initial count of thirty).

Meanwhile, Afghan president Hamid Karzai increased the anger in his public statements about the incident, upping the body count to a reported eighty-nine. He also fired two high-ranking Afghan National Army (ANA) officers for their involvement in the firefight.

The situation took an altogether different turn by Wednesday, August 27, when the U.N. announced that its own investigation revealed “convincing evidence” that at least ninety civilians, sixty of them children, had died during the Azizabad incident. They also directed stern words at NATO and the U.S. over the safeguarding of civilian lives during combat operations, though a Pentagon spokesman maintained that the U.S. strike was “a legitimate one, a Taliban target.”

By Thursday, August 28—six days after the initial incident—the Pentagon leaked its own version of events to The New York Times, claiming that photographs of the scene after the firefight revealed little evidence for a higher civilian death toll, the U.N.’s investigation was cursory, and other reports relied too heavily on the testimony of local villagers rather than physical evidence such as freshly dug graves or injured people in local hospitals. One U.S. military investigation repeats the claim of twenty-five dead insurgents and five dead civilians, but still proposes additional “joint” investigations of the incident—leaving one to wonder what, exactly, they are still investigating.

This creates an unfortunate case of he-said/she-said for outside observers. While a BBC Persian crew traveled to the area and interviewed locals who corroborated a higher body count, English-language news services have not yet completed their own investigations of the incident. This leaves everyone outside of Shindand reliant on the statements of the U.N., coalition media relations, and local activist groups—none of which are neutral or disinterested actors (the U.N. typically uses local stringers for investigations and surveys).

There is, however, precedent to follow. On July 17, almost exactly one month before the current incident, NATO claimed to have killed two Taliban commanders in this same area, while local tribal elders claimed fifty civilians were also killed. For days, NATO officials denied civilian casualties, though they eventually admitted some deaths. In April 2007, too, upwards of fifty-seven civilians died in various coalition operations in Shindand District.

In other bombing incidents, such as the wedding parties attacked in Nangarhar province and in Nuristan Province (both, weirdly enough, on July 6), U.S. officials have also denied the presence of any civilians among the dead for many days. Regarding the Nuristan incident, one coalition media officer went so far as to say the coalition had “no reports of civilian casualties,” even while Al-Jazeera English was publishing the testimony of locals who were wounded or lost relatives in the attack.

When asked about the latest incident in Shindand, General James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said the Taliban intentionally surround themselves with civilians so as to increase the civilian death toll—part of their sophisticated propaganda campaign to trick the world into thinking the U.S. and NATO are reckless. Given the categorical denials of civilian death during the previous six weeks that have since been retracted, the coalition is running out of sympathetic ears when new civilians are reported killed.

The way the coalition has handled these incidents creates the impression that they are callous or even casual about dead civilians: repeatedly denying non-coalition body counts without evidence to back their claims, calling the dead “Taliban” when they are nothing of the sort, and disparaging human rights groups trying to confirm ground conditions. All of this serves to isolate the Pentagon from real social currents on the ground. Moreover, it sets up an expectation that, no matter what actually happened, the official response will be to deny until forced to admit—which, when its account differs so greatly from local accounts of these incidents, encourages the idea that the coalition is lying.

That is almost certainly not the case. It is difficult to imagine the U.S. military or NATO not caring about non-combatants dying by their hands. Yet without better reporting from the scenes of these alleged tragedies, it is difficult to move beyond hearsay accusations. There is, however, one simple solution: admit to having imperfect information. General Conway came close when he explained that troops aren’t “on the inside looking out” of compounds when they order air strikes. If the coalition, instead of rushing to declare itself blameless and diligent immediately after combat, admitted the possibility of innocent casualties, that would increase the likelihood for widespread confidence in the follow-up investigation.

This runs counter to the very real need to tightly restrict information. Yet in a war that relies as much on perception as it does success in battle, this tendency to hunker down and deny an unfortunate reality does far more harm than good. While the military waits for its follow-on investigation, Afghans are left wondering—rightly or wrongly—why the coalition seems not to care when they die.

If you were wondering (because I know you were) what the fashion press had to say about Michelle Obama’s floral dress last night, here’s Women’s Wear Daily with some analysis:

Michelle Obama gave another nod to New York fashion on Thursday night as Sen. Barack Obama accepted his nomination in Denver. The potential First Lady chose to wear a dress designed by Thakoon Panichgul. The floral Radzimir kimono dress, part of Thakoon's pre-spring 2009 collection, once again signals Michelle Obama has no qualms about breaking with presidential tradition, opting to wear a dress by a young New York designer to her husband's most important speech so far.

A fashion-forward First Lady? It’d totally be first. (And I guess the $79 Gap sundress is waiting in the closet for the inaugural ball.)

Today, August 29, is my final day at the only full-time job I have ever known: writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I’m forty-five. I started here twenty-two years ago, half my lifetime. It’s an uncommon crossroads—federal labor statistics show that a person sticks with a job for about four years.

Newspaper work, though, means far more than a paycheck, and most of the other seventy-two people who have also accepted the buyout and are leaving today will tell you the same. We are a family full of passion and character, one I’m deeply sad to leave.

Like a household, a paper takes nonstop devotion and effort. Our people must step up every day, and now with ajc.com, every minute. We share a strong sense of public service, that our work can, at its best, change lives. And our bonds strengthen from crisis to crisis—sound like your family, too?

When I arrived fresh from college, my plan was to survive my ten-week internship then return to my (real) family’s sales company. I still pinch myself that I got to stay.

Like any typical Atlanta transplant, I found my first social network at work. The newsroom was full of twentysomethings who worked long hours then headed to Manuel’s Tavern for beers and b.s. But as soon as I swore off dating anyone there, I met a reporter who would become my husband. (At one time, there were twenty-two couples in the newsroom.)

When our children were born, my coworkers brought food and helping hands — just as we had done for them. A group of us usually spend Thanksgiving together.

As in a family, our roots deepened along the way in other small but significant ways. One reporter made me her bridesmaid. I introduced a photographer to his eventual wife. I babysat for a page designer, and as the years passed, coworkers’ children babysat for mine. I still go to a doctor whose wife worked here until recently, to a church that a copy editor invited me to.

From my colleagues, I learned how to make a feather-light piecrust, quilt, find the best flea markets. They taught me how to camp, hike, and paddle. One work friend saved me from hypothermia after my canoe capsized in a freezing river.

When younger writers arrived, I reached out to them like a big sister. After all, colleagues had shown me how to report and write a complicated story, request a public document, deal with an angry source. Faced with mistakes and criticism, I was fortunate to have these people showing me what newspapering demands day in and day out: honor and guts.

This sense of community helped influence the kind of stories I wanted to write. As Atlanta doubled in size, I sought to connect people to their city and to each other, just as I found connection in AJC’s newsroom. I gravitated toward everyday triumphs and breakdowns—graduations and adoptions, first homes and house fires, affairs, addictions, deep loss. I aimed for stories with a rich sense of family, its joys and sorrows, dreams and disappointments. What I saw around me in the office I looked for in my stories.

When the Internet hit, family life everywhere picked up speed. It rocked my work family. Fewer people wanted their news delivered to their driveway. Classified ads and other revenue dried up. That came to mean fewer of us.

Last month, the AJC offered buyouts to everyone with five years of service, almost three hundred of us, in a memo from top editor Julia Wallace:

You have been a valuable part of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for many years, and we appreciate your passion and dedication to our newspaper.

Regardless of what you decide, we are proud of the company you helped shape and expect your contributions to continue to benefit us. Thank you for being an integral part of our family.

I now faced a difficult decision. Should my household’s two incomes rely on the same tenuous industry? Could one of us separate from our tight newspaper clan? What had we learned about risk from our work family?

A year ago, my editor Jan Winburn had challenged me to dig deeper into a story about a road trip I had taken with my father. It meant exposing a complicated relationship, trying to build with words a bridge from my private loneliness to a public narrative.

That story changed my life. As reader after reader wrote to tell me they could relate, I realized, for the first time, that my isolation was my own creation. A series of vivid dreams signaled me to write more of my own story, so I began, bit by bit. But with a full-time job, my memoir was slow going. Still, I understood that my personal history, even if my daughters turned out to be the only ones to read it, would be my most important story. The buyout offered paid time to get it done.

When I turned in my voluntary separation forms, Jan hugged me, and we both cried. She told she believed the best for me. I told her, “You’re like a parent who raises children so they can leave and make it on their own.”

All those stories, all those years, all the people I learned alongside— they raised me to try, to risk failing, to write no matter what.

With their support, I’m trying something different. I’m going to miss them terribly. I will never replace those who helped me grow as a writer, and, in so many ways, grow up.

_________________________________

The steady drip of layoffs and buyouts, slowly desiccating once-vibrant newsrooms around the country, has also produced a reservoir of anger, sadness, fear, uncertainty—even some cautious optimism here and there—among reporters and editors who invested years, decades in some cases, of their lives to print journalism. We’ve asked anyone so inclined to channel these emotions, not into rant—although there will be a bit of that—but rather into reflection on what went wrong, and where we might go from here. We will publish these periodically under the headline “Parting Thoughts.” All of the letters we publish will be collected here.

Without downplaying the efforts or results of citizen journalists and credential-sharing bloggers, The Gray Lady, for one, did a thorough job tonight covering the DNC's stadium finale. Live blogging by Kathleen Q. Seelye, with dispatches incorporated as they came in—from Invesco-based and pool (stationed with the Obama motorcade) reporters—packed a few well-organized punches. In addition to straight up coverage of Obama's nomination acceptance speech, here is some of what The New York Times tendered:

Details: Obama’s entrance eliciting two minutes and twenty seconds of applause, Michelle Obama’s “thumbs up,” the oversized flags, Obama’s use of strong, active verbs

Little notes: Obama omits race in discussing paternal responsibility. First half hour focuses on the economy and working-class Americans. Obama doesn’t say how he’ll fight al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. McCain was half-joking when he defined “rich” as a $5 million paycheck.

Some Snark:

-“It’s already clear that one fear of the Obama campaign — rain — is not a threat.”

-“In the event of an emergency, MOVE AWAY FROM THE STADIUM, we’re told.”

-“All the Republican talk about his 'celebrity' status hasn’t inhibited his high-wattage smile.”

-calling Al Gore the “Goracle” (‘nuff said)

A fair amount of good scene-setting prose:

-“From our view — where a break in the stadium seating offers a glimpse of the highway overpass nearby, throngs and throngs more moved toward here in a steady stream.”

-“Earlier, long long lines wound their way around the perimeter and other lines spilled out over fields nearby as people waited for buses to bring them here.”

-(About the Obama tribute video) “It’s like being at a drive-in movie, the lights are dim, the breezes cool. Considering this is a story told over and over again to the party faithful, the rapt attention the audience is paying to the video is striking.”

Extras: frequent Twitters (Howard Wolfson quotes, 30,000 text sign-up alert); readers’ queries (about roll call procedure, the Bradley Effect) answered by reporters on the NYT political desk

Quick Follow-up: McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds rebuttal, Hillary Clinton reaction statement

The MSNBC live feed embedded into the NYT blog wasn’t half bad either, though every time you hit refresh in order to see the latest blog posts, the video got cut off and you had to restart it after it reloaded. It was better to grab the live feed off MSNBC.com or CNN.com directly, and read the NYT blog at will, in a different window. Ah, the many options of our time.

No daylight. Not enough chairs. Not enough tables. No wireless. The only televisions to watch the on field action are in the back of the room facing away from the tables. A dozen or so journalists (this one included) are sitting on the just-barely-not-bare-concrete floor.

The permanent label on the door outside this field level “Media Filing Center” suggests that on game days, the space is used as a “Photographer’s Workroom,” but I can attest it doesn’t look all that different from a room just down the hall where they garage Mile High’s groundskeeping equipment.

I must say, the lack of creature comforts certainly encourage speedy filing. Take note, Arianna.

Tavis Smiley asked his two favorite contributors, Princeton professor Cornel West and Bennett College president Julianne Malveaux to weigh in on Obama's speech.

The two African-American intellectuals wonder why Obama referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as a "preacher from Georgia" and never by name.

"The brother dropped the historical baton," Malveaux said, disappointed that Obama didn't delve deeper into the history of the civil rights movement and the significance of the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech. Hillary Clinton talked about Harriet Tubman, but Obama didn't.

This is an interesting insight, and one that I didn't hear mentioned in other analysis. In general, the PBS coverage has been impressive, and soothing: Switching from the screamy tones of Chris Matthews to the calm that Jim Leher exudes was a much-needed respite on this binge of cable news consumption.

When the requisite post-speech streamers launched, it looked like a quickly blossoming beard of red, white and blue, floating just above the portico of the temple set. But something was amiss—the streamers failed to clear the backdrop, leaving stage right a cobwebby, though patriotic, mess.

From where I was standing on a press riser, this was quite possibly the only off-note, staging-wise, of the night.

And for more than a few working photographers, it was a bigger problem. There were twenty some photojournalists atop the stage’s temple, and they, as if covered in leftover Fourth of July silly string, took brief moments from their furious snapping following Obama’s speech to pull strands out of their hair, off their clothes, and away from their lenses.

But the situation with the Skycam was far more dramatic, since it risked some of night’s coup-de-grace shots from Invesco’s most expensive camera set-up. The Skycam, whose midfield aerial shots sports fans are familiar with, spent the whole night sliding around the stadium suspended on four taut wires, giving viewers birdseye pans of the assembled delegates.

But at the moment of streamer mis-launch, it was close enough to the stage that one of the wires caught several red and white streamers, like stockings on a clothes line. Eventually, breeze and movement conspired to mire the camera proper in streamers, making something that looked a little like a Portuguese man-o’-war hovering overhead.

“I knew that would happen,” said a tripod bound cameraman to my right, with a schadenfreude satisfied chuckle.

This just in: CNN has already moved on to speculating about McCain's VP choice, the GOP convention, and the Gustav threat.

That.Was.Fast.

The text of Obama's speech is everywhere, and everyone's got their hands in it. "America, we are better than these last eight years," quotes MSNBC.

Some people are teasing the text, and others just have the whole shebang.

Last night, the Obama surprise appearance was spoiled by the networks, and tonight, they'll all take a stab at reading through the lines before Obama gets to deliver them.

Jerry Bell might be the luckiest man at Invesco Stadium at Mile High, the site, in case you’ve so far missed it, where Barack Obama will formally accept the Democratic nomination tonight.

Bell, the managing editor of 850 KOA, a local AM station, would seem an unlikely man on which to bestow such a title. But there’s a case to be made.

You see, KOA is the official radio broadcaster of the Denver Broncos, the team that calls Mile High home when Obama’s not in town. Their usual broadcast suite (booth 4516) is right on the 45-yard-line, facing Obama’s Greek-columned stage. Next door is where the Bronco coaching staff usually sits, but it’s been pressed into service by convention communications staff.

But someone smiled on the station, and they were allowed to keep their usual perch, which may the best view of the action on the field of any outlet. Usually, that vantage point is pretty vital to play-by-play. Tonight, well, let’s just say it remains to be seen how it translates to radio.

In a sardined elevator on the way up to the KOA suite on the fourth level, home to the periodical press and several other radio outlets, Bell—who, after 22 years of covering the Broncos, knows his way around the stadium—was offering directions to confused journalists.

“This kind of looks like a football crowd,” said Bell, holding his microphone and wearing a KOA embroidered shirt. “Up in the high decks they’re in T-shirts and cut-offs. Except that everyone’s wearing Obama stuff instead of Bronco stuff.”

The KOA studio is a neat, two-tiered affair, with sound muffling Bronco-blue (and Obama-blue?) carpet on the walls. The talent sits up front, just inches from the plate glass, and a couple of steps above an engineer rides the sound levels on a board.

Not surprisingly, it’s been a busy week for KOA. Bell says he’s been coming in at 2 am to knock off interviews with other Clear Channel stations across the country.

“They want to hear about the scuttlebutt. The big one this morning was the ‘greek temple’ thing. They’re calling it the Barackopolis,” said Bell, alluding to the recent hard-to-believe hubbub that Obama’s speaking backdrop is vaguely un-American. “I’m essentially here today so when I do the live bits in the morning I can tell them what it was like out here.”

“The other big story for us is traffic,” Bell says. They’ll use the state Department of Transportation’s road cameras, and some reporters in the field, to keep listeners appraised of the road closures and bottlenecks sure to occur once tonight’s show ends, fireworks and all.

Usually they’d probably call in the traffic helicopter. But with the stadium a one night no-fly-zone, there at least one view that even KOA 850 isn’t allowed to keep.

DENVER- "Hi, there, would you like an hors d'oeuvre?"

A woman is smiling in front of me, a tray of spring rolls, cut sushi-sized and arranged in neat rows, balanced on her forearm.

Apparently, I hesitate in answering. "They're vegan," she informs me, in a don't worry tone.

Well, in that case. I take a piece. And it's delicious.

And with that, I have to say: Touche, Arianna Huffington, touche. I mean, I'd known the HuffPost Oasis would offer snacks; I hadn't known it would offer vegetable spring rolls with a tamari-peanut sauce or a vegan pate with cranberry chutney and watercress. I'd known it would have smoothies; I hadn't known those smoothies would be made of wheat grass and berries (flavor one) or carob and tofu (flavor two). I'd known the Oasis would offer yoga instruction, massages, and facials; I hadn't realized that Arianna-and-Team had converted five rooms of a third-floor, downtown-Denver office building into a full-on spa.

But a full-on spa, indeed, they have spawned. Or, well, sorta. The Oasis is, really, a spa-meets-hotel-lobby-meets-Hometown-Buffet- meets-Enya-concert-meets-movie-set. And that potent combination has proved a flame for the moths in the media: David Carr stopped by the Oasis to interview Huffington earlier this week; Katie Couric demonstrated her downward-facing dog in the yoga area; Daryl Hannah has come by—several times, apparently—for hand massages and general Zen-iness. And the HuffPost, which has set up a special section of its Web site devoted to coverage of the Dramatic Happenings at the Oasis, has been documenting their comings and goings.

A man in a pin-striped suit and Windsor-knotted red tie saunters into the Oasis's lobby area. Taking in the dim lighting, the New Age-y music, and the motley collection of assorted bloggers, gawkers, and yogis before him, he looks startled. But he comes in anyway, taking a laptop out of his shoulder bag and settling down on a couch. An Invesco Field-bound delegate walks in, wearing red pants, a flag-printed t-shirt, a red-sequined cap, and a fanny pack whose belt cinches her waist. She thumbs through the literature arranged on a naked-wood side table--postcard-sized ads for Essential Living Foods, Organic India teas, More magazine, Pangea Organics ("ecocentric bodycare")--before wandering back into the hallway. Margaret Carlson walks in for a yoga appointment, letting the friend accompanying her take the open slot ("I'll just wait for the next one"), using the waiting time to settle down onto a settee and type on her BlackBerry. Later, she'll interrupt the friend's yoga session to confirm their plans for traveling to Invesco Field for Obama's acceptance speech.

A shoeless woman does a warrior pose in the corner of the yoga "studio" (three mats arranged on the carpet before a brick wall lined with potted reeds, their stalks back-lit for dramatic effect). A yogi in dreadlocks, wearing a black t-shirt (RAISE AWARENESS INSPIRE CHANGE) and designer jeans, assists her.

Near the spa area, where black-clad technicians offer hand massages and facials to their ten-minute clients, the Oasis smells like aromatherapy oil, spicy and soothing and laced with lavender. Near the yoga area, the Oasis smells like feet.

Which seems a fitting metaphor for the place overall: there's something soothing in the Oasis's Eastern-inspired spa-ism—the smoothies; the buffet of carob ships, nuts, organic yogurt, and fruits both dried and fresh; the assortment of organic teas; the lighting; the music; the whole vibe. Not to mention the always-soothing fact that the Oasis's amenities are all free.

But there's something unsavory, too, about the place, something strange in the relationship between the Oasis and the political convention taking place beyond its walls--something disconcerting about the isolation it encourages between the media and the events they're meant to cover; something odd in the suggestion that those media members are so stressed in all their reporting that they must be in dire need of "unplugging and recharging" at the Oasis; something off-putting about the excessive branding at play in an environment that pays so much lip service to Emotional Well-Being; something ironic about the fact that all this Zen-fueled opulence comes courtesy of a media organization that (in)famously doesn't pay its bloggers for their work.

None of which, however, seems to bother the Oasis's clientele. Sauntering to the buffet table for a second helping of the wheat grass concoction, a woman grins at the attendant. "Bless you guys for doing this," she says, taking a swig of smoothie. "This is awesome."

For our digital age, there’s an extraordinary amount of paper flying around Invesco tonight. Someone just slipped me a copy of Obama’s embargoed remarks, which means the end times are drawing near.

Despite the obvious Herculean logistical efforts, there are some advantages to hosting a night like this at a football stadium. Upstairs, on the fourth level, in the space that the press covering NFL games usually uses, the DNC press staff has taken over the slotted paper holder that usually holds things like game notes, canned coach quotes, and the like for copies of the advance remarks. Now I just need to find out when we can get into the locker rooms to debrief the QB.

George Packer says the convention is better on TV, but he proves himself wrong with some irresistible on-site observation and flow-like-a-river prose:

Between the reporters and the delegates there’s a kind of invisible wall, as if both groups are too shy or distracted or indifferent to talk to one another. But around the makeshift stages of the news networks, which rise out of the convention floor, there’s always a traffic jam of delegates who have stopped to look at James Carville and Alex Castellanos and Anderson and Campbell, and watch the network stars speculate about what these same delegates might be thinking.

It's lyrically fueled but efficient, this image. Moving on, Packer describes first his descent into the convention pit to hear Hillary Clinton's speech, then the speech itself, showing us, if we’ve forgotten, why good journalists should be at political circuses like this:

With my precious floor pass on display around my neck, I waded into the sea of people down by the Michigan delegation to hear Hillary Clinton’s speech. She made her case up front: you couldn’t find a crack of resentment in her remarks about Obama. But the thrust of the speech wasn’t her support for the man. Her purpose was to remind the assembled delegates of their party affiliation. This was the speech of an old-time Democratic loyalist, and her theme of standing up for the low-wage worker, the sick woman with no health insurance, and the injured vet was Democratic red meat. She was saying: I don’t care what you think of our nominee—remember who you are.

It’s certainly not that someone watching Clinton speak on TV, far away from Denver, couldn’t have registered the same insight and written about it, perhaps more quickly. It’s simply that first-person, or in-person, writing is always more evocative, more exciting for the reader, and if you can be an eye in the crowd and register the insight, then you’re a step closer to the journalistic goal of entertaining and informing (which, given the incessant interchange between farce and banality—and the occasional moment of significance—at political conventions, seems hard to accomplish at the same time). The 15,000 can fight it out for the last press seat available in Invesco, but here’s hoping Mr. Packer made it in tonight.

I'm not sure whether this is the work of a prankster or of a Fate with a dry sense of humor. But, walking by the magazine stands of The Tattered Cover--the bookstore Justin mentioned yesterday, whose strong coffee, comfy couches, and free Wi-Fi have made it a haven for wayward media members here in Denver--I came upon this:

Yep, that is the National Journal's Convention Edition. Right next to UFO Magazine. Underneath Sage Woman, Sacred Fire, and Witch.

Whoever or whatever brought those publications together...well done.

I'm glad to report that CNN, unlike MSNBC and Fox News, decided to carry Martin Luther King III's speech.

I'm less happy that they decided to cut away from the podium to show Morgan Fairchild in the crowd having her picture taken with fans while the speech is going on. Wikipedia reports that Fairchild is "active in raising awareness of AIDS-related issues and environmental protection."

Also, Wolf Blitzer just called Donna Brazile "a rocker."

Lefties left behind wish desperately they were among The Fifteen Thousand Witnessing History in the Mile High City. Instead, they have to rely on said Fifteen Thousand to bring them coverage of the Convention and on Talking Points Memo Café to give them a soapbox.

TPM Café, which normally serves as a communal blog for TPM readers—an open mic night, if you will—has, during these heady Convention times, functioned more as a steam valve for a wide range of heaving emotion.

Take Theda Skocpol, Harvard sociologist by day, TPM blogger also by day. Professor Theda, it seems, is seeing stars as history comes full circle, eats its tail, and wormholes to a brighter tomorrow (and she would know: Skocpol’s husband is an experimental physicist):

For me personally it would be hard to top last night at the Democratic Convention, listening to Bill Clinton and Joe Biden set the stage for Obama and bring the nation and the Democratic Party to the brink of the most important political watershed in the past four decades. As Michigan State college students in 1966 and 1967, my hustand-to-become [sic] Bill and I met while working on a Civil Rights project in Mississippi. We participated in a small way in the fight for American fulfillment through the enfranchisement of blacks and in the repudiation of racial segregation that our generation helped to junp-start. [sic] Then, in 1968, we cried with millions of others when the hopes of the era took a dark turn after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. We watched as increasingly viscious [sic] right-wingers tore blacks from whites, and pitted the middle class against the less privileged—all the while constructing a predatory U.S. state by and for the crassest of the super rich, and bringing our politics to a shameful nadir that McCain has now embraced, to his ever-lasting shame.

It is such a privilege to be alive to see the turning point in 2007 and 2008, to participate in this chance for Americans to take back our country and for Democrats to overcome the divisions of the past and lead the way to a better future at home and in the world…Thanks to both Clintons and the Bidens, and to the many other leaders who have spoken with passion and toughness at the Convention. Now it is up to the rest of us to make it happen across the land. Obama can lead, but he cannot do it alone.

That means it’s time for a war straight out of Revelations, people. Writes Skocpol:

It is time for all of us—professional experts and commentators, too—to cease self-importance (listen up, Carville) or distanced and pallid commentary (that means you Harold Ford and Mark Shields) and join the fight of our lives. This election matters like only a few others in the history of the United States. Our nation will either move forward, or fall down very far—think of what it will mean in and about America if we cannot grasp the bright potential Obama's candidacy embodies! The battlefield has been set, and all of us should network, speak, write, give money, and do whatever we can to achieve the November victories for Obama/Biden and Democrats all down the ticket that offer the opening wedge toward a better tomorrow.

First order of business in this War of the Ages: wiggle the wedge and make sure that damn Sean Wilentz doesn’t slither on through: “Any of us from the progressive side of academia who runs into Sean Wilentz after that execrable smear-job he wrote in Newsweek,” writes Skocpol, “should cross to the other side of the street and keep moving!” YEAH! Who’s on the wrong side of history now, huh? History professor, indeed.

Oh, and the crowd goes wild for Skocpol! Quoth Phelicity: “I recognize the 'stars' in your eyes because, although I'm about 12 years your senior, I have them too...” Oh, and Skocpol’s son, a correspondent for Brown University’s paper (a Chablis drinker, no doubt), will be there covering the event! Just how neat is that? “Your son Michael,” writes a similarly starry-eyed commenter, “may very well be witnessing the American equivalent of Mandela being released from jail.” Yeah, that sounds just about right.

But we digress. This is war, people! “Obama must, beginning with his speech tonight, immediately seize the initiative and begin to take control of the agenda, the debate and the message of the entire campaign. He must put McCain and the Republicans on the defensive and keep them there. Unless that happens, his chances of victory are slim,” wrote one commenter. But worry not. “Fortunately, however, there's still anger” out there, Phelicity reminds us.

Oh, there’s plenty of bilious fighting spirit, yes, especially when you factor in The Commenter Formerly Known As NCSteve. He’s got enough to power Obama’s jet pack from here to Armageddon, wherever that is.

“I’ve watched a lot of conventions. I've always found them entertaining. This year, however . . . this year, the asshats just will not shut the fuck up,” he writes in a post called, fondly, “Dear Sweet Mother of God, Will You People Just STFU Already?”

TCFKA NCSteve lets everyone covering the Convention have it: stupid Chris Matthews (“Tweety”), “I’m With Stupid” Olbermann, Chuck Todd—even poor, dead Tim Russert gets nicked in the drive by. He was, apparently, a huge old tool.

And CNN, God don't get me started on those idiots. Who gives a pile of steaming monkey feces [sic] what a bunch of washed up has=been Democratic "consultants" and super-extra evil Republican pigs have to say about anything? Who cares about the empty drivel pouring out of Wolf Blitzer's mouth. And Bill Schnieder? The notion that that imbecile knows anything about politics would be laughable if not for the fact that he's there, on my TV running his mouth with that oh-so-knowing and wise gleam in his eye as he just says stuff with no apparent connection to any fact-based universe.

And oh the problems for Obama. Problem, problems everywhere. Problems to the left of him, problems to the right. Problems with money, problems with Hillary, problems with everyone and everything. Problems connecting with the all important white 70+ women with "Ring Bell for Service" tatooed on their ass demographic. My oh my oh my. The problems, problems, problems.

Um, this is getting awkward…

Just shut the fuck up already. You're embarassing yourselves and the country. Shut up. I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to watch this shit at all if all they're going to do is sit in their booths in the nosebleed sections and yap and yap and bleat and baaaah.

Um, NCSteve? You okay?

Thank you. The "Rant About the Asshats" light has been turned on. You are free to rant about the cabin.

Oh. Okay. Well, there you have it, folks. If you feel like swinging by and patronizing your neighborhood crazies at the TPM Café, you’ll be sure to find a wide range of, um, informed emotion sloshing about. Or you could try to talk TCFKA NC Steve off the ledge—as many of his commenters tried to do - by recommending he tune into the soothing, soothing sounds of CSPAN. Ahhh…

It’s perhaps worth noting, courtesy of the NYT’s Caucus Blog, that the Democratic National Committee has Got The Media’s Back. No, I'm not talking about the Starz Green Room. The committee is thoughtfully providing a parting gift—a “survival kit” for those reporters who will, poor souls, move far away from the massages, smoothies and yoga sessions currently offered up in Denver, and next week enter into the wilds of St. Paul.

What’s in it? We’ve been hearing about the GOP’s war room; well, the Dems will have one of their own, called “More of the Same” (a phrase that, despite Biden’s efforts last night, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue), and the package includes a media credential for it that features a photo of McCain embracing Bush. (I mean, do you have to have one to enter the war rooms?) But get this: “Attached to the credential is a flash memory drive pre-loaded with research documents, images and videos meant to provide a counter-point to the McCain campaign’s message.”

Whoa, there. I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Still, I wonder what TechPresident, a blog that monitors “how the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them,” will write about this. Doesn’t it just seem like an extension of the “watching MSNBC coverage from the Google Tent” phenomenon, in which sedentary journalism is encouraged and material given is too often material used? Just because reporters shouldn’t use the stuff on that flash drive wholesale doesn’t mean they won’t.

Nick Kristof dedicates his column today to a discussion of the difficult decisions journalists often face when covering events where the truth is swathed in shades of gray.

He first offers an apology to scientist Steven Hatfill, who was initially fingered in the anthrax investigation. Kristof called for greater scrutiny of Hatfill as a suspect; he was later exonerated. The case of Hatfill was a subject that needed to be treated sensitively; yes, the government needed to pursue all its leads diligently, but the media also thrust an innocent man into the spotlight.

Kristof also suggests some hypothetical situations for discussion: how would you handle covering "a new suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case," "a local high school girls’ basketball coach has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct," or that "police have seized barrels of chemicals from a group of young foreign men living in town"?

Regardless of whether or not you may agree with Kristof's handling of the Hatfill case, or his answers to his own hypotheticals, the act of offering readers a chance to understand how journalists grapple with difficult decisions, and that they do in fact grapple with them, is a solid step in providing a better understanding between readers and the journalists who serve them.

If you like media bait, you would like Denver. There is plenty of it here, so much so that, at times, the streets near the Pepsi Center resemble the least exuberant Mardi Gras celebration in history. Over the past few days, I have seen many good examples of this. You have probably seen them too:

-Two men holding a gigantic “Rednecks For Obama” banner, bearing a suspicious resemblance to the two men who claimed to have found the Sasquatch, being interviewed by an intrepid reporter in a cheap gray suit. They are talking a lot, but it is unclear that they have anything to say other than “We live near a Fast Signs.”

[N.B. A successful media baiter will have mastered the art of the comic juxtaposition. “Rednecks For Obama” is a good one. Here are some others that I would one day like to see:

McCain Supporters For Obama: A group of blue-blazered Republicans who are rallying for the Democratic candidate. Slogans could include “McCain’s Our Man; Vote Obama,” or “Vote For John McCain; Obama/Biden 2008”

Abortionists For Life: Lab-coated practicing abortionists who, nonetheless, are eager to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Grandmothers Against Hard Candy: I can pretty much guarantee that this would be the most successful media stunt in the history of media stunts.]

-Several women in homemade P.U.M.A. (Party Unity My Ass) T-shirts, marching in tight circles and proclaiming their undying support for Hillary Clinton to a revolving cast of cameras, both before and after Clinton’s Tuesday evening speech. The obvious care with which the shirts were made is incongruous with the anger being professed by their wearers. They are very nice shirts, the sort that are made by people who probably spend a lot of time at Hobby Lobby. The P.U.M.A. ladies are the sort of women who would bake you a carrot cake, but scrawl “Bite Me” in icing on top.

-Three bedraggled men carrying signs that read “Stop Bird Porn,” being watched with amusement by several reporters who understand that it is a joke but will likely write columns pretending that it is not. (The Bird Porn people were the subject of Dave Barry’s column today. It is OK for Dave Barry to cover the Bird Porn people. This is why Dave Barry exists.)

-The obnoxious nerds in Halloween costumes who are running around admonishing people to “Trick or Vote.” As I wrote yesterday, they are mostly being covered by foreign media, who are likely making fun of them in all five Romance tongues.

There are more examples, but you get the idea. The DNC is flush with media bait—publicity hounds who seek to lure reporters with bright colors, outré costumes, and chantable slogans. This sort of fits. After all, the convention is itself a political tourist trap of the highest order—the wonk’s answer to the Springfield Mystery Spot.

But still. The majority of the people attending the DNC are indistinguishable from anybody you’d see on the street, albeit perhaps a bit better informed. It's only a very small percentage that came here determined to get on TV. And, sure enough, these are the ones that seem to draw a disproportionate amount of coverage.

It’s not that reporters are lazy, because they’re not, primarily. They are, however, deadline creatures, and it’s expedient to write the story that’s right in front of you. This is why Flag Shirt Man gets interviewed while Khaki Pants Guy walks by unmolested. This is why the opinions of a Hillary-loving P.U.M.A. person get mistaken for the opinions of female voters as a group. As Lester Feder so astutely put it last week, too much attention given to political costume parties leads to “the media confusing activist opinion with public opinion in general. And public opinion generally defies such a simple—if dramatic—storyline.”

Call it Peters's Law of Convention Coverage: The level of enthusiasm somebody shows for being interviewed is inversely proportional to the level of discourse they will provide. (The same inverse proportion applies to the number of political buttons one is wearing.) Anybody who wants to be interviewed that badly most likely has nothing to say.

Denver is done, but political reporters would do well to remember this rule as they go into Minneapolis. If anybody would like to discuss this more, I’m happy to oblige; I’ll be standing outside the convention center, wearing an Uncle Sam suit and toting a sign that reads “Media Critics For Illiteracy.” You won’t be able to miss me.

John Kerry gave an effective speech at the DNC last night that skillfully bridged his friendship with McCain, with a critique of his policies.

The speech has gotten many tablespoons of gooey praise—here, here, and here (and here and here and here). It’s one big blogospheric hug for Kerry. (All of which doesn’t negate the praise, but if you want just a tad more perspective than “Best Speech of Convention” or “awesome, like totally rad, he blew me out of the water,” here’s a more sedate, two-steps-back take on it.)

But—and I’m not trying to pull the “why didn’t the media cover this speech” speech, because there are umpteen speeches per day and two or three obvious headliners (last night, of course, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden)—it’s interesting that The New York Times today carried practically nothing on Kerry’s address.

It focused, understandably enough, on the big news: on Clinton’s call for “unity and hope” and on Biden’s blue-collar-guy/McCain-attack-dog double punch. Theirs are the post-convention news with longevity, for sure. But there is also widespread agreement that Kerry’s speech was a more effective attack on McCain than was Biden’s, and other than a few live-blogged lines while Kerry was speaking, the Times passed over it.

Given the pre-written disposition of bigger articles, it’s likely that Kerry’s surprisingly effective stage time threw everyone for a loop, as many in the blogosphere have amply mentioned, and no one at the Times could do more than blog briefly about it (busy as they were instead with the articles that had to be written speculating on Obama’s speech and detailing tonight’s stadium set-up). But as a colleague mentioned earlier today, The Gray Lady certainly has enough people in Denver.

At least the Washington Post got around to this funny little column describing a moment of “unity” on the convention floor between Kerry and a certain Swift Boater named T. Boone Pickens.

It was nearing 10pm in Denver and the mood grew confessional on the CNN set.

Coming back from commercial, Anderson Cooper chitchatted that during the break, Wolf Blitzer had shared with his co-anchors a little tidbit from his past and perhaps he might be coaxed into sharing it with the viewers. Cut to Blitzer looking none-too-pleased.

And then, at 9:58pm Denver time, when the anchors had all changed into their footsie PJs and snuggled up with cups of hot cocoa and copies of Cosmo, the truth came out.

Wolf Blitzer was in a band.

As Wikipedia already notes, Blitzer's group was regrettably named "The Monkeys".

Here are some songs that Blitzer may have written:

-(Can't Get No) Situation (Room)

-(Christiane Aman)Pour Me a Drink

-Tell Me What You C(NN)

-I'm A Rock, I Am An Anchor

-99 Kinds of Beards

-Blitzing the Night Away

-Sgt. Blitzer's Lonely Beards Club Band

-Blitzer Pop

-The First Shave is the Deepest

-I Wanna Be Your Newsman

-While My Teleprompter Gently Glows

(Joke writing assistance provided by Dave Burdick and Shawn Morrison.)

The Boston Globe has had Massachusetts delegates blogging throughout the convention. The New York Times has interviews with delegates about what they hope to hear Obama address in tonight’s speech at Invesco Field. How useful have they been?

The Globe’s blog, called “Mass Voices,” has been interesting to read, because the delegates have been responding to the speeches as they happen, or writing about what struck them most during the previous night’s events. You have to parse through it a bit, because the quality of writing and insight varies. And it was a good idea to have Republican delegates contributing too (commenting this week on both the goings-on of the DNC and the Republican Platform Committee), in advance of the RNC. It’s just a bit confusing to have Blues and Reds both responding on the same blog, when you expect to hear from folks currently at the DNC.

The Times’s audio clips of DNC delegates offer a wide spread of opinions that individually, don’t resound so much. The "voices" interactive feature, after all, isn't anything new. But if you let the media player run through them all, in totality it’s actually a pretty good backdrop of delegate perspectives and priorities from different states (not just New York) for readers looking forward to the nominee’s address tonight, and a refreshing break from, as Katia pointed out last night, some of the more useless moments of media talk.

For confirmation of the rumors of the new, more tightly controlled McCain, look no further than this interview by Time magazine's James Carney and Michael Scherer.

The cringingly awkward transcript contains interactions as tense and uncomfortable as this:

There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I've read your books.
No, I'm not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

Yikes.

On Monday, I mentioned the latest television commercial featuring Harry and Louise—the infamous TV couple who periodically take to the airwaves and opine on the state of American health insurance. I noted that Harry and Louise also appeared eight years ago, promoting solutions for health care reform identical to those we hear from politicians and interest groups today—build on the current system and offer tax credits and other subsidies to help people buy insurance policies from commercial companies. The next day, someone sent me a copy of “The Next Failure of Health Care Reform”, a story that appeared last March in CounterPunch, a biweekly, liberal newsletter that promises “muckraking with a radical attitude.”

Author Vicente Navarro, a professor of health policy and policy studies at The Johns Hopkins University and a founding member of Physicians for a National Health Program, offered a cogent and interesting history of the decades-old struggle to enact national health insurance in the U.S., along with a critique of the tepid approaches advanced by the Democratic candidates this year. Navarro says the proposals of Barack Obama (and, when she was running, Hillary Clinton) “will diminish somewhat the number of those not covered by health insurance and will reduce the level of undercoverage. But the major problems will remain unresolved.” He noted that “people will still experience incomplete coverage, and many millions will continue to be uninsured and underinsured.”

This story is not only a good read but provides great context—a primer, so to speak—for the media as they continue to report on this latest round of reform. Navarro is no health care neophyte. He was Jesse Jackson’s senior health adviser during the 1984 and 1988 campaigns, and worked with Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Reform Task Force in 1993. His experience with health reform failures lends credence to his suggestion that the current reform movement may be heading on the same track once again.

Navarro says that the Democratic Party platforms in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992 called for health care coverage for everyone—calls which, he explained, were often made without much conviction. This year, after much hoopla in platform committee meetings, Democrats resurrected the same call to action: “All Americans should have coverage they can afford; employers should have incentives to provide coverage to their workers; insurers and providers should ensure high quality affordable care…As affordable coverage is made available, individuals should purchase health insurance and take steps to lead healthy lives.” Although the rhetoric is strong, how much conviction is behind it remains to be seen.

And those stories told on the campaign trail about single moms without health insurance are nothing new. In 1988, Michael Dukakis talked about a single mother who had two jobs and still could not afford medical insurance for herself and her kids. In 1992, Bill Clinton talked about a woman who could not get health insurance because she had diabetes. This year, Hillary Clinton told the tale of a single mother of two daughters who could not pay her medical bills because she had a congenital heart defect, making her uninsurable.

Tuesday night, Clinton related another single mom story. This mom had adopted two kids with autism, and then got cancer: “She greeted me with her bald head painted with my name on it and asked me to fight for her health care and for her and her children,” Clinton told the cheering crowd. Last night, the former president told the same crowd he would “never forget the parents and children with autism and other severe conditions” who said they “couldn’t afford health care and couldn’t qualify the kids for Medicaid unless they quit work or got a divorce.”

There you have it—convention takeaways. Which brings me back to Harry and Louise.

One constant, in this celebration of democracy that is the Democratic National Convention? Exclusivity.

Seriously, you need a pass to go pretty much anywhere around here. Passes, of course, to get into the Pepsi Center itself, verified at no less than five different checkpoints, and issued in a rainbow of shades (including "light purple" AND "dark purple") that denote your rank status worth to society specific seating area in the arena. Passes to get into "the perimeter," the square mile or so of media tents and other venues surrounding the Pepsi Center. Passes to get into the blogger havens. Passes to get into the diners that have been taken over by various cable channels. Passes to get into the various parties sponsored by various political groups and media organizations.

Passes, truly, for everything:

A great send-up of the hyper-analysis from the cable commentators by the Daily Show: "You want my asinine analysis. You want that to be the story so that you can ridicule my inane douchbaggery," says John Oliver. "Even if it’s become clear that I’m only doing because it’s fun and easy and I have time to kill."

Watch below:
'

I watched last night's floor speeches--Joe Biden's acceptance of the Dems' VP nomination; Bill Clinton's acceptance of a more general variety--from the Invesco box at the Pepsi Center, directly behind the rows reserved for the writing press.

During the Clinton and Biden speeches, all was quiet in those rows. While the rest of the room went wild for the former president and senator--not to mention the videos screened for the crowd and the other speakers accompanying the stars' remarks--the reporters sat, calm and mostly silent, reading the printouts of the speeches handed out by DNC staffers, browsing the Web, and clacking away on their laptops.

While the rest of the room radiated Biden Red, the reporters' section was bathed in a colorless glow.

But then--surprise!--Obama took the stage. And chaos ensued. Print reporters--some of whom had already left the Pepsi Center's inner sanctum, thinking the evening's events were over--rushed back into the arena, clogging the aisles, jockying for space. They frantically grabbed their cameras--a few fancy, professional-looking contraptions; several basic point-and-shoots; and many, many cell phones--to record the moment for their news organizations. And, more generally, for themselves.

I wrote earlier about all the attention paid to Hillary Clinton's pantsuit color last night, so it's only fitting to sum up the color choices of tonight's speakers and heavies, in case no one else does.

Joe, Jill, Bill, and Hillary all wore blue, and Nancy Pelosi did too. When Obama appeared on stage for his surprise appearance, his tie was red.

According to Color Wheel Pro (the first Google result for "blue color theory"):

Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.

Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body. It slows human metabolism and produces a calming effect. Blue is strongly associated with tranquility and calmness. In heraldry, blue is used to symbolize piety and sincerity.

...As opposed to emotionally warm colors like red, orange, and yellow; blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Use blue to suggest precision when promoting high-tech products.

Blue is a masculine color; according to studies, it is highly accepted among males. Dark blue is associated with depth, expertise, and stability; it is a preferred color for corporate America.

Avoid using blue when promoting food and cooking, because blue suppresses appetite. When used together with warm colors like yellow or red, blue can create high-impact, vibrant designs; for example, blue-yellow-red is a perfect color scheme for a superhero.

Light blue is associated with health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.
Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.

Now, can someone tell me what this says about the Democrats' message tonight?

After two full minutes of applause from the convention floor, Bill Clinton in his speech tonight vouched for Barack Obama, saying, “Everything I learned in my eight years as president and in the work I've done since, in America and across the globe, has convinced me that Barack Obama is the man for this job.”

Politico’s Ben Smith writes: “In the warmest moments of Clinton's speech, he compares Obama to himself.” And indeed, one of the most effective bits of his speech compared Obama’s rise with his own in 1992:

Republicans said I was too young, and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.

At TNR, Noam Scheiber says: “It seemed to symbolically usher in the Obama-Clinton reconciliation we've all been waiting for. Recall, after all, that Bill almost always rejected the analogy during the primaries.”

The speech, to take Matt Yglesias’s effusive words, pretty adeptly showed Bill Clinton flexing “pure skills of awesomeness” in oratory, and it was one that the Obama campaign can’t be unhappy about. Still, there was the tiniest snarky nibble in Clinton’s second-to-last line: “Barack Obama will lead us away from division and fear of the last eight years back to unity and hope.”

Back to?

Here’s TNR’s Ben Wasserstein noting the itchy presence of that prepositional phrase:

That “back to” is enormously revealing. When Obama speaks about getting beyond the partisan politics of the past, he most definitely includes the Clinton Wars, from Whitewater to impeachment, in his indictment of the bad old days. (Which makes sense: He was running against Hillary Clinton, after all.) But by speaking of a restoration of unity and hope, rather than of a new beginning, Clinton showed that he’s not buying everything Obama’s selling.

Maybe Clinton didn’t get the Obamamemo on “prepositional phrases you can use without tampering with the candidate’s freshness.” Anyway, props to Wasserstein for catching a subtle rhetorical about-face.

This will require closer attention and much deeper analysis, but in general, it's been pretty despicable to watch the networks not air some pretty hefty speeches in favor of endless commentary.

This afternoon, MSNBC interviewed Tammy Duckworth, a veteran of the war and veterans affairs director in Illinois, about her speech tonight. And, then tonight, they failed to broadcast her time at the podium. CNN and Fox News also didn't show it; it could be seen on C-SPAN and PBS.

Duckworth's job at the convention was to talk about Obama's plans for providing services to Iraq vets and how he would serve as commander in chief. These are good questions, and Duckworth is qualified to raise them as an Illinois National Guard major. And the McCain campaign has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on Obama's readiness to lead the troops, so why not let someone in an (albeit partisan) position to offer some insight and show her speech?

Perhaps, if you've hired the Best Team in Politics, or staked out your spot as the Place for Politics, or whatever, maybe you feel compelled to squeeze every last penny out of your anchors, analysts, and commentators. But broadcasting the speeches is free, and important.

Update: This photograph of Duckworth's prosthetic legs as she stood at the podium addressing the DNC is a taste of the powerful images that the networks didn't show their viewers tonight.

I've never been a fan of live blogging, but at its best, the process can put Internet readers side-by-side with clever, charming observers weighing in with witty observations.

And sometimes, it just doesn't work. This is Josh Marshall's attempt at live blogging Bill Clinton's DNC speech in total.

Waiting for Bill to start ...

"I love this and I thank you ..."

9:07 PM ... Something about that crowd brings him back to life.

9:12 PM ... Yep, that's Bill.

9:15 PM ... Hillary's speech takes on a different look when you see it as a complement to Bill's.

9:25 PM ... Well, good speech. Very solid speech. Classic Bill. Sort of reminds me of the weird anguish of last spring, thinking we'd never see this guy again. He did what he needed to do. And he got things moving in a direction the convention needs to go.

9:28 PM ... Also good that he said one thing -- John McCain's an "extremist." We need to hear that again and again, because it has the virtue of being true.

Maybe Josh was too absorbed by Bill's speech or maybe he was reading another live blog.

There are a bunch of costumed idiots running around the convention handing out stickers that say "Trick Or Vote." From their Web site: "Trick or Vote is a nationwide nonpartisan costume canvass taking place on Halloween in a city near you. A spooky crew of monsters will be out in full force to remind young folks to vote, and you can be spooky too." Whimsy and politics, together at last! Somebody call Wes Anderson!

About an hour ago, four or five of them trooped into the bookstore, looking like they just left a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and blaming the fact that they have only received foreign media coverage on stateside reportorial laziness. No, you have not been covered because you are obnoxious media bait, and my colleagues are showing admirable restraint in not giving you the coverage that you so obviously crave. Also, the foreign press is just making fun of you.

DENVER - If there was going to be any Real News made during the Democratic convention, last night was supposed to deliver it.

Yep: The Hillary Factor! Capital T, capital H, capital F! What would she do? What would she say? What would her myopically rabid PUMA supporters do to shake things up, stir the pot, and generally add an air of uncertainty to the Pepsi Center's otherwise highly choreographed proceedings?

The drama! The expectation! The sound! The fury!

But, alas: The only real drama last night was of the painstakingly-planned-for variety. Expectations were met, not thwarted. There was very little sound, save for Clinton's speech, the applause that met it, and the strains of "American Girl" that introduced it. And the fury, if indeed it lingers on, was kept hidden from public view.

Last night, instead, was all about met expectations--nothing less and, certainly, nothing more. Clinton, who really had no other choice in the matter if she wants to maintain the good will of her party, gave the crowd--and the body that organized it--exactly what it had requested demanded of her: a full-throated, full-throttle endorsement of Barack Obama.

Which was great for the Democrats, to be sure (U-N-I-T-Y!), but not for the press. Last night's events may have been big news for Dr. Dean et al, but they weren't, in the end, Big News of a more general variety. While Clinton gave a fantastic speech--"tremendous," The Washington Post called it, without a hint of irony--and impressed viewers with her eloquence and her apparent enthusiasm, her performance was ultimately more interesting than exciting. And more notable than newsworthy. Particularly in light of the knock-out, blow-out fight so many in the media were bracing and, really, hoping for.

Indeed, unless something unforeseen manages to slip the surly bonds of mirth over the next one-and-a-half days of DNCC-ing, last night marked a parting of ways between the press covering the convention and their hope that a big news story might come out of it.

Which, then, begs the question: how do you cover an event whose bark is so markedly bigger than its bite? How do you reconcile the Hype and the Reality? There's the story itself, after all—the speech, the fact that U-N-I-T-Y may be in sight for the Democrats—but then, simmering in that story's subtext, there are the expectations about What Might Happen during the speech. (Expectations, by the way, that the media have fostered. As Lester Feder has noted previously for CJR, and as Justin and Gabe Pressman reiterated earlier today, the Disaffected Hillary Voters story is one that's been amplified by the media's appetite for conflict and drama.) So, given its dimensions, and assuming you have only one A1 story with which to describe Clinton's speech to your readers, how do you present them with the fullest, most accurate picture of it?

Here's one way: melodrama. (Wait, that's not in the spirit of the thing. Let me try again: Here's one way! Melodrama!!! Okay, there, that's better.) Take the paper of record, The New York Times, their own sense of Pepsi Center Drama perhaps getting the better of them, substituted drama for substance. The paper's coverage filled the gaps left by last night's events with...well, sap. "With her husband looking on tenderly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes," The New York Times wrote,

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday night and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingered.

Sheesh. One can't help but picture Clinton-as-Cosette in all this, scrubbing the floors of the Pepsi Center, warbling "Castle on a Cloud," and generally lamenting her dreams deferred. The description here drips with the pathos of self-sacrifice. (Who knew it'd be Clinton, not Obama, upon whom the press would impose the convention's Messiah complex? And, for that matter, who knew Victor Hugo was covering the convention for the Times?)

Later in the Times's narrative, our beleaguered heroine, along with her "tender" husband, gets a little, you know, "misty":

Mr. Clinton became teary at several points during his wife’s speech, and even Mrs. Clinton, who has been so steady this week, seemed to grow misty a couple of times as she thanked her supporters profusely and recalled some of the Americans she met along the trail.

And then:

“It’s not just about politics,” she said, referring to the distinctive struggles women face as candidates. Her tone broke from its determined cadence and became, for a second, slower and almost hushed. “It’s really personal,” she said.

It's exceedingly difficult to inject surprise into a situation in which there is little of it—and to frame as Big News something that, simply, is not. The Times puts up a valiant effort in this regard. (As far as pathos goes, the Times eclipses even Dana Milbank, whose entire job is to traffic in melodrama, and whose speech summary notes merely that Clinton "used the spotlight to play the loyal Democratic soldier.")

But it doesn't follow that the effort is commendable. Rather, the Hugo-esque tale of Clinton's speech smacks of desperation: it's trying to create hard news out of a story that is, more than anything else, about hype. And it's trying to instill surprise in speech whose content, great as it was, surprised no one.

The vaunted Big Tent, boasting smoothies, beer, burritos, bloggers, and an endless parade of VIP guests, is wicked lame. The creature comforts are nice, but it is hot and crowded and self-congratulatory (I'm with Groucho Marx when it comes to meet-kindred-spirits things like this), it makes it easy for bloggers to just stick to the tent (and to the Kos/Google-approved presentations) instead of finding their own stories, and it is suffused with a corporate spirit that is no less oppressive for all its studied niceness. The real cool kids congregate next door, at the low-key Tattered Cover Bookstore, where the wireless is free, the chairs are comfortable, the staff is friendly, and the corporate groupthink is nonexistent. "We wanted to create a real blogger hangout," I heard one staffer say this afternoon. They have absolutely succeeded.

That said, it is 4:00, and I am definitely headed to GoogleWorld for a beer after I post this.

In “The Racism Excuse,” yesterday's editorial rejecting the claim that racism explains Barack Obama's flagging lead in the polls, the Wall Street Journal took obvious delight in repeating Democratic VP-pick Senator Joe Biden's racially insensitive description of the Democratic nominee as an "articulate and bright and clean" African-American. For all its snarkiness, the WSJ has a point: the “racism explains it all” assertion is flawed.

The WSJ criticizes John Heilelmann of New York and Jacob Weisberg of Slate, who make parallel arguments: With all the structural advantages in his favor, the only reason Obama doesn't have an overwhelming lead over McCain is that he is black. Or, more precisely, it's because many voters—especially older, white voters—are racist.

There certainly are numbers to support this argument. Weisberg points out that 27 percent of whites think "too much has been made of the problems facing black people," and 5 percent will cop to voting against a black candidate because of his race. One in six Pennsylvania primary voters say race played a role in their decision.
But Weisberg takes his argument a step too far when he writes, "Racism is the only reason McCain might win." And when Heilemann writes that "Obama’s lead is being inhibited by the fact that he is, you know, black," he treats the presidential candidate as if he were a brownie served to voters with a chocolate allergy: they'd be happy to eat it, but only if the baker made a new batch without the cocoa powder. Obama's race is a more integral part of his candidacy—indeed, his life story—and not one that can be isolated from the other ingredients. But he gets to try to frame what his skin color means, just as his opponents are trying to do.

Obama's promise of change is compelling, in part, because of his unusual biography. His 2004 convention speech introduced him as a man who embodies American ideals: the ability to transcend America's divisions and overcome obstacles through talent and hard work. I use "embody" literally here—his skin color and his name are living testimony that he is the kind of change he says he will deliver. But his skin color also comes into play when his critics imply that he is too risky, too angry, or too "foreign" to lead the United States. Jacob Weisberg is right to argue that these attacks are often cynically coded racist attacks, or ones that uncomfortably flirt with prejudice:

To the willfully ignorant, he is a secret Muslim married to a black-power radical. Or—thank you, Geraldine Ferraro—he only got where he is because of the special treatment accorded those lucky enough to be born with African blood. Some Jews assume Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel in the way they assume other black politicians to be. To some white voters (14 percent in the CBS/New York Times poll), Obama is someone who, as president, would favor blacks over whites. Or he is an "elitist" who cannot understand ordinary (read: white) people because he isn't one of them. Or he is charged with playing the race card, or of accusing his opponents of racism, when he has strenuously avoided doing anything of the sort. We're just not comfortable with, you know, a Hawaiian.

The WSJ is right to reject Weisberg and Heilemann's fatalistic view of racism's role in the election, even if it does so by sticking its head in the sand. ("[W]e reckon that a scant number of voters are motivated by racism, and that number's growing smaller by the day," it argues, a claim is hard to credit when America has elected only two black governors and three black senators since Reconstruction.) The truth is that race is an inevitable ingredient in Obama's candidacy (as, it should be pointed out, it is in the candidacies of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain—their whiteness facilitates outreach to the very voters with whom Obama struggles). But it is just one ingredient, part of a much larger package that voters must choose or reject in its entirety.

Obama's race undoubtedly accounts for some uncertainty among voters who would otherwise vote Democratic this year—but so does his youth, his lack of foreign policy experience, his manner, and all the other factors that he would be forced to manage if he were white. His race probably amplifies all the other doubts voters might have about him, but it does not work in isolation.

The challenge that faces Obama today is no different than the one he faced in the primary: find the right message and execute a winning strategy. And managing the race issue is a challenge today just as it was in January. Obama's supporters are understandably worried about the tightening polls, but are wrong to soothe their anxiety with such simplistic explanations.

I’m not sure if this latest gem from The New York Times actually deserves analysis, since the title of the article—“Newcomers Adjust, Eventually, to New York”—pretty much explains what’s wrong.

But, I guess, having wondered for 380 years if people ever feel comfortable in the Big Apple, the world can now rest easy because we’ve got that pressing issue addressed. The article includes such exhilarating anecdotes as:

The subway begins to make sense. Patience is whittled away; sarcasm often ensues. New friends are made, routines established, and city life begins to feel like second nature. In other words, newcomers find themselves becoming New Yorkers.

It’s not just that this is sort of dumb, or that it’s been done by the Times before. Yup, people do, indeed, settle down and get to know a place after they’ve been there awhile. This might work if the author used the story of settling down in New York to illustrate something about New York as a city, or even the sort of people who move there. But this actually just makes use of old fashioned stereotypes about the city:

Ian Ingersoll’s moment happened within weeks of his move from Seattle to New York last fall. He suddenly found himself exasperated by slow moving pedestrians, and, like a true New Yorker, began darting around them instead.

Oh, like all New Yorkers, he is impatient. And later:

Ms. Phin already finds herself getting annoyed more easily, even though she arrived from Texas only two months ago. The culture at her job, as a marketer for an engineering company, was a lot more abrasive than she had expected. “Nothing is sugarcoated,” she said. And so, she is finding herself growing a tougher skin. “I thought I’d bring my niceness with me,” she said, “but already I feel an edge developing. Because you need to, to deal.”

Because New Yorkers are all so blunt, you know. New Yorkers figure that out.

Missing only are anecdotes about how cigarettes cost eight dollars, people have funny accents, and something about getting a slice of New York pizza.

“Hey! You know what says ‘We’ve got a regularly updating but superficial politics page?” said one Time PR exec to another. “A go-cart! With free t-shirts!”

If you get too close (say, if you are angling for your very own medium-sized schwag shirt), a trying-to-be-helpful, blue shirt wearing Page-ette will offer to program The Page RSS feed into your PDA. I’m learning you have to be very careful out West.

Want to know what The Best Political Team on Television looks like when they are not on television? Answer: About the same, just less bushy-tailed.

Bonus shot of the CBS’s teamless Katie Couric, just a couple of dozen sweaty delegates and onlookers away:

Following up on Clint’s scene-setting description of reporters disgruntled that MSNBC commentators chatted over former Republican congressman Jim Leach’s speech Monday night, here are a few more call-outs on broadcast decisions to cut away from speeches in order to provide some pundit talk (and a not so shabby reason to consider watching uncut streaming video):

Steve Bennen over at the Washington Monthly, writing about Leach: “Maybe if he'd challenged Chris Matthews to a duel, news outlets would have taken his remarks more seriously.”

From TPM’s Josh Marshall: “At the moment, Fox News has cut away from Mark Warner's keynote address to show Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani talking about Bill Ayers.”

And from Ta-Nehisi Coates, over at The Atlantic, some live blogging during Montana governor Schweitzer’s energetic speech last night:

sounds excited. And he's tackling McCain.

UPDATE: Also, nice note on "American wind and sunshine." Even if it is a little jingoistic. Even the sun is American!

UPDATE #2: OK, he kinda killed it. And MSNBC missed the whole thing.

(This last, by the by, works as a simple example of Micah Sifry’s big picture interactivity, which I wrote about earlier: Coates was by his computer and presumably watching a couple of broadcasts at once; from his stakeout (at home?), he could simultaneously hear Schweitzer speak, criticize MSNBC’s cut-away, and inject some humor into his live blogging. Comprehensive? No, but most readers who would be reading Coates’s blog during the speech itself would be watching a broadcast or feed too.)

MediaMatters has a round-up of the broadcasts’ missed Leach Moments here.

The big news, and I use that word loosely, last night was all about The Speech. From about 20 feet above stage level, I watched the speech from the print press riser. None of the scribes alongside me had a honest head-on view of the stage—those seats, not surprisingly, go to the TV cameras and photographers.

The print section was littered with advance copies of Clinton’s speech, and several glowing laptops revealed stories already written, with a few TKs waiting to be plugged in once the deed was done. The journalists held applause and cheering, but when Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer got off a few good laugh lines (like: “We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards, including the ones he can’t even remember”) there were smiles and chuckles.

Watching at home, you might have missed that quip, and the rest of the bolo-and-jeans wearing Schweitzer’s pleasant-up-front-singeing-in-the-back speech. MSNBC chose to feature a floor interview between David Gregory and Arizona Governor Bill Richardson, which focused heavily, as if to tee off the night’s big event, on his Obama-endorsing “Judas” moment, and residual animosity between the Clinton family and their old cabinet crony.

Because really (and CJR will have more on this later in the day) that drama, and related strains—the PUMAs, the polled working class whites, the ex-Hillary voters, the Lynn Rothschilds—is the story the press just can’t quit.

And, so, when Schweitzer shoved off—despite the crowd’s enthusiasm, you could feel the networks’ lust for a vaudevillian-elephant hook—the stage was clear for the big event. (Literally—like a dropping piston, the speaking podium slipped below podium level.) A few photographers in exile in the print section hoisted their stadium-sized cameras to the ready, only to have the lights dim and the Chelsea-narrated video retrospective roll.

And then, the Best Political Team on Television, ensconced on the CNN convention floor set moored along the Pennsylvania delegation, put down their BlackBerries and turned around in their chairs to watch. It’s been a good year of Clinton-Obama drama, with a few boiling months right in the middle. And at this apogee moment, even if you are a television professional, why let a monitor intermediate?

As the video wrapped up, Chelsea took the stage with a hand held microphone. Now we had genuine Clinton blood up there. Bright white “Hillary” signs carrying the legal disclaimer “Paid for by Obama for America” (how far we’ve come!) had been dispatched by DayGlo vest-wearing volunteers across the floor. Chelsea called for her “hero” to take the stage, and a human flash of a suited man rushed out to take the baton-microphone off the scion’s hand, so mother and child could hug for the cameras, the crowd, and the crowd watching courtesy of the cameras. The white signs—blinding when compared to Obama’s sedate blue—flashed through the arena. Cameras clicked at a furious pace, to a thunder that can maybe only be topped by doubling, or tripling the crowd.

Which is exactly what Obama plans to do tomorrow night before some 70,000 attendees, and a likely 30 million viewers at home. Good thing there’s a Skycam.

CJR convention correspondent Gabe Pressman notes that much of the coverage of last night's festivities focuses on the fact that, despite supposition to the contrary, Hillary Clinton's delegates seemed more than willing to accept Barack Obama as their candidate for president. But as Gabe points out, there was never much evidence to support the idea of a Hillary rebellion in the first place. Lester Feder has written for CJR about the myth of the angry female Clinton voter; the idea of the radicalized Clinton delegate seems to have been similarly incorrect. After the last night's speech, journalists were apparently clustered around the New York delegation, going person to person, trying to find one of the vaunted Obama refuseniks. No dice. "The whole idea seems to have come from pundits," Gabe said. (I'm paraphrasing.) "They erected their own straw man, and then they brought it down. And it never existed in the first place."

The topic of Hillary and the Pantsuits was a favorite story throughout the primary and last night, it got its (maybe? hopefully?) final night.

In addition to wondering if Clinton could bring the party together, the media was clamoring to find out what would she wear?

Good Morning America posed the question thusly:

Clinton's every word, inflection and facial expression will be dissected. The world will also be looking at what she's wearing. Specifically, what color pantsuit will the New York senator pull out of her closet for this crucial speech?

Kos had a poll.

And then, when the night was over and Hillary appeared in a tangerine, pumpkin, or peach suit, the analysts went to work.

“Vibrant orange” was the verdict from the Washington Post, after wondering if she “would she go with the orange or red, colors that attract attention? Or the blue or green, which have calming properties?”

“Biohazard orange, the color-wheel opposite of the blue podium background, creating the starkest possible focus on Mrs. Clinton,” was the call from New York magazine.

“The fire-bright shade of orange Hillary picked to wear tonight must lie directly across the color wheel from the particular shade of punched-up blue that flanked the DNC podium. The contrast couldn't have been sharper,” proclaimed Slate’s XXFactor blog.

Body-language experts have already weighed in on Hillary's unspoken message, so it’s only fair that the color of her suit receive equal scrutiny.

And Michelle Obama’s dress too received some discussion, with the most ridiculous comment coming from a blogger at the St. Petersburg Times:

As Michelle Obama talked about blue collar values, I couldn't help but think her voice was being piped through that big broach attached to the front of her collar.

Oh, man. Can’t wait to hear what everyone says about Bill, Biden, and Barack’s outfits.

MoDo was perplexed by the mood of the DNC, so she did the obvious thing. She turned to a man who could make sense of it all (emphasis mine).

But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru.

Yup, because Murphy has no agenda whatsoever in parsing the state of the Democratic party. He has no previous affiliations that might reveal his hopes for an outcome in November. And because he is, you know, a social psychologist trained at assessing how groups and individuals make decisions.

Turning to Murphy to assess the DNC is like asking Ben & Jerry's to comment on Baskin-Robbins new flavor. All you're gonna get is sour grapes.

On Monday, Clint inaugurated our "Dubious Moments in Self-Promotion" series, in which we document the often-ridiculous ends to which media organizations will go to advertise themselves to...well, mostly, other members of the media.

Today we inaugurate another series: "Dubious Moments in Dem Promotion," in which we document the often-ridiculous ends to which the Democrats and the people who love (to profit from) them will go to advertise themselves to...well, mostly, other Democrats.

Part 1: the Obama Action Figure.

While Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne made his way across the convention floor to hear Sen. Ted Kennedy speak Monday night from the vantage of the Massachusetts delegation (“I still think of myself as a Massachusetts kid,” he wrote late that night), Slate’s Jack Shafer may have been rereading his Press Box column from mid-August entitled “Conventional Nonsense: Making the case for a press boycott of the national political conventions.” Or, as it might have been named: “Why I’m proud I’m not going to the 2008 conventions, even though I covered them in 2004.” Here’s a snippet:

…one way to improve coverage of the four-day, quadrennial conventions of Republicans and Democrats would be for the TV networks to assign sportscasters like Bob Costas, Joe Morgan, and John Madden instead of political journalists to report on the gatherings. They know how to make a game with a foregone conclusion seem entertaining.

Hey, I hear Jimmy Breslin is at the DNC, if that counts. So anyway, here’s Shafer’s main point of complaint:

Unless a brokered convention threatens to break out, these political gatherings tend to produce very little real news. Yet the networks, the newspapers, the magazines, and the Web sites continue to insist on sending battalions of reporters to sift for itsy specks of information.

The press head count of 15,000 is staggering and absolutely worth questioning. But the bulk of Shafer’s argument—that there’s no news, and therefore no need for reporters—sounds like croaking for croaking’s sake. (His sportscasters comment is the closest he gets to productive, arguing, as it does, for reporters who can cover the hyper-crafted conventions in a different way from the political reporters who are veterans of the campaign trail.)

Several other journalists have stated their reasons for or attitudes about staying home. Some drove the point like Shafer, while others just shrugged their shoulders before turning ‘em just slightly away from Denver’s Google-enhanced reportorial mosh pit. At Mother Jones, for example, the newly installed Kevin Drum, another non-attendee, wrote half-heartedly about Michelle Obama’s speech:

I'll confess that I find it almost impossible to judge political speeches. My attention usually wanders a bit because I've heard all (or most) of it before, I'm hyper-aware that it's all heavily staged and that every word is designed for a particular purpose, etc.

Limiting his own opinion to the thought that the speech was “a little artificial sounding,” he ended with a series of queries that seemed to question the news value of carefully prepared speeches, and ultimately tossed the final verdict back to his readers:

But everyone else seems to think it was a home run. Do they really know? Are they just saying that out of partisan loyalty? Are they saying it because everyone else is saying it? Or was it genuinely a home run? I dunno. I'm afraid I'm autistic on this particular wavelength. What did you all think?

From the ordinarily thoughtful and detail-driven Drum, it’s a bit puzzling to read what comes across as a lack of enthusiasm for analysis.

At TechPresident, a group blog that monitors the candidates’ use of the web, Micah Sifry took a more positive slant in a column on Sunday detailing what he thought was most interesting in non-attendance (its title, “Why I'm Not Going to Denver or Minneapolis,” is, like Shafer’s, rather self-explanatory):

I do think there's something new and interesting developing around these big political events, a kind of community experience that coalesces and takes shape via the web when many of us are either at, or paying attention to, something important all at the same time. So when I say I'm interested in "watching the web watch the convention," what I think I mean is I want to see how the world live web works during an event of this magnitude. And by NOT going and being in the center of the storm and instead watching and participating from a distance, I am betting that it may be easier to see some of the larger patterns at work.

Of course this means that there has to be a mess of people (the “battalions of reporters” whose descent into Denver Shafer bemoaned) covering the convention to allow for Sifry to do what he wants to do, but he acknowledged that fact high up by framing his post as an individual decision (“I'm not sure how or if I can add any value to, or interact with the convention”) rather than as a judgment against superfluous journalistic kowtowing.

Sifry’s point is most valid in its argument for interactivity among reporters. Case in point: Commentary’s Contentions blog and TNR’s The Stump demonstrated last night how interaction (and coordination) among bloggers can produce interesting, if not comprehensive, results for readers. (TNR’s Noam Scheiber and Michael Crowley, for instance, sat in different spots inside Pepsi Center, commenting on the speeches but also reacting to each other’s posts; Commentary’s bloggers didn’t appear to be on site, but supplied constant and complementary witticisms.)

So let’s return for a moment to Shafer’s column. Back in mid-August, he wrote: “If the political press corps were honest, they'd start every convention story with the finding that nothing important happened that day and that your attention is not needed.”

Alternatively, in the name of productivity, the press could cover the circus, including its own involvement in it—with an ear attuned to Sifry’s interactive big picture (via colleagues able to piece it together back at home) and, as some of the above-mentioned bloggers showed last night, with a ready sense of humor.

There are apparently 15,000 journalists attending the Democratic National Convention. Here is what some of them are doing:

14,000 are wearing terrible suits.

7,500 aren't doing much at all. This isn't surprising. Only a small number of reporters actually have a reason to be here. The rest are conventioneering—seeing old friends, eating Democratic-themed menu items ("Barack Obama's Turkey Chili") in pandering local restaurants, brandishing their press passes at all comers, looking for free things, and spending about 14 percent of their time trying to rustle up enough stories to justify their presence to their editors. These reporters are the ones mostly writing about themselves, or their friends, or their experiences exploring Denver with their friends ("I was enjoying some turkey chili with David Broder yesterday..."). At least they're open about the fact that they're enjoying themselves.

4,021 are smugly bad-mouthing the convention and its participants in their story ledes ("There is no reason for so many journalists to be here"). Oh, you truth-telling rebels! These dismissals invariably ring false. If they really didn't want to be here, they wouldn't have come.

2,294 are bitching about only having perimeter press passes. The press corps is divided into four levels of access—perimeter, arena, hall, and floor. Arena, hall, and floor passes are allowed to enter the Pepsi Center. Those with perimeter passes are restricted to the parking lot. Some of these are mournfully wandering around like Diogenes, looking for stories, or perhaps discarded arena and hall passes, but only finding sunburn. Others have tried to sneak into the Pepsi Center, only to be rebuffed by the robustly efficient Young Dem Robot security staffers. The rest are crammed into four or five huge white tents scattered across the parking lot. The tents house the remote operations of most of the news operations. In Pavilion Four, there is free Coors and free Swedish meatballs and a kiosk where media members can have campaign buttons made featuring their own names. There are also several comfortable leather chairs and flat screen televisions. During Hillary Clinton's speech, several women clap when Clinton thanks the "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits." One of these women is wearing a button that reads "Vote Jeanne President."

1,026 are drunk. This is as it should be.

500 don't have credentials, but are trying desperately to get them. The credentialing process occurs in a Hampton Inn about a forty-minute walk from the Pepsi Center. Each morning, reporters have to come and claim their credentials for that particular day. The media members are separated by medium—newspaper reporters on one floor, magazine reporters on another, multimedia reporters on another. CJR's credentials are issued from the leftovers pile (third floor). It's Denver's answer to the Island of Misfit Toys—bloggers, activists, eighteen-year-olds, men wearing giveaway T-shirts, men complaining about having to pay eleven dollars for parking. One intrepid credentialee is so devoted to his job that he is videotaping the room, like a tourist. A DemBot hustles over and stops him. "There is a lot of sensitive material in this room," he says. There is most definitely not.

340 are confused about how to find the proper press office inside the Pepsi Center. There are different press rooms with euphonic names like Radio Row, and Talk Show Row. Many of the broadcast journalists are stationed on the uppermost floor of the arena, in what is probably the press box during regular operation. Unaffiliated journalists are stashed on a Being John Malkovich-style semi-floor in the building's mysterious middle. The unaffiliated press center is a large oblong room featuring several large, oblong tables, no wireless access, and dozens of reporters for small and desperate outlets. Everybody here looks vaguely depressed, or aggravated, possibly because the room was so difficult to find. One indignant woman, in a pink blazer, is desperately trying to find somewhere to have a cigarette. "They told me I had to go downstairs to have a smoke," she said, shaking her head violently, as if she is about to abandon all caution and light up in the press elevator. She steps out onto the unaffiliated level. "Can I have a smoke here?" she asks. She cannot. The Blogger Lounge is appended to the unaffiliated press room. Its "lounge" credentials apparently hinge on the fact that it has sofas.

150 are in the CNN Grill. At the 2004 RNC in New York, CNN took over the Tick Tock Diner on 34th and 8th and offered round-the-clock free food and beverages to CNN staffers, their guests, and their hangers-on. In Denver, they have outdone themselves, assuming control of a giant brick building in front of the Pepsi Center, painting CNN-friendly slogans on its face (CNN=POLITICS, in a font face that brooks no dissent) and hanging a large electric star that reads CNN Grill. The Grill is ostensibly restricted to CNN staffers and talk show guests, and security is tight, although at times during the afternoon the Grill sets up an ice cream cart behind a fence and distributes free ice cream to all. 200 yards away, Fox News has commandeered another building, and it is much easier to get inside that one.

Sixty-two are enjoying massages.

Seven of them are having their photographs taken with Captain Morgan, the rum-loving pirate who, for some reason, was credentialed into the convention. Captain Morgan wears a red frock coat and a frilly shirt and sounds like he was once told in a high school acting class to project his voice from his diaphragm.

One of them is frantically trying to engineer a meeting between Captain Morgan and Ted Sorenson, the painfully dignified Democratic legend who is finishing an interview with Tavis Smiley just as Captain Morgan bursts into the tent, T-shirts and Morganettes in tow. That person is me, and, in this, I am a failure. But, then again, we are all sort of failures here.

Last week, a reader, Jeff Huggins, asked me to address why the media have failed to explain climate change in a way the public “gets.” Yesterday, I published the first installment of my response, discussing one of the two elements involved in “getting” it: the basics of climate science. Today, I address the second: an understanding of the various points upon which scientists agree and disagree.

Delineating and accurately describing the various points of science—from the relationship between anthropogenic greenhouse gases and warming to the various impacts of that warming—and explaining where “consensus” (a controversial term) lies and where it doesn’t is one of the most important and challenging tasks for climate reporters. Getting it wrong can create widespread confusion. Max Boykoff made this point in 2004 when he released a paper with his brother arguing that the inclusion of a skeptic’s perspective on the fundamental question of anthropogenic (human-made) warming leads to “balance as bias (pdf).”

Indeed, Stanford political scientist Jon Krosnick recently completed research, yet to be published, which found that including a skeptical perspective in a news story about anthropogenic warming reduced the proportion of people who said they perceived scientific consensus from 58 percent to 47 percent.

Krosnick’s team assigned 2,600 volunteers to watch one of two television news stories. Some viewers watched the complete version of the story, which included a skeptical perspective, and others watched a version in which the skeptic had been edited out. One of the stories concerned the fundamental question: Is the rate of warming increasing? The other concerned the question: Will the impacts of warming be catastrophic? There is strong consensus that the answer to the first question is yes, but much less accord about the latter. In both stories, however, the skeptic’s voice felled any notion of scientific consensus — an indication that journalists must be very careful to give context whenever they venture into such matters, and not just stick in an outlying voice out of some distorted sense of objectivity.

“One of the findings from our new work is that ‘getting it,’ so to speak, is strongly correlated with trust in the news media,” Krosnick said in an interview. “The more an American trusts the media to be accurate and unbiased, the more likely they are to endorse mainstream scientific views about climate change.”

And the media are, despite Huggins’s criticisms, slowly but surely eliminating false balance when addressing human activity’s role in global warming. According to Boykoff’s more recent work (pdf), “balanced” coverage of the anthropogenic contribution to climate change tapered off from 2003 to 2006 in the five largest American papers in favor of stories that depicted it as undeniably significant. Furthermore, stories that depict man’s contribution to warming as negligible have all but disappeared from news pages. Regional papers seem to be improving as well. According to Krosnick, though, misunderstanding persists due to the early problems.

“Our research suggests that there's actually kind of a carry-over, that people don't forget that quickly,” he said. “It's kind of like the dog that didn't bark in Sherlock Holmes’s stories. Americans heard a lot skeptics in a lot of news stories for a lot years, and the impact of those skeptics doesn't disappear simply because the skeptics aren't being mentioned any more.”

All improvements aside, however, Huggins thinks there are still some serious problems with climate coverage; in one of his regular comments on Dot Earth, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s blog, Huggins wrote:

If the large majority of scientists are correct on global warming, and if the Times genuinely means what it says in its occasional editorials on the subject, then the coverage of the issue in the news pages is clearly way below the task, and way off-mark. By this, I mean things like placement, clarity, frequency, cohesiveness (bringing the whole matter together in an understandable “aha” way), and related matters.

Put another way, there is a major de-linkage between the Times’ news coverage of the issue (global warming, and ways to address it) and the nature and weight (not to mention urgency) of the issue itself.

On the matter of frequency, Huggins may have trouble making his case. Newspaper coverage of global warming has spiked over the last few years and the Times has probably covered it from a greater variety of angles than anyone else. It is one of the few outlets, for instance, that have realized that the climate story is essentially an energy story and it dedicated an excellent series, The Energy Challenge, to exploring that connection.

Huggins’s other arguments have more merit. Placement is major concern. In April, American University professor Matthew Nisbet analyzed research by the Pew Center, which found that only 2 percent of front-page stories in the Times and The Wall Street Journal have focused on either science or the environment.

“If our highest-quality news outlets are not drawing audience attention to important news about science or the environment,” Nisbet argued, “you can bet other news organizations aren't either.”

To make matters worse, the global-warming stories that do make it onto the front page tend to concern the most contentious aspects of climate science. Revkin, who has published quite a bit of media criticism on his blog, has long complained that the editorial quest for “hot conclusions” and the “front-page thought” can lead to a glossing over of important context about scientific opinion. It can also lead to the promotion of stories where argument itself is the selling point. Stanford’s Krosnick said that in addition to effects on public opinion his latest research supports the idea that disagreement is more compelling than agreement.

"When we showed people the story with the skeptic, they rated the story as significantly more interesting than the people who saw the story without the skeptic,” he said. “So the idea that a ‘boxing match’ sells newspapers turns out to be true."

The boxing-match analogy leads back to Huggins’s concerns about “clarity” and “cohesiveness.” The fact is, there are many points of climate science—the rate of warming and sea-level rise, the intensity of hurricanes, drought and flood patterns—on which there is still substantial disagreement among scientists. Given that most climate-science coverage these days is devoted to impacts and solutions, the single greatest impediment to public understanding may be that journalists have done a poor job of specifying what question (or questions) is being covered in any given article.

In a talk at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference in 2006, Revkin urged listeners to think of each point of science as corresponding to its own bell-curve like graph representing the relevant state of consensus. For the questions of warming and humans’ contribution to that warming, the curves are high and narrow. For many others, however, the curves look less like bells than rolling sand dunes. Based on Revkin’s talk, Boykoff published two similar graphs in the journal Nature that illustrated that media has indeed reflected the mixed opinions about hurricane intensity and success of the Kyoto Protocol.

“One of the things I hope I’ve said consistently is that it’s not that balanced reporting needs to be shunned when addressing climate-change issues,” Boykoff said in an interview. “It just needs to be used much more carefully."

Because journalists have not clearly explained that each question has its own curve, news consumers typically conflate them. In other words, when the public sees uncertainty about the various impacts of climate, they tend to extrapolate that to mean there is uncertainty about the link between human-caused greenhouse gases and warming. The predicament almost begs for a disclaimer at the top of every climate story: "Warning: this article reflects legitimate scientific uncertainty about impacts of global warming; that uncertainty, however, does not detract from the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the globe." Journalists’ inability to communicate that more artfully probably does more than anything else to thwart the “a-ha” moment that Huggins is looking for.

There are limits to how much blame can be placed on the press, however, and contrary to Huggins assertions, one might make a strong argument that the Times has, in fact, covered climate in a way the public “gets,” or should “get.” It might even be possible to argue that the media, overall, has as well. In a blog post last December, Revkin asked, “Are words worthless in the climate fight?” After all, he noted, people have a tendency to be apathetic about long-term threats like climate change and even when the threat is apparent (as some impacts of warming already are) people tend “normalize” bad situations.

As Nisbet, the American University professor, has argued, one of the most effective journalistic strategies for breaking through such impasses is choosing the right frame for climate stories. These can include the “environmental stewardship” frame, the “public health” frame, or perhaps most importantly, the “solutions” frame. Climate alarmism can be just problematic as skepticism when it comes to the public “getting” it. Many journalists have recognized that; Nisbet has discussed how Time magazine, in particular, has shifted from a “be worried” to a “we can solve it” attitude.

Time, which recently published a “call to arms” for action on climate change, might be one of the publications that has elevated the level of urgency in its coverage to a point that critics like Huggins and others who think the public needs to be scared straight on climate, might deem acceptable. At the same time, however, those critics must realize that not all publications are comfortable in the role of cheerleader. They might also consider the argument that even if the public has not yet “gotten” climate issues, it is the process of “getting” them more and more. What would be useful, and has not occurred so far, is research that examines individuals’ opinions about global warming relevant to their specific news diets (i.e. whether they get their news from television newspapers, or blogs, and which ones).

Polls and surveys aside, however, it is hard to ignore the fact that broad swathes of global society - from politicians to captains of industry to homemakers - are now operating under the assumption that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is a good idea. People are coming to understand that global warming is inherently an energy challenge and that we are in need of an energy “revolution” comparable to some to of the greatest public mobilizations in history. The transformation in mindset over the last two years has been nothing short of extraordinary and the press, for all its shortcomings, is partly to thank for that. Huggins is right, we still need the media to strive to do better, but even if they do, “getting” it may be just a matter of time.

In the media game of tag, Joe Scarborough just called "Not It."

After offering ten different suggestions for how Hillary Clinton speech could have more effectively demonstrated her support for Barack Obama on Morning Joe, Scarborough uttered a typical bizarro-world line: "We don't to want analyze this too much."

Too little, too late, Joe.

In the early scrabble of thoughts, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic’s Michael Crowley, and McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds, all take issue with the fact that in her speech Hillary Clinton didn’t address foreign policy and Obama’s preparedness as commander in chief.

Sullivan: “To my mind, however, it was an average performance, not a slashing attack on the Bush-Cheney record, nor a rousing rallying cry for Obama, nor a very insightful analysis of the country's problems. There was virtually nothing about foreign policy. She did what she had to do, tell her voters to back Obama.”

Bounds: “Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief. Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead.”

Crowley: “I'll amend this if I'm mistaken but on first read of Hillary's speech text I see no clear, flat assertion that Obama is qualified and prepared to be commander in chief from day one, which of course was always her central critique of him. That was something I had expected to see.”

(Ben Smith at Politico mentions it briefly as well.)

Maybe we’re supposed to take the hint from Clinton’s campaign song-cum-entrance/exit music (a Big Head Todd and the Monsters tune that blasted over the speakers tonight): “Oh yes you can change the world / There is no other one / Believe and you will find blue sky.”

The Los Angeles Times goes cuckoo for “Hillary the _____” madlibs trying to nail a metaphor that aptly describes the role Sen. Hillary Clinton assumed during her speech tonight. First, a lawyerly lead from an article titled "Hillary Clinton takes the stage as Obama's advocate":

Hillary Rodham Clinton put her presidential campaign behind her on Tuesday night and returned, for a highly anticipated half-hour, to an old job. She was an attorney again, her client was former rival Barack Obama, and her speech to the Democratic National Convention was effectively the closing argument to a jury of her most ardent supporters.

And from the LAT’s Top of the Ticket campaign blog:

For the third time in less than three months, Hillary Rodham Clinton played the good soldier. Whether some of her troops chose to follow her lead remains to be seen.

OK, so Hillary is an attorney convincing troops to rally around her client, I mean rival, Barack. Got it.

With MSNBC taking a left turn, CNN tonight marks a course for the center.

Larry King, the elder statesmen at The Most Trusted Name in News, decided to dedicate two nights in a row to letting Republicans respond to speeches made at the DNC.

Last night offered this insightful commentary (from a write-up on CNN.com):

Conservative commentator Ben Stein said Michelle Obama's speech "was just a mass of cliches." He took issue with her comments about her background as a mother and wife.

"I don't get what is so impressive about her. Lots and lots of people are mothers. Lots and lots of people have sick fathers. Lots and lots of people have children," Stein said.

And tonight, GOP strategist Kellyanne Conway offered this backhanded compliment of Hillary Clinton's speech: It was so good. Too good because, Conway said, it might have made some of her supporters wonder why in fact she wasn't given a place on the ticket.

Homegirl just can't catch a break.

...the Huffington Post missed tonight's Unity memo. But, apparently, the site got the "Barack Is a Dignified Artist Magnet and Hillary is Just Plain Crazy" memo loud and clear:

I watched Hillary Clinton's much-anticipated floor speech tonight at The Big Tent. (Not the metaphorical one--though you could argue that that version got just a bit of play tonight, too--but Google's literal incarnation.)

In short--among The Big Tent's bloggers, anyway--Clinton killed. The tent's darkened interior, lit only by the red-and-blue of the various TV screens on its periphery--and, of course, by the hazy glow of the small army of laptops within that--erupted several times during the speech in rancorous cheers. The biggest applause lines?

- Anything that mentioned Barack Obama being president
- Anything that mentioned Michelle Obama being First Lady
- Anything that mentioned Unity
- "It's fitting that George Bush and John McCain will be appearing together in the Twin Cities...because it's awfully hard to tell them apart."
- "sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits"
-"No way. No how. No McCain."

We just heard a rousing call and answer from Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, speaking right before Sen. Hillary Clinton tonight at the DNC. Like a good warm-up comedian, he got the crowd energized.

Schweitzer: “Let me ask you something. Can we afford Four… More… Years?"

Crowd: “NO!”

Schweitzer: “Not bad. Is it time for a change?"

Crowd: “YES!”

Schweitzer: “Pretty good! When do we need it?"

Crowd: “NOW!”

Schweitzer: “And who do we need?”

Crowd: “Barack!”

Schweitzer: “That’s right—Barack Obama. [Laughs.] That’s right, that’s right—Barack Obama is the change we need.”

At the end of his speech, he called out: “They need all of us to stand up. Colorado, stand up!” He encouraged a few more states, then, to enthusiastic cheers, yelled: “In the cheap seats, stand up!”

And MSNBC’s camera panned to… Bill Clinton.

The whole broadcasting outdoors thing is a silly gimmick that hardly ever pays off. But tonight as MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan speculated that Hillary supporters may vote for McCain over Obama because they see the Illinois senator as empty of substance, the crowd erupted in boos.

It's like a chorus of media critics swelling with disapproval.

What do reporters do? Reporters ask questions. Who? What? When? And so on. But sometimes, there’s nothing to ask those five-W questions about, so they start asking more complicated questions, ones without Ws or answers.

1. Can the rift between Hillary and Obama supporters be healed?
This question is still getting serious play in print and on the airwaves. And there's no answer despite all the speculation.

2. Should the Democrats be stronger in attacking McCain during the convention?
Yesterday, political strategist James Carville railed against the noble tone of the first day of the DNC, and today we can't
stop talking about it.

The problem with questions like these is that there a) no answers and b) no way to report the story. Alas, if
Jack Shafer and the other naysayers are right and conventions are devoid of substance, perhaps the press feels compelled to goad the Obama campaign into taking action... and you know... making news that can be reported.

It’s an easy mark. Political candidates who end up coming short can always blame the press for the loss. For being too hard on them. For being too easy on their opponent. For slanting coverage. For inadequately explaining their attributes. For undercovering good stories.

So guess who’s saying all that at this year’s Democratic convention?

“I didn’t think the media treated Hillary fairly,” said Angela Ramirez Holmes, a delegate from Pleasanton, California.

Not surprisingly, many of the complaints coming from Ramirez Holmes and the other Clinton delegates I spoke to, both men and women, centered around the perceived (and occasionally very real) sexism directed at their candidate.

“I feel like women candidates sometimes get covered on what they wear, what they eat, how often they work out, instead of for their brains,” said Ramirez Holmes, who works as a local political consultant in the Bay area.

“I don’t remember any comments about Barack or Biden about what color tie they were wearing, how it matched their skin, or whether it was too bright,” said Amy Torello, the chair of the Alameda County party.

Micheal Wagner, a salesmanager and Clinton delegate from Spokane, referred to Robin Givhan’s infamous Washington Post article parsing the candidate’s neckline during a single senatorial appearance.

“The sexism was in all states, from one to ten,” echoed Cynthia Schwartz, another Washington state delegate. “Like when Tucker Carlson said that whenever he heard her voice he wanted to cross his legs. That was a nine or ten.”

“My gut is that there is sill an acceptable level of sexism in this country that even in mixed company you can say incredibly sexist things,” said Alan Clendenin, an air traffic control manager from Tampa. “The most frustrating thing about it is that it went unchallenged, by the party, by the candidates, but also by the rest of the press. The media should be a watchdog for that sort of thing.”

But the Hillary delegates’ complaints also trod more familiar ground, singling out particular coverage decisions and frames that they thought worked against Clinton.

“When Hulk Hogan endorsed Obama, there were hours of coverage. When the astronaut, John Glenn, endorsed Clinton, it was a ticker,” says Ramirez Holmes. “Now, tell me how Hulk Hogan ranks above a senator from Ohio?”

Others weren’t happy with the way the press treated the final contests of the race. “The focus wasn’t on all the primaries she was winning. There was more talk about ‘why isn’t she dropping out.’ The news media never emphasized all of the positives,” said Schwartz, “Even when she won Pennsylvania by 10 points, they weren’t talking about how marvelous that was. They were talking about how it was less than the 15% that they though she should win.”

Several of the delegates singled out MSNBC, unsurprisingly.

“MSNBC had Hillary in their crosshairs from the moment the race started picking up,” said Clendinin.

“They should have been straight off announcing their coverage as editorial comment—Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews. And I’m really disappointed with Andrea Mitchell, who used to be a real reporter,” says Wagner.

In the end, several said, the coverage drove them to something of an apostasy in Democratic circles.

“A lot of Hillary supporters fled to the most conservative news feed. Like our old friend Bill O’Reilly,” says Wagner. “I actually find him to be a real newsman.”

"Why three in the morning?" was the question on many people's minds after they received the Obama campaign's early morning vice presidential notification text message last Saturday.

Mainstream journalists and bloggers alike have surmised that Obama intentionally released his announcement as a way to make a subtle reference to Hillary Clinton's red phone attack ad.

Au contraire, says CNN political editor Mark Preston, who claims that the Obama campaign intended to release the news at eight o’clock Saturday morning. But after CNN reported that Biden was the confirmed nominee at 12:42 AM, other new organizations soon followed suit. Obama's campaign decided that the news "was going to get out," so they issued the 3 AM text message.

"Every election, there's one story that every news organization clamors to break, and that's the VP nomination," CNN political director Sam Feist told CJR. "I think the Obama campaign did a good job keeping the announcement secret as long as they did."

The news broke after most print outlets' deadlines had passed. The New York Times's Saturday front-page headline was decidedly stale: "Field Narrows for Obama’s Running Mate." The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were among the few major papers to get the announcement into their final editions.

Gibbs told CNN that a “vast majority of the people” still learned of Biden's nomination in the morning.
Despite anger in the blogosphere over the assumption that Obama notified news outlets of Biden's nomination before his own supporters, Feist maintained that the news did not come from a leak in the Obama campaign. "We had four rock-hard sources," he said, all of whom were outside Camp Obama.

After hours of impatient blather and on-air BlackBerry updates CNN was finally able to confirm that Joe Biden was the nominee. John King, who delivered CNN's on-air announcement, was also responsible for breaking the news of Al Gore's nomination in 1992 and Lloyd Bentsen's in 1988 while he was a reporter for the AP, Feist said.

So far, relatively little media coverage has been devoted to the Obama campaign's admission that CNN's reporting influenced its announcement. Much more has been devoted to discussed unsubstantiated rumors that the announcement's timing could be a political barb directed at Obama's former Democratic opponent. The CNN Effectdescribes the impact that round-the-clock news coverage has on the political process. With the advent of cable news, this academic theory was originally put forth as a description of the news media's influence on international politics. But in this case, the CNN Effect can also clearly be seen as an ingredient in domestic.

Because of CNN's report, and the pressure that news outlets placed on one another in their relentless pursuit of early news on the Democratic veep nomination, Obama's publicity stunt may not have gone exactly according to plan. But his campaign still used a new medium in a way that has not been seen in presidential campaign history—harvesting contacts and generating press coverage in the process. How's that for using media to impact the political process?

Glued to gavel-to-gavel convention coverage on cable news? Then you surely know that Hillary and Chelsea Clinton just did a walk-through at the Pepsi Center. But did you know:

"Maliki demands 'specific deadline' for U.S. troop pullout"

"Pakistan's governing coalitions splits"

"Car bomb kills at least 25 in Diyala provence [of Iraq]"

"North Korea Makes Plutonium Threat"

And, in news that would be preoccupying cable channels were there nothing going on in Denver (something will happen there, later, right?):

"Hurricane Heads For Haiti"

"Caylee's mom wanted to give her up for adoption"

DENVER— It was a political spectacular, filled with nostalgia and deep emotion.

As the Democrats began their 45th national convention, organizers pulled out the stops. There were cheers and tears for Senator Edward Kennedy, stricken with brain cancer, as he exhorted delegates to wage war against the Republicans. And the candidate’s wife, Michelle, poised and confident, pleaded the case for her husband with passion.

Great pageantry. Brilliant choreography. But what is a journalist’s role in covering an event like this? Are we mere spectators, or stenographers manipulated by the political powers that be?

It’s perplexing. If we are reduced to being witnesses to a big show staged to impress the viewing public, are we fulfilling our responsibility?

Certainly, the haunting presence of Ted Kennedy and his attempt to rally the troops was news. The stately Michelle Obama’s speech was news, too.

But are the flashing lights and the music, cheers, and tears obscuring more vital matters?

Have we examined the Democratic platform to see what it promises or fails to promise? Have we made clear to voters the differences between Democratic and Republican health programs? Have we explored their differences on abortion rights, the economy, taxes, and Iraq?

Have we told the story of the new corps of Obama operatives who have taken over the party organization? Some of the Obama people have behaved arrogantly—denying credentials to people who have served the party well but not on the Obama team.

In our zeal to cover the spectacles are we ignoring substance?

I go back to the convention that nominated Adlai Stevenson in Chicago in 1952.

I see this convention as tightly controlled. Some veteran journalists have had trouble getting credentials. How democratic are the Democrats?

Quiz: Which of the following is an excerpt from the David Brooks column in today's New York Times and which is a bit from the ad for Michael Moore's new book in "The Arts" section of today's Times? (H/t, CJR reader):

A) "How many Democrats does it take to lose the most winnable election in American history? Not many. Just a few 'close advisors' to Barack Obama who tell him a bunch of asinine stuff and he ends up listening to them instead of his own heart."

B) "[Barack ] Obama may yet recover his core focus. Now he has to preserve it against his most terrifying foes: the 'experts' in his own party."

Brooks even mentions Moore in his column -- to describe one variety of bad advice some of Obama's "most terrifying foes" (example B above is Brooks) are offering:

[There] are still others who say Obama needs to get bare-knuckled. He needs to hammer McCain above the belt and below. Apparently, these people have decided that having nominated Obama, the party needs to be led by Michael Moore.

Actually, a party led by Michael Moore, to hear Moore tell it in his ad, would do about what Brooks prescribes in his column: In Moore's words, let Obama listen to "his own heart;" in Brooks's, have Obama stay "true to his core identity." While Brooks's opinion appears on A17 and Moore's on E7, could it be that they're really on the same page?

As excitement mounted for the Democratic convention at the end of last week, The Washington Post published one of those loaded connect the dot stories tracing the Obama campaign’s ties to the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of Chicago’s premier teaching hospitals. The Post reported that, with the help of Michelle Obama, its vice president of community and external relations (now on leave), the big, 600-bed hospital embarked on a project to move poor people out of the hospital’s emergency department and into care in the community.

Ms. Obama helped create the hospital’s Urban Health Initiative, which aimed to redirect non-critical emergency room visitors to neighborhood community clinics. That, in turn, would free up space for well-insured patients with more complicated medical cases, who might need some of the expensive services the hospital is known for, like organ transplants and cancer care. In other words, the Post said, the hospital wanted to keep those patients who could pay their bills and rid itself of those who couldn’t (and who arguably shouldn’t be seen in the ER anyway).

At the suggestion of Ms. Obama and others, the hospital hired the firm of David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist and Sunday morning stand-in, to sell the program. Axelrod’s firm suggested the standard PR techniques—focus groups, branding, targeting messages to specific constituencies, recruiting religious leaders to write opinion pieces. The Post revealed other ties between the hospital and the Obamas: Valerie Jarrett, the medical center’s chairwoman who travels with the candidate; hospital board member Kelly R. Welsh, a bank executive who gave the Obamas a $1.3 million home mortgage loan, and Eric Whitaker, the center’s executive vice president who now runs the Urban Health Initiative. What these ties will mean for a President Obama, the paper didn’t quite say.

The Republican attack machine hustled to forge a link between Obama’s public statements on health care reform and the Chicago dust-up. The McCain campaign held a conference call with reporters to denounce the Axelrod spin on the hospital’s community initiative. “At the same time in 2007 that this spin was being conducted, Barack Obama was campaigning and talking about expanding access to health care and bringing to more Americans, even as this medical center was using his strategist to cut off access for poor people in Chicago,” McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters.

NewsBusters, a project of the Media Research Center, the conservative press criticism operation that bills itself as “the leader in documenting, exposing, and neutralizing liberal media bias” also tried to fan the flames with a post urging the media to explore the Obama ties. NewsBusters opined: “This does seem to be an absurd hypocrisy that the media members should be all over, don’t you agree? Given Obama’s position on the poor and the uninsured, if this issue gets little or no additional coverage, one has to wonder why.”

I agree the media should be all over the issue—but not because of Obama’s hypocrisy. The scenario in Chicago is being played out in big cities all over the country. Hospitals are burnishing their images as high-tech, gleaming places for those with tickets to health care—i.e. insurance. They do that by moving facilities to the suburbs where insured folk live, competing for insurance-rich patients (and even creating unholy alliances with the news media to help them do so), and discouraging uninsured people of every color from coming to the emergency room. It costs money to a care for a poor person with no means to pay, and it’s no secret that hospitals would rather not spend that money.

Which brings up the second part of the story—the community clinics, some funded (albeit inadequately) by the federal government, where these people get care. It’s not surprising that docs on Chicago’s South Side have found care there inadequate. Clinics are stretched to capacity, and always need more doctors to meet the demand. They must scramble for money from foundations and private donors who are looking to fund new innovative programs, not basic medical care. When patients need surgery, they have to beg local hospitals for free operating time.

Forget David Axelrod. The real story here is how those candidate-touted market forces are actually causing hospitals to fight with each other for elite patients, while the clinics must compete with each other for the crumbs—the few dollars that community organizations, including hospitals, are willing to spend on care for the poor. The Washington Post began to explore some of this, noting that the University of Chicago Medical Center did lend part-time personnel to some clinics and gave $350,000 to another. While helpful, many clinic directors will say these are really bandages, and that more systemic change is needed. What are the candidates going to do about the widening divide between rich and poor in health care? That’s the story we’d like the media to investigate as we head toward November. It’s time for some hard questions, and the Chicago contretemps offers a good segue.

Last week, a reader, Jeff Huggins, asked me to address why the media have failed to explain climate change in a way the public “gets.” Getting it basically involves two things: an understanding of the basic scientific evidence that humans are causing global warming, which we’ll address in the first installment of this column, and an understanding of the various points upon which scientists agree and disagree, which we’ll delve into tomorrow in the second.

Indeed, polls support Huggins’s claim that most people don't get it. The most recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of Americans believe the earth is warming (though that number has been dropping since July 2006). Roughly half of Americans (47 percent) think that warming is due to human activity, but almost as many (45 percent) say that the warming is due to natural environmental patterns (18 percent), that no solid evidence of warming exists (21 percent), or that they do not know the cause of warming (6 percent).

This, despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, our highest authority on such matters, believes that it is “very likely” (greater than 90 percent chance) that humans are, in fact, responsible for “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.”

The problem is that most people don't believe that such a consensus (to use an unnecessarily controversial term) actually exists. In April 2007, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 40 percent of Americans believe that “most” scientists agree that “global warming is happening.” On the other hand, 56 percent believe there is “a lot of disagreement.” Now read closely! Notice that the question isn't even asking whether scientists agree or disagree about human activity's role in climate change; the question simply asks whether or not they think warming is happening. According to the IPCC, the fact that the earth is warming is “unequivocal.” Yet people seem to think there is less agreement on that point among scientists than there is among the general public (remember, 71 percent think warming is happening regardless of cause) — a rather odd disjuncture.

So yes, it's fair to say that at least half the country doesn't “get” climate science. The tougher question is, how have the media caused or abetted that misunderstanding? As Huggins, who is a regular reader at New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog (a self-described "Dot Earthling"), has suggested over a series of comments there, climate reporting exhibits two overarching problems. First, the media have not communicated the basics of climate science well enough. Second, they have caused confusion about what scientists agree upon and what they don't by relying on he-said/she-said reporting; when no context or weight is given to the relative merits of each argument, such reporting can create a false sense of balance in the minds of readers and viewers.

When it comes to the basic science, Huggins has noted that he's “not talking about the detailed details. Not everyone needs to be a professional scientist, of course.” A grasp of the basic concepts and “being able to roughly ‘visualize’ the situation” will clear up many misconceptions about the climate change, he has argued, and he’s likely right. There are, perhaps, two fundamental processes that individuals need to grasp (and visualize) in order to understand global warming: the earth’s carbon cycle and the greenhouse effect.

The carbon cycle shows where human emissions fit within the massive and perennial exchanges of carbon that take places between the planet’s terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric reservoirs, and why they are throwing those natural balances out of whack. The greenhouse effect, on the other hand, describes how human emissions are affecting the heat balance of the planet. One might say that the media have done a better job explaining the latter than the former. According to LexisNexis search, the term “carbon cycle” has only come up in a total of eight stories spread across The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal over the last five years. But, as Huggins has pointed out, even New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has written extensively about the environment, recently botched an explanation of the greenhouse effect on The Late Show with David Letterman.

The trouble is, the press doesn’t do a good job with basic, textbook-style education, whether it be the principles of climate change or any other subject, from economics to heart disease. Historically, there was little way around this. The news was the news and it was hard to find space and time for rehashing fundamentals. That has changed with the Internet, a boundless repository where news outlets can now store information and reference material in the same fashion as an encyclopedia.

Nonetheless, in early March, Huggins asked, “Where can I go, today, within the NY Times’s online materials or in the printed paper, to find a cohesive, easy-to-understand, visual communication of the essential dynamics of global warming? It might exist, but I haven’t seen it, and I read the paper and post online nearly every day.”

He’s right, sort of. The Times’s topic page for global warming does not have a simple, text-based or graphical explanation of the carbon cycle or the greenhouse effect. Indeed, despite the fact that numerous newspapers and some broadcasters have created similar pages dedicated to climate, very few give any space to the basics in the way that BBC does, for example. On the other hand, most of them provide myriad links to other resources where all that and much, much more is available.

It might seem like a good idea for big papers to produce their own copies of such material, but let’s not forget, there is still the news to worry about, and the original material that the Times does have—including excellent graphics and slideshows—has mostly moved on to documenting the impacts of global warming, as well as human attempts to mitigate and adapt to it. That editorial direction reflects the scientific, not to mention political- and business-world, consensus that there is enough evidence of man-made warming to warrant some kind of effort to cut greenhouse emissions.

None of this is to say that journalists shouldn’t try to recap, in individual stories or in special online packages, some of the basics whenever there is time and space. Ultimately, though, news outlets will never be as good at basic education as textbooks, encyclopedias, or explanatory Web sites such those produced by NASA or the EPA.

Perhaps that is an indication that they should focus on improving the second major problem in climate coverage: accurately describing the points upon which scientists agree and disagree. Think of smoking. Most people wouldn’t be able to describe, even basically, the chemical and physical processes by which it creates tumors. Nevertheless, despite a disinformation campaign that has parallels in the saga of climate science, prolonged attention has convinced the public that there is universal agreement that cigarettes are dangerous. Whether or not the same can be done for global warming will discussed tomorrow in Part II.

According to Colorado magazine 5280 (if you remember your elementary school conversions, the title is a nod to the Mile-High city, which boasts an elevation of 5278 feet above sea level), there's a sizable list of DNC-related events from which the media are excluded. A quick glance at the host committee's public calendar shows that some events, such as "Hula Hoops for Peace," are open to media, whereas "Visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy laboratory" is not.

Other yes-media, no-media decisions?

Yes: Ralph Nader rally at the University of Denver

No: John Hickenlooper event for the American Wind Energy Association at the Wynkoop Brewing Company

Yes: EMILY's List Gala with Senator Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama at the Sheraton Denver Hotel

No: Planned Parenthood’s “Sex, Politics, and Cocktails Late Night Dance Party” at the Samba Room

5280's take?

You’re thinking, “So what? Those persnickety reporters just want to turn everything into a story and the Dems deserve some privacy.” But what the press doesn’t report, the public doesn’t know, goes an old newsroom maxim.

What I'm asking: are the media guaranteed a front-row seat to any of the World Wrestling Entertainment's Smackdown Your Vote events? I hear Superstar Batista will be in attendance.

From Fox News's Chris Wallace earlier today during a segment headlined, "Can Clinton Convince Her Supporters to Back Obama?"

WALLACE: Nancy Pelosi berating the press for focusing on the rift between Clinton and Obama, saying it is all in the past. But will Clinton be able to heal the wounds tonight when she takes the stage?....Are we covering [the "rift" ] or are we over-covering it?

Hmmm. Let's see. After a very quick and limited ("Clinton supporter," "Wallace") Nexis search:

August 25

WALLACE: Tomorrow night is absolutely vital, I think, second only to Obama's speech on Thursday night, because there is still a big division... with polls showing that somewhere between 30 percent and 50 percent of Clinton supporters are not on board the Obama bandwagon... So that is job one for her, and some would say it's job one for this convention is party unity, to get all of the Democrats behind Barack Obama…

August 24

WALLACE: But, Governor Kaine, Obama and Clinton have been -- you know, the primary battle has been over now for almost three months…And yet there are, as we see in the polls, a lot of Clinton supporters who are still upset, still bitter. Do you think those people who are still so upset are going to be won over or bought off by the fact that her name is placed in nomination here on the floor, if she gets a roll call?

August 24

WALLACE (to Obama communications director, Robert Gibbs): Why shouldn't Clinton supporters be angry?

August 24

WALLACE: Well, Brit, apparently, from all the reporting, Hillary Clinton was never seriously considered by Obama or his team as a running mate, never consulted about it. Was that a mistake? And could he possibly pay a price among Clinton supporters here in Denver?

August 17

WALLACE: Do you really think that a roll call vote is going to satisfy those Clinton supporters who are still, a couple of months after the fact -- still unhappy and bitter about her defeat? Do you really think they're going to settle for the pageant of a roll call?

August 17

WALLACE: Bill [Kristol], doesn't it almost ensure -- I mean, we've got thousands of us pesky reporters around looking for a story. There's not a lot of news at these conventions. They're fairly pre-packaged. Doesn't this now ensure that at least for the first three days of this convention the story is, "Oh, the Clintons, oh, the Obamas, the soap opera, are the Clinton supporters going to try to disrupt the convention?"

"At least for the first three days of this convention." Several days prior, even.

Yesterday, Clint mentioned the lengths to which some cable news networks will go to promote themselves during the convention. (Such lengths, if you're MSNBC, involve hiring workers to don red-, white-, and blue-bedecked elephant and donkey costumes and ride around on Segways, waving at passers-by, posing for photos with gawkers, handing out fliers, and generally engaging in all manner of self-promotional hilarity.)

I happened upon the Cirque du Segway yesterday afternoon, during a lull in MSNBC's outdoor broadcasting that sent an even bigger crowd than usual in the direction of its free-wheeling dog-and-pony elephant-and-donkey show. All was jovial as the DNCC delegates posed for photos with the mascots, high-fiving the donkey ("Obama! Yeah!"), giggling at the inanity of it all. Until one delegate, on his way to the donkey for a photo, stopped in his tracks.

"Hey, don't take my picture with the elephant!" he cried at no one in particular.

The elephant froze for a moment, then spun around forlornly, starting to Seg away. The crowd watched in stunned silence.

But then: "Hey--why don't you guys give each other a hug?" someone shouted.

And they did.

As cameras flashed, recording the convention's rare moment of bipartisanship, Don't-Take-My-Picture-with-the-Elephant smirked. "Well, we'll never see that in real life," he said, walking away.

Back in June, the New York Times (among others) chronicled what it deemed to be Michelle Obama's "image makeover," a Softening Tour orchestrated by the Obama campaign which took Mrs. Obama on The View in a designer black and white sundress to talk pantyhose and breakfast cereal.

It's late August and Michelle Obama is "now a softer presence," according to today's Times (print headline, anyway). Mission Michelle, however, is not yet entirely Accomplished, though, because, to the Times's eyes, she is "at the center of a multimedia charm offensive that may be the most closely managed spousal rollout in presidential campaign history." (Well, certainly the most covered/picked over/examined).

Also: "spousal rollout?" What a creepily cynical (even for politics and political coverage) phrase, so easily tossed off by the Times' Jodi Kantor. The DNC presents: Michelle Obama 3.0! Now more "maternal." Michelle Obama 3.0 comes complete with "economic crisis look" ("$79 Gap sundresses," per the Times), biographical video and proof of pride in America. Some assembly required.

I thought everyone knew you don't introduce new products in August...

Saturday night’s Elitch Gardens “Media Welcoming Party” at the outset of the Democratic National Convention looked to be a grand spectacle, with rides galore, rock-climbing walls (see a video of a young woman in cuffed jeans—a respectable journo, no doubt—scaling it as fireworks blast off in the Denver night air), and malt beverages courtesy of Molson Coors.

The headline sponsor was the Denver Newspaper Agency, which manages the business operations of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, but the DNC Host Committee helped organize the party, and its list of corporate sponsors bedecked an entire wall. Many a delegate and politician attended the media bash as well, raising the peripatetic question (given who is funding the parties they attend and with whom they’re rubbing shoulders) of how heartily journalists should partake of the convention’s slew of festivities.

Here’s the Denver Post on the shindig:

The first big party of the Democratic National Convention kicked off Saturday eve, and it was a megafest: Thousands of journalists, delegates, locals and assorted gawkers assembled for the welcoming party at Elitch Gardens, unofficially known as the media party.

While the giant Ferris wheel swirled and the Tilt-A-Whirl twirled, local media and political folks like Ken Salazar, Elbra Wedgeworth, Bertha Lynn (not working, in jeans and accompanied by her husband, Larry Naves), Craig Silverman — even former Republican Gov. Bill Owens — came to hear the Flobots, Railbenders and Debajo del Agua.

Flobots, eh? Though journalists joshing at political conventions with the people they’re covering is old hat—the 1908 Denver DNC hosted an Elitch Garden party for a mixed bag of delegates and media folks too—it’s worth pointing out how cavalier the mentions of such shoulder rubbing have been. Denver lawyer and major DNC fundraiser Steve Farber sipped a beer at Elitch, calling himself “just another party crasher.” A local artist painted a portrait of the presumptive Democratic nominee on site (with proceeds to benefit the DNC host committee, of course). Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter was in attendance and looking for his kids. Denver DA Craig Silverman was carrying around a huge bag of stuffed animals he’d won. What sightings! But never fear—when spotted, Perlmutter was asked what he was most looking forward to in the coming week. Don’t say that Politico doesn’t do its job. (Apparently, it’s poker with Ben Affleck.)

The DNC’s Web site offers up further examples of how silkily the media are enveloped into the convention’s daily scheduling: the Starz green room facility, “just steps from the Pepsi Center,” serves as a location where “delegates, party officials, invited guests and press can listen to high-powered panels, watch movies, or just unwind,” and MSNBC’s “Broadcast from Union Station” is listed alongside Denver-area biking trails and a Free Day at Denver Art Museum (courtesy of Target).

Add to the mix Google’s “Big Tent,” which hosts nap areas, massages, and workspaces for credentialed bloggers at $100 a head; its much anticipated co-sponsored party with Vanity Fair on Thursday for an invite-only gaggle of convention-goers and journalists (John Harwood said he would try to attend!); and the many party gift bags (ringtone gift card from AT&T, plastic water bottle from Visa, and breath mints from UPS, oh my!), and the seeming endlessness of corporate- and DNC-stamped offerings make the head begin to ache, even as it acknowledges that it’s just the way the convention river flows.

But then again, just when you think the fourth estate has become too incorporated into the DNC Partay, we get this fine example of accountability reporting, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Apparently, reporters (and whoever else crashed the media party) suck at recycling.

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization
By Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster
576 pages, $30

This curious book is in the form of a chronicle, a stark chronology in which the author has made himself all but voiceless, thus suggesting that his narrative is determined by deity or fate. Hundreds of scraps of history, all drawn from previously published sources in English, purport to depict the years preceding World War II and the conflict’s first twenty-seven months, up to and including the entry of the United States after Pearl Harbor.

The tone is flat and unornamented, and almost every item concludes with the same calendrical flourish. For example: “The moon was almost full. The British attacked Berlin’s electric-power station and the working class Moabit district surrounding it. The next night, the Germans bombed Stoke Newington, a Jewish working-class neighborhood in London. It was October 14, 1940.”

What is Baker up to? He is a novelist and occasional polemicist—note his outrage in his book Double Fold, seven years ago, at the destruction of original newspaper files. A determined, even addicted newspaper reader, he has relied particularly on The New York Times and its worldwide network of correspondents. The result is a highly eccentric, fascinating, and often revealing selection of anecdotes, all circling the question of how humankind came to punish itself with the bloodiest war of all time (to date).

Baker suggests that the leaders of the participating nations, most of whom had matured during what was known in its own day as the Great War, were more than willing to rearm and inflict death on soldier and civilian alike. He does not, as some reviewers have suggested, excuse Hitler and the Nazis, but his glimpses of Churchill and Roosevelt and their military cadres are chilling. All parties accepted merciless war as an unavoidable policy of the twentieth century.

Baker’s secondary theme is the fate of Europe’s Jews. Surprisingly, Baker shows that the Times, which has been accused of ignoring the Holocaust, provided strong coverage through 1941 on the development of Nazi policies of expulsion and extinction. Even so, the Nazis’ road to genocide was witnessed with indifference by America and Britain; the British even interned Jewish refugees as enemy aliens. The United States declined to offer haven.

While Baker seems to scoff at the powerful, he finds heroes in small clusters of pacifists—shouted down, abused, and in the end ineffective. On them, he offers his one outright opinion in the last paragraph of the book: “They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right.” This suggests that Baker believes he has proved that the so-called good war was a bad war. But he has declined to use the powerful tools of historical analysis—that is, assuming the burden of offering in his own voice conclusions based on a full presentation and weighing of evidence. In this sense, Human Smoke may raise doubts, but it does not convince.

Free Ride: John McCain And the Media
By David Brock
And Paul Waldman
Anchor Books
219 pages
$13.95 paperbound

A maverick, as all of us familiar with the Hollywood West surely know, is unbranded beef on the hoof. By extension, it is a person who resists labeling, an independent, a rebellious soul. (Etymology states that the term comes from Samuel A. Maverick, one of the founders of Texas, who refused to brand his cattle.) American politics now has one maverick-in-chief, John McCain, the Arizona senator currently running for president. David Brock (an ex-conservative and something of a maverick himself) and Paul Waldman (a columnist for The American Prospect) contend that this characterization of McCain has little to do with his scattered breaks from Republican doctrine. Instead, they argue, the pervasive and flattering portrayals of the senator are due to his apparent willingness to treat journalists as buddies, and to say things that sound candid and unscripted. As the presidential campaign progresses, the skeptical are starting to question this cliché, speculating that McCain is closer to a standard-issue Republican. But the references to him as a maverick go on, undiminished and unthinking. Whether the authors are right or wrong about the red-carpet treatment given to the candidate, there is no doubt that journalistic laziness has let the M word become McCain’s very own, let’s say, brand.

The award for Least Useful On-Screen Bell or Whistle Unveiled During Convention Coverage by a Cable News Channel goes to...

...CNN, for its "volume on the floor" graphic (I'm describing it from memory here: vertical audio bars, with green lights rising and falling to indicate the current volume level on the convention floor) which crowded the left-side of the screen much of last night-- even, a tipster tells me (I was mostly watching another channel), during commercials. Because (I guess?) why should viewers of The Best Political Team on Television miss out on any changes in volume level on the floor of the Pepsi Center while they're suffering through yet another freecreditreport.com ad?

And the award for Best Sarcastic Use of a Goofy Cable News Channel Tagline By a Convention Speaker goes to...

...Caroline Kennedy. For this, at the end of a somewhat testy interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer (and team):

WOLF BLITZER: Do you see a role for yourself moving forward in this campaign?

KENNEDY: I just want to be with The Best Political Team on Television.

ANDERSON COOPER: That is so the right answer.

Last month, we criticized The New York Times for leaving a big hole in a page-one story on the aftermath of Bhopal—the worst industrial disaster in history—by skimming over the issue of whether Dow Chemical ought to be responsible for the cleanup. The unremediated site of the disaster, which killed 3,000 people in their sleep, has dangerously polluted the drinking water of thousands of Indians around it.

After receiving a letter from a U.K.-based Bhopal advocate spelling out why Dow is legally liable for the mess because of its acquisition of Union Carbide—which owned the chemical plant that killed all the people—we asked Dow for a response. Both letters are below.

For background, this BusinessWeek story from 2002, a year after the acquisition, says Dow was on the hook for Union Carbide’s asbestos liabilities in the U.S., but doesn’t address the issue of responsibility for the Indian disaster.

Another BW story a couple of months ago looked at the question of Dow’s liability, but doesn’t give us much more than he said/she said.

In an awkwardly worded sentence (actually four run-on sentences in the passive voice), Dow asserts that it settled liability in 1989:

Liability was settled by Union Carbide Corporation in 1989 and they have no outstanding liability for Bhopal Union Carbide Corporation and the former Union Carbide India Limited (now Eveready Industries India Limited) settled their liabilities regarding the Bhopal tragedy with the Indian government in 1989 and this settlement was upheld by the Indian Supreme Court in 1991.

The U.K. advocate, Tim Edwards, meanwhile, says the 1989 settlement dealt only with the deaths and injuries that resulted from the accident, not with remediation. This 1989 NYT story supports the advocate's position.

Also, Dow’s claim that Union Carbide “remains a separate company” after Dow’s 2001 acquisition of UCC—even if upheld by the courts—doesn’t mean that Bhopal doesn’t affect it. While corporations protect shareholders and directors from liability (with certain exceptions), that doesn't mean Union Carbide itself isn't liable for its actions and those of its own subsidiaries at Bhopal. Its former CEO, Warren M. Anderson, is still a fugitive from Indian law nearly twenty-five years after the incident.

Finally, Dow claims that the Indian state in 1998 had already taken back the lease that tagged a Carbide Indian unit (and Carbide’s future owners) with responsibility to clean up the land.

But Edwards, who edits Bhopal.net, offers an interesting account of how the state decided to take back a lease so loaded with liabilities—it was a bureaucratic mistake. As it happens, as late as 1998, the Carbide unit was still (slowly) cleaning up the site, tacitly acknowledging its liability:

That is, until they got lucky: in 1998, another branch of local government, seemingly unaware of what the left hand was doing, wrote to EIIL [the unit] to ask if they were still using the land for industrial purposes and, if not, to return the lease. EIIL responded with barely suppressed glee that they were not using the land and asking for a date to return the cursed lease. The lease was duly returned in July 1998. The Pollution Control Board realized the mistake and demanded that EIIL come back and finish the work but the Union Carbide-trained manager refused, citing the hand-over of the lease.

The fact is, though, the matter of Dow’s liability remains one of genuine controversy, and our criticism of the Times was a little too easy. Still, in handling a twenty-four-year-old controversy, the Times should at least have spelled out the issues, even if it couldn't resolve them.

To advance the discussion, we post the two sides’ letters and invite further comment. Here’s Edwards:

Yours is a highly astute reading of this issue.

That Dow is in the clearest legal sense 'successor in liability' to its wholly owned subsidiary Union Carbide is indisputable. The form of the deal between Dow and Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is a classic merger: Carbide's accounts became consolidated into Dow's; a proportion of the takeover price was paid in the form of Dow shares. As this article states, a merger involves assets and liabilities. That Dow didn't own Carbide in 1968, 1978 or 1984 is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. All that matters is that Dow entirely owns Carbide now. That's why when a raft of asbestos-related litigation filed against Carbide came to light shortly after the 2001 merger, billions were wiped off Dow's—not Carbide's—share price.

The chief difference between these asbestos liabilities and the Bhopal ones is geographical: Bhopal is not in the USA, therefore Dow is able to take advantage of the manifold difficulties that face any state attempting to enforce legal accountability against a multinational not headquartered within its borders.

Dow managers seem to have gambled that they could play the absence of an international accountability regime for multinationals in order to get away with having become— to all legal extents and purposes—Union Carbide. Dow could have thoroughly protected itself against this risk by picking and choosing the liabilities it would inherit from Carbide via the merger, if only it had been open about them in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Instead, Dow failed to declare the existence of ongoing criminal proceedings concerning the deaths of over 20,000 people, or indeed civil litigation ongoing in the Southern District Court of New York addressing the separate matter of environmental contamination. Unrepentant, Dow perpetuates these lies-by-omission to its shareholders each year at its annual general meeting.

The unavoidable fact is that there is plenty of legal liability still attached to Bhopal. UCC remains on-the-run from charges of culpable homicide in India. In pusillanimous Carbide's 16 year absence, Dow itself—a growing presence in India—has been issued a summons to attend and explain why it cannot produce its subsidiary in court. The summons is yet to reach Dow in the US because Dow hired a leading member of the ruling Congress party in India to apply for a stay order. That stay order will one day be lifted. Meantime, Dow continues to mislead its shareholders into believing that there are no Bhopal liabilities attached to Carbide.

Dow also turns questions concerning the former Union Carbide factory site in Bhopal into another red herring about ownership.

At no time did Carbide actually own the grounds of the site, instead they were taken on a 100 year lease from the Madhya Pradesh State government. Under the conditions of the lease, the land was supposed to be returned in a habitable and usable condition. Alas, over a decade of reckless housekeeping prior to the gas disaster had resulted in thousands of tons of process and waste chemicals being buried in unlined pits inside the factory, leading to a massive contamination problem. Thus, from 1989, Union Carbide had to be involved in an assets-recovery and site remediation project at the heavily polluted site, which was monitored by one local branch of government, the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board.

Secret bio-assay tests conducted by Carbide on soil and water in 1989 caused 100% mortality to fish. Instead of informing local authorities, Carbide hid the results and took minimal action to prevent further contamination while maximizing assets recovery. Internal documents show that UCC wanted to be rid of the site as quickly as possible but were frustrated by the legal conditions attached to the lease. Then, in 1994, Carbide was inexplicably given permission to sell its shares in its Indian subsidiary, UCIL, which had already been seized by Indian courts due to the fact that Carbide was (and continues to be) a fugitive from the ongoing criminal proceedings concerning the unprecedented mass homicide caused by its gas disaster.

UCIL subsequently became Eveready Industries India ltd (EIIL), though the staff at the site, including the UCC trained manager, remained the same, continuing the slow, reluctant remediation process. That is, until they got lucky: in 1998, another branch of local government, seemingly unaware of what the left hand was doing, wrote to EIIL to ask if they were still using the land for industrial purposes and, if not, to return the lease. EIIL responded with barely suppressed glee that they were not using the land and asking for a date to return the cursed lease. The lease was duly returned in July 1998. The Pollution Control Board realized the mistake and demanded that EIIL come back and finish the work but the Union Carbide trained manager refused, citing the hand over of the lease.

Much as Dow's attitude toward the criminal proceedings reveal a desire to escape the rule of (largely Anglo-Saxon) law in India, Dow's stance on the contaminated site is an implicit repudiation of that bastion of environmental protection, the 'polluter pays' principle, which exists in Indian common and statutory law just as it does in the US and elsewhere. In effect, Dow is saying that it refuses to abide, voluntarily, by this internationally accepted law.

It's rare that such a criminal escapes justice forever, and even $50 billion Dow is no exception: the Law Ministry of India recently issued the considered opinion that if there was any liability for Bhopal, it would have to be borne by Dow. As Dow's future business strategy hinges upon access to the South Asian market, justice will not be denied for much longer.

Tim Edwards Editor, Bhopal.net

And Dow’s response:

We have sympathy for the plight of those who were victims of the Bhopal tragedy and the fact that the site has not been cleaned up. I think we would all agree that these issues need to be addressed. The solution to this problem, however, rests in the hands of the Indian central and state governments and recent media reports indicate that they are working to get the site cleaned up. As there are those who wish to unfairly attach liability to Dow for the Bhopal issue, we are not in a position to contribute to these efforts. Dow has a fiduciary responsibility to its employees, retirees and shareholders to not take on liability risks that are not ours to bear. That said, Dow and its subsidiaries' commitment to the communities in which we operate is significant.

I've provided information below that addresses the specific question of liability raised by Mr. Edwards:

Liability was settled by Union Carbide Corporation in 1989 and they have no outstanding liability for Bhopal Union Carbide Corporation and the former Union Carbide India Limited (now Eveready Industries India Limited) settled their liabilities regarding the Bhopal tragedy with the Indian government in 1989 and this settlement was upheld by the Indian Supreme Court in 1991.

Union Carbide Corporation stopped doing business in India in 1994—with the permission of the Government of India, it sold its interest in Union Carbide India Limited in 1994 and the proceeds were used to build a state-of-the-art hospital in Bhopal to treat victims of the tragedy (a bit of history here—after UCC sold its interest in Union Carbide India Limited, the new owner renamed the company Eveready Industries India Limited. Eveready was doing some remediation at the Bhopal plant when the State Government of Madhya Pradesh revoked the lease of Everyeady and took ownership of the plant site in 1998.

The site was then, and is now, under the ownership of the state government of Madhya Pradesh. As I noted earlier, this has been the case since 1998 and for whatever reason most of us do not know or fully understand, the site remains unremediated. As owners of the site, the Madhya Pradesh government is the entity that has the ability and, more importantly, the authority to ensure that the plant site gets cleaned up. And they are trying to clean up the site. Recent media reports in India indicate that the State Government is, in fact, attempting to implement their remediation plan—see Times of India article attached at end of email. Please also see Union Carbide's web site on Bhopal for full details of the sale of UCIL).

Union Carbide Corporation remains a separate company. It has its own board of directors, its own financial reporting, its own manufacturing facilities and its own employees. And, more importantly, UCC manages its own liabilities.

Dow did not inherit nor does it manage Union Carbide Corporation's liabilities. UCC manages its own liabilities and reports these to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You will not that there is no mention of Bhopal in Union Carbide Corporation's report to the SEC. This is because Union Carbide settled this liability with the Government of India in 1989.

To recap: The Dow Chemical Company is not a successor-in-interest to Union Carbide Corporation. Successor-in-interest is a legal term. One legal precondition to Dow becoming a successor-in-interest is that Union Carbide would no longer exist as a separate corporation. However, UCC does exist as a separate corporation and I have provide a link to their most recent 10Q report.

I have also attached for you the link to The Dow Chemical Company's position on Bhopal found on dow.com. This link will also attach to Union Carbide Corporations' Web site regarding the Bhopal tragedy and I would encourage you to visit that as well.

Scot Wheeler, Spokesman, Dow Chemical Company

Thanks, C-SPAN for answering a question I was just about to start googling. What happens with all those "Kennedy" and "Michelle" signs?

Turns out, the Smithsonian collects the memorabilia to create a document of campaign history. Who knew?

Conservative commentator and CNN contributor Amy Holmes's thoughts on the DNC's first night: Sen. Ted Kennedy drew attention away from the Clintons and focused it on the Kennedy-Obama legacy pass-down; Michelle Obama successfully reintroduced herself; oh, and poaching from rival conventions is okay. Talking about McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina holding a press conference in Denver Monday morning, presumably with the idea of snagging disaffected Clinton supporters, CNN's Nicole Lapin asked: "Is it appropriate this week?" Holmes cherubically answered, "Of course," and added that the Obama camp "would be well-advised" to do the same next week in St. Paul. (Obama shwag pushers, are y'all listening?)

Then, a few minutes later, switching over to commentary about Michelle Obama's speech, we heard CNN's Bill Schneider say (drumroll, someone): "This is a future candidate. This is someone who will have a political future. It was very impressive." You heard it from Schneider first, folks—the wife's a live one!

Think that MSNBC has gone fully around the liberal bend, becoming the unimpeachable favorite of the left-leaning blogosphere?

‘Fraid not. Here in “The Big Tent,” the blogger friendly para-convention posting, eating, drinking and socializing space, was featuring a disjointed broadcast experience. On a half dozen or so flatscreen and projection TVs, the crowd was watching MSNBC’s feed, while listening to C-Span’s audio. This highlighted the surprising amount of time of that MSNBC preferred to serve viewers Oblermann-Matthews chit-chat rather the scene in the convention hall.

Bizarre as it was, it seemed to be a workable compromise—and anyhow, given the number of folks staring into laptops, there’s a healthy number of eyes off the TV screens. But then, during former Representative Jim Leach’s Obama-endorsement speech (until 2007 the Republican had been a Representative from Iowa for 30 years), someone flipped the audio to MSNBC.

That didn’t sit well.

“Why they’d cut off Jim Leach?” someone bellowed.

“That’s not what we want,” said another.

And then something happened that I’m willing to wager has never happened before. From the front of a room a high school cafeteria-style chant (foot stomps and table pounds and all) began, thinly, but clearly:

“C-SPAN. C-SPAN. C-SPAN.”

Soon, commercial and pundit free audio was restored. The video feed followed minutes later. And peace fell over The Big Tent.

It has always been unclear how to properly address the role of family money when covering a political candidate. But last week, after the senior senator from Arizona had a decidedly senior moment when asked to recall how many houses he owned, it seemed like the McCain money was now fair game. And journalists put the microscopes on the vast liquor fortune of Cynthia Hensley McCain.

On August 22, The New York Times ran an article, "For McCains, a Public Path but Private Wealth," about the Hensley beer distribution fortune's origin, size, and relationship to the McCain family. This is theoretically interesting, and the effort involved in figuring out just what Mrs. McCain's role is at Hensley & Company, third-largest Budweiser distributor in the United States of America, is fairly impressive. But the article is consistently marred by bizarre non sequiturs:

But in his will, Mr. Hensley left Mrs. Portalski [Cindy McCain's older half sister] just $10,000 and her offspring nothing. “It’s so disappointing, just being pushed aside,” she said. Mrs. Portalski said Mrs. McCain added insult to that injury by referring to herself, in her eulogy for her father, as his only child — while her half-sister sat in a front pew.

Well, OK. But is that really relevant to how Mrs. McCain controls the Hensley company? Strictly speaking, no. Though a case could be made for how, as the eldest daughter of Jim Hensley, Kathleen Hensley Portalski ought to have something to do with the $300 million-a-year corporation. The Portalski story might vaguely suggest something about the McCain family's notions of fair play and appropriate conduct.

However, as the article also explains:

Far more of Mrs. McCain’s money is invested in real estate. With Sharon Harper, a close friend, Mrs. McCain has stakes in three office complexes. At the Brophy College Preparatory School, where the McCains’ two sons went to high school, the Harper Balcony sits just over the McCain Colonnade.

And earlier:

In the late 1980s, [Cindy McCain] set up a charitable organization out of Hensley headquarters, distributing medical supplies in developing countries. But she disbanded the group in the early 1990s after she became addicted to painkillers and was caught stealing from its supply of drugs.

And she also, apparently, wears too much makeup. The Times article turns out to be really just a send-up of Mrs. McCain. And these little jabs throughout the article ostensibly about her wealth (which is surely story enough) are really just, well, bitchy.

The fact that, for the first time in history, the U.S. has a major candidate closely connected to a corporation that distributes beer could be handled a number of ways. Journalists could, for instance, consider what this means with regard to underage drinking. For a variety of reasons the McCain campaign probably doesn't see this as a major policy initiative of a potential administration (no more than, say, the United States would have considered condiment policy if John Kerry had been elected in 2004) but still, there are a number far more relevant ways to tackle this issue.

As one reads this sort of article it is understandable why The New York Times is so often accused of displaying a liberal media bias. It isn't strictly relevant which presidential candidate the author, David Halbfinger, supports (or whether or not he votes at all), but the McCain article is a slanted one. And the Times can surely do better.

The fact of the matter is that, like many scions of large family fortunes, Mrs. McCain has a very limited role in the corporation owned by her and her children. That's a story right there; there's no need to resort to personal attacks to make it interesting.

CNN has a huge countdown to the official gavel banging--"You don't want to miss this," Wolf Blitzer said--and meanwhile, in the wide shot, the Pepsi Center looks empty.

Where is everyone?!!! And why don't they care?!!! "History is about to be made," Blitzer says!!!

Yes, we hear there is serious news to be found at these conventions. But there’s also ample opportunity for the biggie political pressters to get face-time and build a little name-rec with their journalism colleagues, and the politicos who love them. To that end, Campaign Desk is inaugurating what we’re afraid will be a regular feature in Denver and St. Paul: Dubious Moments in Self-Promotion, or if we’re pressed for time “DuMo-n-SPro.” Enjoy.

Below are two be-Segwayed, becostumed, (and presumably rather sweaty) workers charged with pressing promotional flyers into the hands of passers-by in the hopes of garnering a live outdoor studio audience—perfect for camera pans—at MSNBC’s live broadcasts.

MSNBC has set up camp just south west of Denver’s Union Station, steps from the Silver Patron Tequila Express railcar. It’s hard to say if the booze train or the set has more red white and blue bunting.

Is it just me, or does the decor at the Pepsi Center sort of look like a Cirque du Soleil production?

No wonder the circus cliché is on everyone's lips.

At 3 a.m. on Saturday, after most in the political establishment had gone to bed, disappointed and, more commonly, indignant that Barack Obama hadn't yet announced his choice of a running mate, millions of cell phones began vibrating. The wee-houred national cacophony--buzzes, rings, tinny renditions of "Canon in D" and "In Da Club" and "Sweet Home Alabama"—heralded two things of note: first, that the lowly text-message—its uses in the past generally confined to confirming plans ("gr8! c u there!") and drunken flirting ("looved talking 2 u...cn i have yr number?")—was moving up in the world ("Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee"). And second: So, too, was Joe Biden.

Yep, it was official: Biden won the veepstakes! (Other-Joe-mentum!) Bloom, meet rose! Hype, meet fulfillment! InTrade.com, meet vindication! For a moment, on Saturday, Biden was the golden boy—the running-mate-designate.

But, then again, he was also the embodiment of the frenzied, frustrated speculation in which the political press had been engaging for the previous days/weeks/months. So, predictably, and faster than you can say "Scranton, Pennsylvania," Hype met Backlash. The proverbial hype cycle—buzz, hype, backlash-to-the-hype—being, as it was, already heated in the pressure cooker that was the end of the week's myopic, manic Veepstakes-apalooza, burst. Joe Biden, Toast of the Political Press, became...well, Joe Biden, Toast of the Political Press.

Here's The New York Times's lede in its front-page announcing the Biden pick:

Senator Barack Obama has chosen Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware to be his running mate, turning to a leading authority on foreign policy and a longtime Washington hand to fill out the Democratic ticket, Mr. Obama announced in text and e-mail messages early Saturday.

And here's a graf from Patrick Healy's assessment of Biden's role, in today's Times:

Yet even though Mr. Biden comes to the Democratic ticket with decades of political relationships and personal history in electoral battleground states that Mr. Obama, who joined the Senate in 2005, cannot match, the new team’s advisers acknowledge that Mr. Biden is not a cure-all for the political challenges facing Mr. Obama, of Illinois. After all, he lost the Democratic primaries this year in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as unofficial nominating contests in Florida and Michigan, to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

It's an imperfect science, of course, tracking the overall tone of coverage in the space of two-and-a-half days. Still, a pattern emerges: after months (years?) of Biden buzz--the Hype--came the Thing Being Hyped, after which came mixed reviews (working class hero! but also puts his foot in his mouth!), after which came...the backlash. (He's too old! He's too straight-talking! He's too bald!)

But the backlash, I'd argue, may have to do with the particulars of the announcement of his selection: the hype-building delay, the ample time given for reporters to analyze the merits of other candidates, the semi-letdown of learning that the Guy Everyone Thought Would Be the Nominee was, in fact, the nominee. And the fact that the announcement everyone had been waiting for came--uber-letdown!--when everyone was sleeping. ("We confirmed the news after midnight, and then after trying to get a little sleep, this text message at about 3:00 am ET woke us up," NBC's First Read team wrote, frustration seeping into their words.) Most reporters would agree that the humor value in the 3 a.m. announcement (get it? because that's when Hillary's phone would ring in the White House?) wasn't worth the wee-houred wake-up call.

The real test of Biden-in-the-press, then, will come later, once the Delaware senator has divorced himself from the announcement of his being picked. Until then, it's all about the hype.

Whoever labors in the least cushy conditions wins...Respect? Legitimacy? That "blue collar" vote?" Something, apparently.

Pity the 38 Washington Post reporters in Denver who, Howard Kurtz reports, are working in "conditions [that] are hardly glamorous: makeshift desks in an air-conditioned tent with ill-fitting floorboards."

Soldier on, Kurtz et al, "ill-fitting floorboards" and all (just don't go blaming some frivolous story later in the week on the strain of toiling on uneven ground).

Meanwhile, David Kurtz describes Talking Point Memo's "convention headquarters:"

[A] quaint cottage in the shadow of a giant blue neon mortuary sign on the edge of downtown Denver. We're more or less within walking distance of the convention site, the Pepsi Center, where the NBA's Nuggets play, but we're on the opposite side of downtown from most of the major hotels, so in true TPM style it feels like we're sneaking in through the back door.

And in case you didn't get that TPM, staying on the wrong side of the tracks and all, is not MSM:

I'd like to think that we have a slightly different view of things from up on the hill behind the mortuary sign.

Meanwhile, I understand CJR's reporters in Denver are way, way behind "the mortuary sign," on the sofa of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. And the floors? Dirt.

We win!

The selection of Senator Joe Biden to be Barack Obama’s running mate has revived the debate over a statement Biden made to The New York Observer in early 2007.

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden was quoted as saying. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Now, we’re not going to deal with the question of whether his use of words like “articulate” and “clean” was racist or otherwise loaded, or whether he was slighting other “mainstream” African-Americans like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm or even Jackie Robinson. Instead, we’re going to focus on the comma that could have helped make his point clearer.

“Seldom has the distinction between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive clause been more important,” wrote Dean Mills, who happens to be the dean of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. “Without the comma, which is how every version I’ve seen is punctuated, it sounds as if Biden is saying that all other African-American candidates were not articulate, bright, etc.”

“But if you listen to the clips,” he continued, “Biden pauses significantly between ‘African-American’ and ‘who.’ So he could have meant (and almost certainly did): ‘I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.’”

Dean Dean Mills and I have had frequent run-ins over the serial comma, which he fervently believes in and I don’t. But this time, I’m on his side.

Biden was probably using African-American not as a noun, but, as Mills suggests, as an adjective, as in “the first mainstream African-American candidate” (though that, too, is open to interpretation). If the comma was spoken by Biden, but not included by his transcribers, the phrase “articulate and bright and clean” was a restrictive clause, meaning it applied only to Obama, and not to the body of African-Americans who came before him. That doesn’t mean he thought the other people were not “articulate and bright and clean”; it means he wasn’t speaking about them at all. (An even clearer way would have been “you got the first mainstream African-American candidate, and he is articulate and bright and clean.” But that would be changing the quotation, a definite no-no.) Without the comma, it was a nonrestrictive clause, meaning that it applied to every other African-American, and that he thought Obama was the first “articulate and bright and clean” African-American. That’s less likely.

It might be of little comfort to Biden to know about that comma now, given the kerfuffle that ensued over the actual words, but it could have saved him -- and readers -- a little bit of trouble.

Ah, labels. They’re good for summing up large, complex populations with a snazzy phrase and reducing people’s lives to an anachronistic prop.

Enter the lunch bucket.

Since Barack Obama chose Joe Biden to be his running mate, this charming term has taken center stage.

“In Biden, Obama chooses a lunch-bucket Democrat with deep foreign policy experience,” proclaimed The Boston Globe.

“Biden is a lunch-bucket Democrat,” wrote David Brooks in the Times last week. And so on.

Once upon a time, a lunch-bucket voter is one who works at a construction or factory job and totes along his or her afternoon meal in a pail of sorts. It’s a cute way of saying “blue-collar.”

But just days before Biden and the Bucket burst on the scene, The Press Democrat reported that the ranks of the Buckateers have grown since the economy has taken a downturn.

With white-collar workers—bankers and paralegals according the Democrat—taking up their buckets, the designation becomes more expansive, and less useful for condescending to a huge segment of the population.

And another thing: who has a lunch bucket nowadays? Does Tupperware voter just not have the right ring to it?

Wall-to-wall cable convention coverage. It can make even Chuck Todd (MSNBC's "goateed guru") look less-than-sharp.

During a David Shuster report on Michelle Obama getting her bearings at the convention podium (or, "Michelle Obama Walks Through Pepsi Center Just Hours Before Speech"), Todd asked:

David...you can usually tell when people do these walk-throughs, they'll go back to something a second time because something bothers them about something. See anything like that?

For the record: no, Shuster did not "see anything like that."

Last week, Vanity Fair polled hair stylists on Whether John McCain Has A Comb-Over ("from certain angles, it looks like a frozen waterfall, or maybe a clamp designed to keep his big angry head from bursting") and, if so, Whether It Might Matter to Voters.

Less than 24 hours after Obama named Sen. Joe Biden as his running-mate, Politico had already completed "a quick survey of stylists and hair transplant surgeons" looking into the "mystery" of Biden's "fraying combed-back helmet" and why it "did not follow the normal path of baldness." In other words, Whether Joe Biden Has Hair Plugs.

Politico didn't even pretend to ponder (forgot to?) What This Might Mean To/For America.

Hair. The subject of so many campaign coverage, um, highlights. Remember when Hillary "shifted her part"?

DENVER, COLORADO— Turns out there's one piece of news—real news!—to be learned about the Democratic convention, which is otherwise an event whose general lack of real news is both acknowledged and ignored by the press. And the news is big! Seriously. You actually might want to sit down for this.

Are you sitting? Okay, then, here it is: The Democrats' convention marks the official start of...The Real Campaign.

Here's Andrew Sullivan, writing about the Meaning of the Convention in the Times of London yesterday, emphasis mine:

Yet the most important thing dawning on observers of the election, even those who have been examining it under a microscope for months, is that the real campaign starts now--and no one has a clue what is going to happen.

And here's Frank Rich, writing on the Meaning of the Convention in the Times of New York yesterday (emphasis, again, mine):

As the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It’s time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death.

One can't help but note the irony that an event known for—okay, defined by—its pageantry would herald the start of, you know, the Real Campaign. But that's precisely what the columnists are suggesting: The pageantry is attracting voters' attention. And voters are real. Ergo: The campaign itself is now real.

"If you looked at the polls at this point in the last two election cycles, you would see they were poised for real movement only now, Sullivan writes. "This, after all, is when the mass of American voters tune in."

Rich seconds that emotion. "Zero hour is here," he has it. "As the presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain."

Which is also (ironically, as well, given the sources) an implicit indictment of the press. If voters—the public, the people the press is meant to serve—haven't been paying real attention to the presidential race until now, then the press's obsession with it, the suggestion goes, has been both self-indulgent and, even worse, unhelpful.

Except, of course, Sullivan and Rich aren't the first to make that suggestion. To the contrary: The Real Campaign has begun, apparently, several different times during the 2008 season. And several times during previous election seasons, as well:

AP: "AND NOW, THE REAL CAMPAIGN BEGINS" (June 9, 2008)

Bill Bradley, Pajamas Media: "Finally, the Real Campaign Begins" (June 9, 2008)

Dan Balz, The Washington Post: "The Real Race Begins" (May 9, 2008)

Tony Peraica, Blogger News Network: "Now the real campaign begins" (February 7, 2008)

PBS: "Edwards, Clinton Claim Real Campaign Has Just Begun" (January 4, 2008)

Time: "The Real Campaign Begins" (October 17, 2007)

David Broder, The Washington Post: "the serious stage of the presidential campaign begins this fall" (September 6, 2007)

St. Petersburg Times: "Fun's over; the real campaign begins" (September 2, 2007)

Howard Fineman, Newsweek: "Somehow it's appropriate that the Democratic presidential campaign begins in earnest this week in a place called Popejoy Hall." (September 3, 2003)

Jackie Calmes, Wall Street Journal: "AND NOW, THE 200 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN BEGINS AS HOPEFULS MUST COMMIT AND START RAISING CASH" (November 4, 1998)

So. Current presidential campaign: Just beginning? In mid-life crisis? Wrapping up? All of the above? Either way, we know one thing that's just beginning: convention shenanigans. See you at the Pepsi Center!

You want to attract some reporters? Hang up a sign that says "Spin Room" or "War Room" ("Where We Help You Write Your Story Room?" "Get Your He-Said Here Room?")

The Associated Press's Andrew Taylor reports on the Republican "war room" where "a staff of two dozen has set up shop in temporary workspace up the road from" the Democratic action in Denver. Per Taylor:

[W]ith a 24-hour news cycle and thousands of reporters in Denver, Republicans anticipate plenty of demand for an alternative to the Democratic narrative.

"We want to be in the stories," says Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan.

And, you are!

Also, the RNC's Duncan added, talking the talk: "There should be a balance ... and we want to make sure we're available to tell the other side of the story."

More from the AP's Taylor:

It remains to be seen how effective the GOP effort will be...

Wait, scratch that...

A tour for television crews Sunday afternoon attracted just a handful of journalists, though all three broadcast networks came through at some point in the day. About a dozen print reporters took a look as well...

Wait until the convention actually starts!

And these war roomers aren't content just courting "all three broadcast networks" and other big guns:

[A] key target is local media in battleground states. That's what the satellite truck in the parking lot is for: to allow for local stations in states such as Michigan and Ohio to interview top-name Republicans such as Giuliani and Romney.

Presidential nominating conventions are eminently mock-able. (The Pomp! The Puffery! The retina-searing sea of red, white, and blue-sequined cowboy hats!) The conventions' delegates and other participants--and those who trail them for the week in the Service of Democracy--are generally the first to admit this. In place of smog (there is none! Green City, and all!), it is irony that hangs heavy over Denver this week.

Which would seem to make the current convention an easy target for some Colbert-esque Satirical Skewering.

And yet. It's also difficult, Colbert would be the first to admit, to parody something that's so openly a parody of itself. While we applaud anyone who does so successfully...we offer, in the meantime, a cautionary tale--the Times's attempt at Convention Satire, a faux "schedule" of the convention's events:

"Theme of the Day (Sponsored by Facebook): Do we really want a 72-year-old dude in the White House?" (SNAP!); "Former vice president and Nobel laureate Al Gore will arrive at Invesco Field by melting glacier" (ZING!); "Presidential nominee Barack Obama will address the convention live via satellite from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin" (POW!).

Enough said.

I covered my first national convention in Chicago when Adlai Stevenson was nominated in 1952. It was a brokered convention, and the job of a reporter was to scurry around and look for leaks from the secret meetings in hotel rooms or trailers in which the party bosses negotiated the deals on the ticket and the platform.

The world has changed. The nominee is picked in caucuses and primaries. And, while speeches and spectacular visual effects in the convention hall are used to project the candidates and the party's image to the nation, there's a new emphasis on wooing the bloggers and the radio talk show hosts.

Much space has been set aside for the newest phenomenon—the blogger. There may be thousands here.

But what was most intriguing for an old political junkie was to witness the intensity with which the Democratic National Committee is pursuing an influential segment of the new media: the talk show hosts on radio and TV.

In a room on the main floor of the convention center a team of twenty volunteers was being briefed by a veteran of old Democratic wars, Kandy Stroud, a public relations executive from Washington. These young people will have one job during the convention—to meet the guests who come to be interviewed by radio and TV hosts and insure they are delivered to the right microphone.

Ms. Stroud outlined a system for tracking the procession of officials, politicians, and experts who will be coming to what's called “Radio Row”—where radio and TV interviewers await the guests. Arrangements are also made for Internet conversations. The microphone is provided here and satellite connections to an interviewer in another part of the country. There's also easy access a few feet away to computers that will provide Internet access. So, conceivably, one guest can appear on radio, TV, and the Internet in what might be called one-stop political shopping.

As Ms. Stroud talked earnestly to the young volunteers, their eyes shone with great interest. “Make sure you're very gracious to the people who come here. You want to make them as comfortable as possible,” she said.

The talk show hosts, Ms. Stroud said, run the gamut from liberal to conservative. “There are tons of radio and TV shows around the country and, of course, many national shows,” she said. “Many liberal and conservative hosts broadcast from the same, large rooms.”

“Is it like the Tower of Babel?” she asked. “No. Despite their political differences, they generally get along.”

One volunteer, Tom Beach, a production coordinator for television from Los Angeles, came here at his own expense.

“It's inspiring to be here, to be part of history and to meet other kids who share my passion for politics,” said the Obama fan.

Why? Why, these conventions? Why 15,000 journalists at these conventions? What are we doing? What is this all about?

This week is all about an Oprah Winfrey sighting.

Thanks to MSNBC's Courtney Hazlett for clearing that up just now.

Fred Mogul, a health reporter at WNYC, called to discuss the latest Harry and Louise comeback. The infamous duo appeared in health insurance commercials in the early 1990s, raising doubts about the Clinton health reform plan. Although press lore now credits them with killing the Clinton plan, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the small business lobby, and New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan also had a lot to do with it, as I recall.

Harry and Louise resurfaced last week in a new ad that’s running now during the conventions. This time, their message is more positive: “Health care costs are up again. Too many people are falling through the cracks,” says Harry. “Whoever the next president is, health care should be at the top of his agenda. Bring everyone to the table and make it happen,” says Louise. The ad sponsors are a puzzling mix: the very same NFIB that scotched reform before; Families USA, which claims to be the voice for health consumers but allies itself with groups that hardly have consumers in mind; the American Cancer Society’s Action Network; and hospitals represented by the Catholic Health Association and the American Hospital Association. Though not an official sponsor, Karen Ignani, president of the insurers’ trade group Americas Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), also showed up at a press briefing announcing the pair’s return and lent support for the effort. “AHIP Welcomes New Pro-Reform Ad Featuring Harry and Louise,” said its press release. So reassuring!

WNYC’s Mogul unearthed a couple of old stories from 2000 that give important clues to the subtext of the new ad campaign. Mogul found that, contrary to popular opinion, this is really the third Harry and Louise commercial. CBS News noted that “Version two of Harry and Louise, by the way, features the very same actors, but the starting budget is one tenth of the original, sources say.” An Associated Press story said “Harry and Louise are back for an encore.” It didn’t say which one.

Mogul found that, at the beginning of the presidential primary season in January 2000, the Health Insurance Association of America (the old name for the insurers’ trade group) and Families USA worked together on a conference that USA Today called “the strange bedfellows conference.” The paper reported that both groups agreed that big reform wouldn’t sell. That still seems to be the operating principle today. From another conference participant, representing the Catholic Health Association, came this prescient quote: “I think there is a growing awareness that having 44 million of our fellow country-persons without access to health care is unacceptable.” Eight years later, quotes like that are everywhere.

Ron Pollack, who then and now heads Families USA, said that universal health coverage had a better chance if, rather than drastically changing the whole system, policymakers expand existing programs and allow more low income people to qualify for Medicaid. Bien sur! The insurance trade group agreed and called for programs that gave vouchers to help poor people buy their own coverage. At the time, The New York Times reported that Harry and Louise were starring in television commercials to promote the industry’s plan to make it easier for people to buy private insurance, with new government subsidies for low-wage workers and new tax credits for small employers. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The solutions advanced by these groups in 2000 are the same ones candidates and interest groups talk about today—tax subsidies and tax credits to promote private insurance, building on the existing system, avoiding radical reform. And to build consensus for those recycled solutions, the ad sponsors and the insurance industry have dusted off Harry and Louise. Even the press has dusted off its slant. In 2000, the lead of a New York Times story said “Harry and Louise, featured in television commercials that helped kill President Clinton’s plan for universal health insurance in 1994, are back.” The lead from CBS News last week: “They were television icons back in the 1990s—a fictional couple starring not in a sitcom, but in political ads that transformed a very real national debate.”

Ron Pollack is back, too, saying: “I think it shows that the American people are coming together.” Really? The significance of the current Harry and Louise redux is not that groups with wildly different agendas can now play nicely together—although arguably that’s the message the sponsors want to send. It’s that the range of acceptable solutions to the health care crisis hasn’t advanced much since 2000. Or since 1994, for that matter. University of North Carolina health policy professor Jonathan Oberlander made that point recently on NPR. “A lot of things have happened in 16 years; the health care system is much worse than it was, but we pretty much have the same solutions that we’ve always had.” That’s the story Fred Mogul was beginning to sniff out; that’s the story that needs to be told.

This is the fourth in a series examining how the candidates’ health care proposals will affect ordinary people who live in the river town of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, and how the press could cover that angle. The entire series is archived here.

Kevin A. Smith

You might say that Kevin Smith, age 46, has struck it rich in the health insurance lottery. He, his wife, and four kids have a family policy provided by his wife’s employer—Arkansas State University. She is a teacher and runs an early childhood education program in the area. The university’s insurance comes with a low deductible, just $500, and his share of the premium runs only about $2900 a year, an insurance bargain these days. It’s an eighty/twenty plan, which means the insurer pays 80 percent of a bill, and the insuree pays the rest. That’s a bargain, too, considering that seventy/thirty plans are common. Copays for most services cost twenty dollars. “It’s good insurance,” Smith says. “But having said that, I have a stack of medical bills. I feel Michael Moore is right. The way the system works, it can break you.” The 20 percent copayments applied to increasingly expensive medical services add up quickly.

Smith’s family is typical of some 25 million Americans who may be underinsured; that is, their insurance, good or bad, does not cover all their medical care. According to The Commonwealth Fund, a New York City philanthropic and research organization, people are underinsured if they spend 10 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket expenses. So far this year, the Smiths have racked up medical bills that totaled $7000, about 8 percent of the family income. Smith, who once worked for former Arkansas Sen. Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton when he was governor, and served ten years in the Arkansas state senate until term limits forced him out, makes a good income between selling insurance and running a side business helping communities write grants. Still, the pile of medical bills is daunting, considering ongoing family expenses and looming college costs for his two sons.

The health services his family has used are nothing extraordinary, but they reflect the normal everyday care a family with four kids might need. It’s the stuff, he says, that you can’t plan for. His son suffered a concussion playing football. His wife broke a rib after a bicycle fall. Smith himself has had a couple of bike accidents. Last February, he finally paid off $3000 in bills, and was so excited he announced it to the staff in his office. The next day he fell off his bike on a rain-slick street and badly broke his arm and collar bone, and the cycle of medical debt began again.

Doctors sent him by ambulance to a specialist in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He got stuck with a $1000 bill not covered by insurance, and a doctor later told him the ambulance ride was unnecessary. Then, in May, he had another bicycle accident. Even though he suffered lacerations and a bruised a knee, he didn’t go to the doctor. His shoulder is frozen, and it’s hard for him to buckle a seat belt or shave.

He has been to his regular doctor, a chiropractor, and a physical therapist, all of whom have recommended an MRI costing about $1000. But he’s stalling, trying to avoid adding that $200 copayment to what he already owes. This year, his doctor diagnosed environmentally-induced asthma which is going to require some expensive medications with twenty- and thirty-dollar copays. So far he’s using free samples from the doctor to see which ones work best before buying costly drugs.

During his time in the Arkansas legislature, Smith learned a thing or two about health care. As an insurance agent, he sees “people all the time who are uninsurable, can’t afford a policy, and fall through the cracks.” Unexpectedly, he blurts out: “I wish we had single-payer. We would trade commissions (on health policies) for free health insurance in a New York minute.” If his clients didn’t have to worry about health care expenses and health policies, Smith says, they could afford to pay their other insurance premiums on time, or maybe buy a long-term care policy that some people need but cannot afford to buy. His business would do just fine.

But no candidate is talking about single-payer health care, so unless the candidates’ proposals really will produce coverage for those without it, the Smith Insurance Agency will still have to put up with late auto, life, and homeowners’ premiums from clients who also struggle to pay their medical bills. Not much is likely to change for Smith and his family, either.

How the family would fare under McCain

McCain’s health proposals are geared toward encouraging employers like Arkansas State University to drop health insurance for their employees and encourage them to use tax credits to buy policies in the individual market. McCain would also require those with employer-based insurance to pay income taxes on the value of those benefits, perhaps another inducement to move into the individual market. For starters, though, Smith’s asthma most likely makes him uninsurable if he buys on his own.

Assuming he could qualify medically, a comparable family policy currently sold by Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield costs about $5800. If he used the $5000 credit to buy such a policy, he might pay only $800 in premiums and save some money this year. Since this policy, like the one from Arkansas State, requires 20 percent coinsurance, he would still find himself with out-of-pocket expenses and a stack of bills. The under-insurance problem would not disappear, and down the road, there are other risks of switching.

As Smith and his wife get older, the $5000 credit buys less coverage because premiums in the individual market increase with a person’s age. They could end up paying far more in premiums than if they stayed with their employer plan. Generally with these plans, a forty-year-old worker pays the same portion of the premium as a sixty-year-old worker, although premiums for the entire group may rise as the group itself ages. “I can’t imagine this working for a lot of people. It won’t work for me,” he adds.

How the family would fare under Obama

Because Obama’s proposals are so vague, it’s hard to say whether the Smiths would benefit. Early on, Obama said that his proposed public plan would be available to small businesses and individuals without access to employer-based coverage or public plans. That seems to indicate he wouldn’t be eligible for any kind of new public insurance option like those being promoted by Obama surrogates; that is, barring some huge legislative breakthrough that lets everyone buy into a Medicare-like plan that might offer cheaper premiums and comprehensive benefits—in short, a better deal than private insurance, whether provided by employers or bought individually.

On the trail, Obama has promised that he has the secret sauce to lower insurance premiums by $2500 for a typical family. That implies his proposed cost control measures—health IT, requiring hospitals to publicly report on costs and quality, and better management of chronic conditions—will actually keep medical costs from rising. Experts now doubt that these ingredients will work. So unless and until there is real cost control, the Smiths will continue to be part of the growing number of Americans who are underinsured.

Just received the "List of Prohibited Items for Members of the Media" from the Republican National Convention. Among the items reporters may not bring "inside the security perimeter" in St. Paul: "weapons, knives (regardless of size)," "fireworks, explosives," "tasers, stun guns, or similar devices," "coolers," "knitting needles," "strollers," "tired narratives," "herd mentality," and "fixation on triviality. " (Oh, ok. So I added the last three).

George Stephanopoulos tried to get chief Obama strategist David Axelrod to say something­—anything—interesting about the Biden choice, but Axelrod was relentlessly on-message ticking off his points: Biden is “accomplished,” “expert,” “working class,” full of “wisdom,” has “overcome adversity,” and he’d be forthright with Obama. Otherwise, an Axelrod sentence, you might say, consisted of a noun, a verb, and four-more-years-of-George-Bush. If you want a whole paragraph, he’ll throw in: “McCain can’t remember how many homes he owns.” Of course, he wouldn’t play at this week’s round of the tedious, empty game of estimating the future—how much of a bump the convention should give Obama. Why is such short-term prophecy a serious question? The only answer to such questions ever ought to be: Che sera, sera.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were running hard this week with the gift of McCain’s disputed house holdings. In the midst of real economic privation, even justifiable panic, it was almost as if the question of home ownership, which is no laughing matter for many millions of people, had elbowed its way sideways into the campaign, albeit in an unexpected, displaced, symbolic fashion. Stephanopoulos pushed the question of McCain’s real estate onto Rudy Giuliani, who broke new ground in the annals of property assessment. “They both live in million dollar homes,” Giuliani said, “so…what is that about people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? “Well,” Stephanopoulos responded, “Senator Obama has one.” Giuliani: “Senator Obama—I don't know—one—one million dollar house, two, three, four? You're—you're sort of not in a position to be pointing at other people, when you are in that one percent of America in terms of—I mean how many people live in one million dollar homes? They both do.”

“One—one million dollar house, two, three, four”….You expected Giuliani to break into the punch line of an old gag. (One house, four houses—pretty soon you’re talking about real estate.) Still, Giuliani gamely insisted that McCain is “a regular guy that almost any American can relate to,” apparently oblivious to the fact that, given the recent real estate bubble, many of these almost-any-Americans know that a million dollars doesn’t buy what it used to buy. Meanwhile, neither Stephanopoulos nor anyone else in national TV has, to my knowledge, explored this supplementary item unearthed by Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel: that the McCains spent $273,000 on household servants in 2007, according to the senator’s tax return. It might also be worth noting that Obama’s house comes with a $1.32 million mortgage. And McCain’s?

The housing inventory kerfuffle is symbolic politics with a vengeance, which does not mean it is trivial—remember George H. W. Bush apparently not recognizing a barcode? By itself, Housegate is surely, in one way, misleading, as George Will pointed out to the ABC round table, noting accurately that the Democrats’ great twentieth-century knight, Franklin Roosevelt, was a rather imposing landowner himself. Which led Will to one of his better lines: “It’s time we accepted that the question is not whether an elite should rule but which one.”

This pithy condensation of an ancient conservative apothegm has much to recommend it. But in the current setting, of course, it’s also vastly misleading. FDR represented not Hudson Valley landowners of Dutch descent, but a united Democratic Party. Barack Obama starts from the Ivy-League-degreed and other professionals (who represent about 40 percent of the Democratic vote), allied with African-Americans and the young (no elites at all), hoping to assemble a united Democratic Party from there. By contrast, John McCain also represents two elites: First, the naval aristocracy into which he was born (including a spell as a Navy lobbyist), and, second, the beer distribution heirs and top-tier stock owners who financed his political career. (About to make a pile of money on the sale of Anheuser-Busch to a Belgian company, Cindy McCain is. Whatever happened to the hue-and-cry about the imperial ambitions of offshore capital and the selling off of America’s great homeland assets?)

A word now on an earlier moment, when Stephanopoulos asked Axelrod’s opinion of what he called “ a really interesting piece in Newsweek magazine this morning, called ‘A Liberal's Lament,’ by the historian Sean Wilentz.” Stephanopoulos summarized Wilentz as arguing “that while Barack Obama's had soaring rhetoric, he has yet to…put his stamp on the liberal tradition.” He quoted Professor Wilentz as follows: "[Obama] needs to fulfill the glamorous and more difficult task of explaining specifically where he wants to move the country and how he proposes to move it above and beyond reciting his policy positions."

It was as if Obama had for months been confining himself to “pulsing theatrics” (another phrase from Professor Wilentz), had not given speech after speech declaring his passions and views, propounding plans for health care, energy, jobs, loans, Iraq, and the American position in the world as specifically as anyone in any presidential campaign of recent memory.

Axelrod fired back accurately:

Well, I don't accept that that's what Barack Obama hasn't been doing, and I think that he will give a clear picture again this week of where we have to go. He feels strongly that…a healthy economy and a healthy country involves one… in which everybody gets to participate, in which there's shared prosperity, in which we unite behind a common purpose instead of a kind of special interest bazaar we've seen in Washington these past few years that have basically wrecked our economy and put us on the wrong course. He understands that the middle class is the backbone of this country, and the middle class is in trouble right now, and they're not getting any help from Washington.

This piece, by a prominent Clinton-supporting historian who went to the mat to support them during the impeachment campaign of 1998—and who was roundly accused of “partisanship” for his pains—now accuses unnamed “liberal intellectuals” of “largely abdicat[ing] their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama's image” while refusing to accept that Obama’s nomination, like it or not, is legitimate. Wilentz upholds Franklin Roosevelt as the exemplary true-blue liberal campaigner, when Roosevelt gave 100 percent support to a 1932 Democratic platform that called for a balanced budget and a 25 percent cut in government spending in the trough of the Depression. Forgetting the historian’s mandate to treat history as it is, not as an echo of sometime else, he takes flight from the political setting and mistakes Obama as Jimmy Carter. He forgets that a campaigning candidate does not campaign in the abstract but against specific candidates under specific circumstances.

After much travail, the Clintons are reportedly on track to speak for Obama at the convention and rally those of their supporters who go by the name PUMA—Party Unity My Ass. Now one of their most eminent supporters has embarrassed them.

Must every cable channel bring us convention coverage from a jam-packed restaurant? What's the thinking here? "Authentic" backdrop complete with "Real People" (and fries)? I can barely hear Joe Scarborough -- no low-talker, he -- with all the background noise and bustling at Sam's No. 3 Bar and Grill in Denver from whence Morning Joe will be broadcast all week. How loud can it get? Terry McAuliffe -- Terry McAuliffe! -- was practically inaudible just now.

One day John McCain is a Maverick. The next day he’s an Enigma. (Day Three: He’s a Shapeshifter). In the last week, the senator from Arizona has thoroughly perplexed two columnists at our nation’s best-known newspapers.

Last Saturday, Frank Rich seemed surprised that Obama wasn’t leading McCain in the polls, and offered a rather odd explanation for their statistical tie.

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer—and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.

And, today The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson mused about McCain in this way:

There's a candidate in this presidential race who remains a mystery—hazy, undefined, so full of contradictions that voters may see electing him as an enormous risk. I'm referring to the cipher known as John McCain.

Psst... the man has been in the media spotlight since he returned from Vietnam in 1973, he’s been a public servant since 1982, and he’s been a presidential candidate twice. And we still don’t know enough about McCain? Seriously?

Rich and Robinson reach for shaky evidence to prove our ignorance. 1. We don’t know the real McCain because he has reversed his positions—therefore we don’t know what he really believes. 2. We don’t know McCain because he confuses Shiites and Sunnis and sometimes seems confused and forgetful. 3. And, we don’t know McCain because the press has promoted McCain’s maverick image.

There’s no point in speculating how both columnists came to the same conclusion about McCain (DNC talking points, perhaps?), but clearly the argument doesn’t hold water. McCain’s reversals and confusions aren’t mysteries; they’re facts of his personality. And as for his maverick image, well, there’s one group that ought to take some responsibility for that—the media.

The current hubbub about McCain’s many houses, which according to the Wall Street Journal can be traced back to Obama strategist David Axelrod, still doesn’t really speak to whether or not McCain would competently handle the economy. (Maybe he didn’t want to answer because there are lots of ways to parse the question: structures or properties, owned or leased?)

Ironically, the charge that the candidate is an unknown was previously leveled at Obama earlier on in the campaign. And last month, WaPo’s Richard Cohen said that Obama is still an unknown, too: “I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.”

Alright, if we really accept the assumption that all the candidates are total unknowns, can we… um… find out? Rich and Robinson work at two pretty substantial news organizations. Can they get someone to find out? It seems like pretty lazy journalism to just issue these grave statements—Obama and McCain, who are they?—without acknowledging the amount of information that’s already been amassed about the two candidates.

Or is it possible that, after all these articles, the two senators are, perhaps, unknowable? What is it that the countless profiles and perspectives crave? Journalists are trying to predict what sort of president a candidate might be, but that’s just not an entirely attainable goal. If Rich and Robinson are hoping that more information might help them make a more solid prediction, well, tough. No one gets a real Magic 8 Ball in this life.

And Frank Rich earns an extra raspberry for his description of the public perception of McCain:

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

Whoa, there.... I think Mr. Rich has mixed up his literary genres. McCain is not Prince Charming; he is a tragic hero undone not only by the forces of evil, but also by his own shortcomings. And his happy-ever-after seems far from certain.

August 22, 2008

Dear Shark,

We're writing to express our gratitude for letting us jump you today. We couldn't have produced "Going to the End of the Line" without your help, and sincerely appreciate your cooperation in the endeavor.

We look forward to working with you again in the future. Perhaps on another interactive feature, this time about the mystery, rugged beauty, and triumph of the human spirit that is the M100 bus line? We'll be in touch. In the meantime, thank you again for your valuable assistance.

All the best,

The New York Times

“What’s your best idea to cut gun deaths?” The New York Times's Freakonomics blog asks today. The responses are well meaning, and predictable.

Jens Ludwig, a law and public policy professor from the University of Chicago, supports handing out money for tips on gun possession:

A bunch of logistical issues would need to be worked out, including how large the rewards would be (I think $1,000 or more wouldn’t be crazy) and how police should respond to tips and confiscate guns while respecting civil liberties.

Former gang member Jesus Castro Jr., who currently runs a gang-awareness mentoring program in California, says:

The greatest way to make this happen is to make it law and set up organizations that serve youth and families, helping them to better educate parents on how to stop gun violence and clearly teaching them the consequences that result from gun violence.

Here’s Eric Proshansky, the deputy chief of the Division of Affirmative Litigation in the New York City Law Department: “Elect public officials who are, in fact, committed to reducing gun deaths in the U.S.”

And from David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard School of Public Health, who favors the creation of the National Firearm Safety Administration, we get:

…each specific rule regulating the manufacture and sale of firearms should go through a more scientific administrative process rather than the more political legislative process. It’s time to take some of the politics out of firearm safety.

How productive is this feast of informed opinion? Wait, that’s not the right attitude. So, here’s the checklist, America: cash incentives, community organizations, the Right Folks in Office, and a new national agency. Now, let’s get moving.

Judith Warner says we should leave Elizabeth Edwards alone. She’s the exception to the rule, apparently.

“I don’t want to discuss John Edwards’s extramarital behavior here,” she wrote in her Domestic Disturbances column in yesterday's New York Times. “I don’t want to beat up on Elizabeth, a woman who, it seems to me, has already endured many lifetimes’ worth of pain.”

Well, maybe only 1,000-or-so words’ worth. Warner’s rant, called “Starve the Beast,” on why Elizabeth Edwards has been unnecessarily protective of her husband, is not much worth reading. Except, that is, for the rather odd sentence that sticks out halfway down. Here it is, with its preceding one discussing the former senator’s shelf life going forward:

But I have no doubt that, in the future, he’ll be back - with a few well-planned wrinkles, a few grizzled hairs to connote wisdom and suffering, and, most important, a more personal and immediate relationship with God. One simply wonders, with a shudder, whether Elizabeth will be with him.

Is Warner referring to Elizabeth Edwards leaving her husband, or no longer being alive? The ambiguous statement leads in two different directions: either Warner is talking about some culpability on Elizabeth’s part for not more rigorously “starv[ing] the beast” (a shudder of self-righteous horror) or a culpability on Edwards’s part in trying to “re-brand” himself when his wife is battling cancer (a forecasting shudder).

The ambiguity just adds confusion to what already reads like a familiar feminist screed:

When will she learn? If you keep on feeding the beast, you’ll get your hand, then your arm, then your head chopped off.

“When the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him,” [Elizabeth] said, on the day John made his “Nightline” confession.

That door should stay closed now.

And if you’re going to keep the door open for a little longer, misleading statements (and the awkward re-appropriation of a fiscal metaphor) aren’t doing anyone any favors.

This morning, the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times—among many others—reported that the United States has agreed to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June. And from the rest of the country by the end of 2011.

Which means: not only has the White House’s infamously nebulous “time horizon” been officially upgraded to—wait for it—a timetable, but it’s also a timetable that would start the withdrawal process relatively soon.

Now, the agreement is by no means the final word on the timetable issue. "Both sides warned Thursday that political hurdles to a final settlement remain," the LA Times writes in its lede, and it "still must be approved by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders before it goes before Iraq’s fractious Parliament," the NYT article warns. The Bush Adminstration is referring to the 2009 and 2011 withdrawal dates specified in the draft agreement as “aspirational goals” rather than fixed deadlines.

Indeed, Rice downplayed the draft agreement's military implications in a press conference yesterday (video via the AP):

Still, the unsurprising political downplay nonwithstanding, this is a big story. Not only does the specification of withrawal dates signal a significant shift in the rhetoric of the Bush administration, but it may also signal a shift in Iraqi attitudes. "Iraqi officials said they are 'very close' to resolving the remaining issues blocking a final accord that governs the future American military presence here," the Post notes.

So, then: where's the story? While it's gotten some pickup, unsurprisingly, on the blogs, it's gotten a surprisingly small amount of attention among the rest of the media. And it's come nowhere close, of course, to dominating the day's media narrative. Because, apparently,there's one piece of news (well, "news," at this point) bigger than troop withdrawals. Yep: Veepstakes!

Indeed. Little, apparently, can distract anchors and reporters from their salivation--and increasing indignation--over the fact that Obama has yet to release the name of his running mate. Indeed, "we're still waiting to hear" has been the refrain among the media all day today. It's hard to remember a time when so many news reports have reported that "we have nothing to report."

On CNN’s Headline News this afternoon, the short interruptions in the nearly-incessant veep speculation have contained news not of the potential withdrawal agreement, but of: the shooting of a high school student in his Tennessee school’s cafeteria; an obese woman, charged with the murder of her two-year-old nephew, who may be “too fat to go to trial” (“she can’t fit through the door!” Chuck Roberts noted, glee seeping into his voice); a euthanized baby whale in Australia; the demolition of a firehouse in Peekskill, New York; and news about Kaylee Anthony, the missing Florida two-year-old.

Fox News interrupted its Veep Talk for a report on Anthony (during which Geraldo Rivera, “on the ground” in front of the Anthonys’ Florida home, declared, “this is the JonBenet case of the 21st century!”).

Perhaps it's time for the media to set their own timetables--for reporting real news.

At a Wednesday town hall meeting in Lynchburg, Virginia, Barack Obama derided The New York Times number-one bestseller The Obama Nation, and its author, Jerome Corsi. He's "just making stuff up," Obama said. "But it gets a lot of play on Fox News."

Fox News has been a particularly fruitful platform for Dr. Corsi. During his Hannity and Colmes appearance last week, the Harvard-educated author boasted about the show's promotional capabilities: "There's a great formula, go on Sean Hannity's radio show first to the day. Sean Hannity later in the day, you get a best seller."

Corsi made his television debut on Hannity and Colmes in 2004, discussing his book Unfit for Command—an assault on the military record of John Kerry, co-authored with longtime Kerry nemesis John O’Neill. The book soon rose to the top of the Times’s bestseller list, and played a major role in Kerry's defeat.

Several print outlets attempted to verify Corsi's claims about Kerry, concluding ultimately that they were, at best, incomplete. Meanwhile, cable news outlets barreled along with nonstop coverage, which mostly served to inflate the controversy. Many television hosts echoed Sean Hannity's thoughts: "You weren't in Vietnam. I wasn't in Vietnam," he told Kerry advisor Jeh Johnson. "I don't think we can determine the truth here. This is why we're going to let the audience decide."

This postmodern take on truth granted legitimacy to Corsi’s arguments at the height of the 2004 cable campaign news frenzy, and left American viewers to digest a Rashomonic array of Vietnam stories on their own. Viewers, not journalists, had to determine which decorated veteran was most credible—John Kerry or the Swiftees.

With Obama Nation, print media outlets have repeated their efforts to fact-check Corsi. But this time around, even cable news hosts (apart from Sean Hannity) have been much more willing to openly challenge Corsi. They have featured him alongside representatives of Media Matters and other opposing groups; they have introduced him as a discredited author and discussed his more outlandish theories.

Of course, Corsi's allegations about Obama have proven much easier to debunk, compared with his distant wartime accounts of John Kerry. Corsi claims Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his parents, when, in fact, the final page of his introduction states, "It is to my family, though, my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book." He said Obama attended a particularly incendiary Reverend Wright sermon on July 22, 2007, when at that time, Obama was giving a speech halfway across the country. Even Corsi's more general suggestions—i.e. Obama wants to withdrawal troops from Afghanistan—are pretty far removed from reality.

While news outlets should be commended for increased candor (even if it is through the backhanded "Corsi refuted" storyline), their coverage has also presented Corsi as a phenomenon in the publishing industry: "Sensational accusations on race, religion, and drugs leap from the pages in what's about to top The New York Times bestseller list," declared Larry King in the opening of a show last week. Across the print and online spectra, Corsi's blockbuster book sales have been the headline material, as if to justify why a discredited commentator is still worth covering.

Even when coupled with with candor and fact-checks, the media’s coverage of Corsi is giving the author a great deal of free publicity, and may accomplish little other than giving further credence to his character and claims. On Wednesday, The Huffington Post's Peter Dreier noted noted that bulk sales, book stores and media promotion have been heavily responsible for the book's early celebrity.

"Why do we care what Jerome Corsi says?" asked Paul Begala back in 2004, lamenting the fact that "some people are making the mistake of taking him seriously." Two days later, his own Crossfire program aired a show examining the question "Did Kerry misrepresent his Vietnam record?" and featuring Jerome Corsi as a guest.

News outlets certainly ought to provide a forum to tease out political allegations. But there is a limit to the amount of attention that should be awarded to unsubstantiated controversies. It's worth remembering that garnering as much free media coverage as possible was a cornerstone of the original Swift Boat strategy. Books like Corsi’s fit snugly into the recent tradition of partisan political gamesmanship. But that doesn’t mean that the press has to play along.

The swell of sour press about the Olympics may have begun with a couple of crooked teeth. It was clear to anyone who’d ever watched a person sing while smiling that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke was lip-synching her rendition of a national ode at the opening ceremonies, but that, by itself, is hardly a scandal. What stunk was the revelation that she was mouthing words sung by seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was excluded because she didn’t look, according to the subsequent admission of the musical director, “flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression.”

The media had accepted Beijing’s ban on public spitting and its efforts to scrub its filthy air as acceptable Olympics-prep primping. For China to shame a homely child for insufficient cuteness was another matter. Since then, China has continually played into what’s becoming the new motif of Olympics coverage: the fallback narrative of China as a land of polar contrasts has been reduced to one of a single China, in which much of what was built to dazzle the world is, at second glance, a crock.

One of the more thorough (and cleverly presented) catalogs of China’s Olympics misdemeanors I’ve yet seen was by Rick Reilly on ESPN.com (for which I write about the outdoors). He blasted China for filling sparsely attended events with herds of “volunteer fans,” erecting fences to obscure unsightly neighborhoods along the marathon route, and possibly fielding under-aged gymnasts. For serial lying, in other words.

China’s effort to present a flawless face to the world has also produced outright repression. In the current issue of Sports Illustrated, Selena Roberts echoes Reilly in reporting that China, “enabled by the IOC’s docile lords and protected by NBC’s friendly lens,” has created a simulacrum of reality, “a Truman Show” set in a city “looking as if it’s been Photoshopped.” She goes further when she visits a designated protest site, thirty minutes by taxi from the Bird’s Nest stadium, where she finds people flying kites and climbing rocks. Turns out that none of the protest applications have been granted. Two septuagenarian applicants have even been sentenced to a year at a labor camp for repeatedly applying to protest.

Sports journalists, like political journalists, have a high pomp threshold. They acknowledge that schmaltz and canned enthusiasm are the trademarks of spectacle, and they will let most hokum slide. Outright manipulation, though, raises their dander, and toy department or no, reporters live by free speech. It’s probably too much to expect the contractual broadcaster - NBC, in this case - to call for more openness; the network did, after all, pay nearly $900 million for its own exclusive rights. But bully for the print journos, including star writers at two sports media titans, finding another grand theme to these games besides Michael Phelps-as-Aquaman.

Why did it take so long for the press to find its voice? The drumbeat of critical coverage has been audible since China was awarded the Games, and only intensified with every broken promise of Internet freedom and Beijing’s pre-Games expulsion of the homeless. Everyone expected surly China to clamp down on dissent harder than Athens or Sydney; that was no surprise, so in one regard, it wasn’t as newsworthy as the sports everyone came to see. What observers didn’t predict is the general tackiness of China’s crackdowns. After giving their hosts the benefit of the doubt, the Western press has become increasingly skeptical because of the outright abuses, yes—but also because of the petty fibs and overall “phoniness.” In attempting to project strength, China instead advertised its own insecurities, and became a ripe target for criticism.

Reilly called these games the “Fauxlympics,” adding uncharacteristic poison to his pen, but the whole exercise by the Communist government in China recalls another Russian export. “[T]he entire host city has been turned into a kind of Potemkin Olympic village,” Andrew Gilligan wrote in the London Evening Standard. In surveying half-empty stands that were ballyhooed to be sold-out, he arrived at the rather charitable conclusion that China was merely desperate to appear perfect. The irony for the Chinese is that nobody in a country endowed with a free press would ever expect such a massive, rollicking endeavor to unfurl flawlessly, because when the best-laid plans inevitably do go awry, journalists delight in highlighting the hubris. “There is such a thing,” Gilligan noted, “as trying too hard.”

Earlier today, I mentioned an article, penned by the HuffPo's Rachel Sklar, that explains Rachel Maddow's ascension to her own show as evidence of liberal leanings at MSNBC--and of the power Keith Olbermann, a Maddow mentor, enjoys at the network.

"This isn't about why she was hired, this is about who she replaced, and why -- and, behind the scenes, by whom," Sklar writes.

The "who she replaced" is Dan Abrams, the focus of Sklar's piece. Sklar mentions--and, really, mourns--the loss of Abrams's primetime show, Verdict (which Maddow's show will replace), suggesting that the former show simply wasn't liberal enough for MSNBC's new primetime lineup--given the fact that, as Sklar writes, MSNBC is "moving sharply to the left." Sklar notes that Verdict "has been performing better in the 9 p.m. hour than anything MSNBC has ever had, particularly in the all-important demo"--and that it "has been a damn safe harbor for MSNBC."

As I noted, Sklar's piece is a good one, thoughtful and well-researched. But a tipster reminds us of one thing it's missing: disclosure. Since Sklar herself has been a commentator on Verdict.

Which is not to negate the value of Sklar's piece. But it is to say that a little disclosure would have been nice.

Why, exactly, did Michiko Kakutani write a profile of Jon Stewart in this past Sunday’s New York Times?

The infamous Times books critic depicted Stewart and The Daily Show in a way that seemed an attempt at an imprimatur, a High Brow Stamp of Approval from the diva of literary reviews. It’s an attempt that produced something of a non-result.

Stewart has been profiled before, in the Times and elsewhere—among others, Frank Rich did it in 2003, and Damien Cave did it in 2005. His portrait gains little luster from Kakutani’s standard mix of handpicked details and sweeping statements (how else do you review literary tomes?), because unlike even the most constant writers of our time (say, Updike, Roth, or even DeLillo), Stewart is almost constantly in the spotlight.

Kakutani’s stamp of approval is something of a Holy Grail for newbie authors, and her indictments of even the most canonic writers can almost reverse a flood of critical adoration. (Coming to mind is her recent review of Salman Rushdie’s newest book, which, she wrote, is “lacquered onto a plywood story with a heavy paintbrush that leaves lots of streaks and spots and results in a work that feels jerry-built, meretricious—and yes, quite devoid of magic.”)

Kakutani is a stranger to the world of comedy news shows, however, and while sending an outsider to report on an unfamiliar milieu can be a brilliant editorial strategy, it doesn’t work here. (Incidentally, the observer role has, in the past, suited her fairly well. In October of 2001, when she described how the interconnectedness provided by cable and Internet served as a conduit for a collective fear, her detachment made for an interesting, if somewhat pedantic, panoramic read of those landscapes.)

With respect to the Stewart piece, it’s not just that there’s little new about it (a legitimate and concrete gripe). There’s a more significant disconnect here, one caused by the inability of Kakutani As Critic to do what she does best. For once, her stamp of approval doesn’t really matter (and that’s what her well-honed thing is). Take this summation:

“The Daily Show” resonates not only because it is wickedly funny but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic.

It’s typical Kakutani: the distillation of a theme or plot or entire book (take your pick) into a smartly written, syntactically attractive sentence. But her words slide off the page like so many extraneous drops of water, because The Daily Show has been distilled, and the verdict, from a mélange of reporters, pundits and viewers, is already in. Her own verdict—however confidently awarded—means very little.

It would have made sense for someone like Kakutani to write a piece outside of her ordinary scope if there were further need for a cultural arbiter to assess and assign value to the show. But The Daily Show doesn’t need Michiko Kakutani to confirm its relevance. The other option was to report the hell out of the piece and actually offer up some new and interesting details about Stewart and the evolving operations of the show. Unfortunately, Kakutani, whether she was resting easy on her critic’s couch or leery of entering the world of scrappy reportage, didn’t do that, either. At one point in the profile, she calls what Stewart does on a nightly basis—informing and entertaining—an "ambidextrous feat." Kakutani, at least this time around, appears a bit more one-handed in her efforts.

As a lead-up to Denver, the Washington Post has enlisted David Broder--who has covered every convention since 1956 (again: 1956)--for a series of videos in which he reflects on conventions past.

"I love conventions," Broder says in today's spot, "but they're not today what they were then."

Slight understatement, perhaps. But that makes the remarkable evolution the conventions--bastions both of tradition and innovation--have undergone over the years well worth documenting. And who better to do that than a veteran?

A hissing cockroach race! Pictures of McCain and Obama! Taped to roach contenders’ backs! The McCain roach wins! Here’s the video courtesy of The Star-Ledger, via USAToday.

In 2000, apparently, the Gore roach won by an antenna. Ah, New Jersey Pest Management Association, you float my boat. And AP “offbeat” writers, so do you.

Rachel Sklar, senior editor at the Huffington Post and scribe of its "Eat the Press" column, has an article up on Romenesko today.

Which would be unremarkable, save for the fact that the article's presence on Poynter wasn't the result of curation: it was originally published there. As an entry in Poynter's Forum, to be precise.

Seems Sklar's article ("MADDOW IN, ABRAMS OUT, AS MSNBC MOVES DECISIVELY TO THE LEFT")--which explores the political implications of Rachel Maddow's much-buzzed-about promotion at MSNBC--was too focused on partisanship(!) to be HuffPo-publication-worthy(!). Which seems just, you know, a tad ironic. But, per Huffington, "Not everyone is approaching everything in this campaign from a right vs left perspective. Stop trying to force everything into that tired old way of looking at American politics."

Whether Huffington, through delusion or sheer force of will, actually believes in her own exemption from the partisanization of political coverage is an open question. As is whether she "wants to tightly control how politics is discussed on her site." Either way, though, Sklar's (very good) article was spiked by the HuffPo. So Jim Romenesko took it in.

Per Sklar's introduction to the piece on Poynter:

This post was originally written for "Eat The Press' at the Huffington Post, but it was determined that the post was not "congruent with HuffPost's editorial position against the media's penchant for viewing everything through a left/right prism" (see here). With respect, I disagreed, and together we decided that the piece would be best placed elsewhere. Thanks to Jim for that opportunity.

The first few days of any conflict exist in the darkest version of what soldiers call “the fog of war.” Nothing is certain; competing and conflicting reports about incursions, attacks, counterattacks, and atrocities filter through various news channels, only some of which ever get confirmed later. In a fast-moving war, publishing rumors and relying only on official sources—with little or no social or historical context for the fighting—can distort the public’s, and the policymakers’, understanding of the situation. The war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia is a perfect example of this, as sloppy reporting in the war’s early days led to some questionable decisions later on.

Put simply, most early reporting in U.S. media on the conflict lacked any context, either recent or historical. Since at least 2006, Georgia had been dealing with provocative cease-fire violations in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and in the two weeks or so leading up to the August 8 incursion, Georgia claimed to have suffered “daily shelling” of its villages from South Ossetian outposts near the provincial capital of Tskhinvali. Days before the war began, on August 3, The New York Times reported from Moscow that South Ossetia was claiming at least a half-dozen dead fighters after a brief skirmish with Georgia. Similarly violent incidents along the borders of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia have occurred repeatedly over the past several years. So, unlike the many newspapers that were describing it as “blitzing” or “lightning” (with all the uncomfortable Nazi images those terms conjure), many analysts saw the war coming years ago. It really wasn’t a surprise.

Furthermore, there was a tendency in both Russian and western news outlets to pin some blame for the conflict on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. This is fine as far as it goes, but it misses a key point: even before Saakashvili became President after the so-called Rose Revolution in 2003, tensions between Georgia and Russia were high. Not only had they fought nearly the exact same war in 1993, but former president Eduard Shevardnadze, who was never as much of a firebrand nor as anti-Russia as Saakashvili, faced two assassination attempts in the mid- and late-90s at the hands of suspected Russia-backed agents.

Even ignoring the very bloody and stalemated history of the 1993 war, most early coverage ignored this history, choosing instead merely to relay statements from U.S. or Georgian officials, bounced weakly off counter-statements from Russian officials. Headlines in English were never “Russia responds to Georgian aggression,” a theme that was dominant in many Russian-language accounts. Rather, American papers were mostly filled with the story of Russia invading the sovereign country of Georgia—an overly simplistic portrayal of events.

Upon entering South Ossetia, Russian troops claimed to have discovered evidence that suggested Georgian troops engaged either in genocide or ethnic cleansing, depending on the source. For days, many outlets, including The Associated Press, reported the Russian claim that 1,500 South Ossetians had been killed during the Georgian advance. While these reports sometimes were accompanied by the important caveat that they could not be independently confirmed (or hardly any caveats at all), just as often such claims were reported as fact, or not given the benefit of the doubt, leading to an inaccurate view of what really happened in Tskhinvali.

An August 14 Human Rights Watch reportconcluded that only forty-four people had died in the city “since the start of the fighting,” which includes several days before the Russian incursion into Georgia. While civilian deaths, and injuries, and damage to non-military targets deserve condemnation no matter their source, there is little doubt that the mostly uncritical reporting of Russia’s provocative claims led to a great deal of confusion as to the actual scale of the fighting, and unjustly accused Georgian forces of atrocities they did not commit.

Inaccurate journalism has real consequences. While offering support to Georgia, President Bush and his spokespeople had to hedge their statements about what was going on in the country—not because they were being diplomatic, but because they had no idea what was going on, thanks to “confusing reports from the ground,” and “one-sided and possibly exaggerated accounts of actions from both sides.” While part of the explanation for this is that American intelligence agencies have been primarily focused on Iraq, Iran, and North Korea over the last six years rather than the Caucasus, another important part is that officials have come to rely on initial reports from the media.

Hence, policymakers make poor or tentative decisions based on a faulty understanding of what was happening. While President Bush has every right to take Georgia’s side in the conflict, it was wrong of him to portray Russia’s advance into the country as smooth and unstoppable and unspeakably brutal, when the Pentagon did not know for certain if that was indeed the case. Yet he probably did not know better. Subsequent reporting has revealed just how halting and imprecise Russia’s military advance was, which could have tempered Western leaders’ rush to condemn the situation before they understood it.

This summer, several headlines touted a new threat to the world’s battle against climate change. But this menace doesn’t burn gas, churn oil, or even kill trees.

Flat-screen televisions have been criticized lately because manufacturers use a little-known synthetic gas called nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) in the production of their liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. The reason for such headlines as “Flat Screen TV Gas ‘a climate time bomb'” is that U.C. Irvine professor Michael Prather described NF3 as the “greenhouse gas missing from Kyoto” in a recent paper, because it possesses a global warming effect 16,800 times that of carbon dioxide when compared as single molecules.

But scary headlines and misreporting have misled the public about the true threat posed by NF3 and that 56-incher. Yes, NF3 is a potent greenhouse gas—but even if 100 percent of a year’s production reached the atmosphere it would only have a microscopic effect on climate change.

“It’s not a big deal by itself,” Prather said in an interview. “We’re looking at less than half a percent [the impact] of CO2. Is it the most important thing? No. But it should be in the market basket. And it should be monitored.”

The overblown response to Prather’s report also raises the question about how climate science will be written and interpreted now that global warming has gained more of the news hole and been deemed an urgent issue by so many. Prather said he wrote the report in a manner that he hoped would garner attention, but felt disappointed that half of the reporting he saw inflated his paper’s conclusions.

“If it weren’t flat screen TVs, it wouldn’t have gotten the coverage,” Prather said.

But could stories such as “LCD making worse for the environment than coal?” inundate the public with so many hyped warnings to the point that the masses would eventually ignore the climate change message altogether?

“It is a potential problem, as the public may begin to neglect the message if they get whipsawed by exaggerated reports,” Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in an email. “So we need to state information clearly, including appropriate caveats.”

The caveats are many. The Prather paper clearly reported that no one knows how much NF3 resides in the atmosphere, because the gas hasn’t been measured. Prather hoped to devise a means to measure the gas by this fall. Additionally, the impact of NF3 on global warming would be minimal. If all the estimated 4,000 tons of NF3 produced in a year escaped into the atmosphere, it would equal 0.44 percent of the global warming impact from the world’s CO2 emissions in a year. All of that NF3 would have slightly more climate impact than the emissions from two of the world’s largest coal power plants combined. There are more than 600 coal plants in the United States alone.

“It was a very useful study, a useful warning—too bad it got over-hyped,” Hansen wrote. “It is not a message for consumers, i.e., there is no reason for them not to buy flat-screens, but it is a message for technologists to be aware of its potential effects.”
In LCD production, NF3 is electrified to separate the nitrogen and fluorine, which then acts as a cleaning agent. Most of the NF3 is destroyed in the process, and none remains in the TV. A 2006 study cited by Prather in his paper reported that only 2 percent of NF3 escapes in most uses. So at this point there’s no need to add an HDTV to that list of environmentally harmful consumer items like SUVs and incandescent light bulbs.

“A lot of environmentalists are concerned about being the bearer of bad news and always being seen as the people who want you to do something that would lower their quality of life,” said Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute. “You don’t always want to be the one saying ‘I don’t want you to buy that.’”

The ironic part of this for NF3 producers such as Air Products is that use of NF3 increased in the semiconductor industry, which uses it to make microchips, when it replaced perfluorocarbons, a potent class of greenhouse gases that can’t be contained or destroyed as easily as NF3. Air Products even won a climate protection award in 2002 from the Environmental Protection Agency for helping reduce emissions in the industry.

“The thing that drives me mad about this is that we have researchers and [NF3] is their claim to fame,” Air Products vice president Corning Painter said. “We brag about it. We got an EPA award for this. And now for it to be reported in this way is depressing for the team.”

The implementation of NF3 has helped the U.S. semiconductor industry reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade, despite an increase in demand for electronics products, according to the EPA. Through a partnership with the industry, the EPA receives voluntary NF3 emission measurements.

Prather agrees that NF3 marked an improvement, but he still wants the gas measured and put on the list of greenhouse gases for the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol that begins in 2012.

“Is it an improvement? Yes.” Prather said. “But is it God’s gift to greenhouse gases? No.”

From The New York Times's exploration of the efforts that Applebee's, erstwhile Mecca of Casual Dining, is making to update its "stagnant" menu: "A Craving for Riblets and Change at Applebee’s."

The riblet, the Times informs the uninitiated, "is the meaty piece with flat bones left over when racks of ribs are trimmed into uniform rectangles. It is a classic menu item at Applebee’s Grill and Bar." It is, the Times goes on to note, a "craveable."

"Craveable," here and in the Applebee's lexicon, is a noun.

And yet, apparently, said craveable isn't quite craveable enough. Because, we also learn--in what has to be the best line in the Times article--that "Applebee’s can no longer stand on the riblet alone."

Alas.

Barack Obama once again gets the cover of Time magazine.

For anyone keeping track, this makes seven Time covers for the Illinois senator; John McCain has thus far graced only two.

[via Drudge]

Radio producer David Isay is the founder and executive director of the StoryCorps project, which collects and preserves oral American oral histories.

On August 20, Isay spoke at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about the beauty of stories, the art of the interview, and power of listening.

An audio file of the talk is available here.

Here is the extent that the powers-that-be in Beijing have been successful at de-politicizing these Olympics: This morning’s U.S.-Russia women’s basketball game, which should have carried all sorts of intrigue and comment, given the two nations’ recent bellicosity over the situation in Georgia, was treated by the entirety of the press corps as just another stepping stone for the U.S. women on their way to a gold medal (the U.S. won 67-52).

I’m not saying the game should have been covered with the Cold War overtones of, say, the 1972 men’s gold medal game, the infamous disputed match that saw the U.S. refuse its silver medal in the contentious aftermath. But a mention of the conflict in at least one of the hundreds of game stories, or on the broadcast itself, seems mandatory.

Every story managed to note the odd situation of Becky Hammon, a U.S. citizen who plays in Russia and was granted naturalized citizenship so she could play for Russia in the Olympics. She was called a traitor by U.S. coach Anne Donovan, and was the subject of much debate coming into the Games. Most stories, like this one from the Dallas Morning News, focused on Hammon, her relations with the U.S. team, and the fact that she was held to three points as the U.S. advanced.

But no one has asked, to my knowledge, whether Hammon’s decision would be the same if she had to make it in the context of the Russia-Georgia conflict, or what her teammates think about the suddenly frosty relationship between the U.S. and Russia, or anything remotely geopolitical. I know it’s the Olympics, and we are supposed to “forget about the real world,” or some such nonsense, but we all know the Games have always been political. It seems the most basic of oversights to ignore a still-simmering situation and how it affects both sides, even if the answers in return might be boilerplate.

But given how the mainstream media has mostly ignored the Chinese government’ s failure to follow its agreements to lift press and citizen restrictions, and the lack of any festive atmosphere in the Beijing streets, and the effect of the appalling weather conditions on the outdoor events, it’s no surprise that this is one more storyline that has been taped over, like many of the non-Olympic sponsor logos that dot Beijing.

But it’s all good, so long as the women’s team wins the gold medal. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!!

Talk about a housing crisis. Yesterday, following John McCain on the trail in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Politico's Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen asked the senator a seemingly straightforward question: how many homes do you and Cindy own? The answer, coming from a candidate who has made much of his opponent's general "elitism"—and during, of course, a time of intense economic hardship for many Americans—was...well, not good.

"I think—I'll have my staff get to you," McCain said. "It's condominiums where—I'll have them get to you."

Yowza. And the question, it's worth noting, still hasn't been answered with any finality. McCain's staff came back with "at least four"; Newsweek, earlier this summer, estimated the number at seven; and the group Progressive Accountability, via the Huffington Post, is reporting ten homes in all—"two beachfront condos in Coronado, California, condo in La Jolla, California, a two-unit condominium complex in Phoenix, Arizona, three ranch houses located outside of Sedona, Arizona, a high-rise condo in Arlington, Virginia, a rental loft, and, according to GQ, a loft they bought for their daughter, Meghan"—worth a combined total of $13,823,269.

Wow. (The utility bills alone!) But it's not the having-of-houses that's problematic for McCain (he's a senator; one would expect multiple homes); it's, of course, the not-knowing-about-the-having—which would seem to suggest either financial excess (Elitism!) or forgetfulness (Old Age!). Both of which implications Steve Schmidt et al would prefer to avoid.

The Obama campaign, increasingly willing to go on the attack (Politics As Usual!), has leapt on the gaffe. And since the best fuel for candidate-sparked fire is an Indignant Reponse From Said Candidate's Opponent, it looks like we've got ourselves a scandal.

It's not a direct analogy, to be sure, but one can't help but think of Bitter-gate in all this: the accusations of elitism, the umbrage expressed on behalf of Ordinary Americans, etc. The line between Inadvertent-Slip-of-the-Tongue and Inadvertent-Baring-of-the-Soul is a thin one in such cases—and one, of course, defined by the press. In Obama's case, Bitter-gate's elitism charge stuck—partly because he'd already wrapped himself in Velcro (Arugula!), but partly because the press decided that it should.

Will they do the same for/to McCain? Or is there room for only one elitist on the campaign trail?

Update: Looks like there may be an explanation for McCain's hesitancy about the house question. According to Politico, "Sen. McCain himself does not own any of the properties. They're all owned by Cindy McCain, her dependent children and the trusts and companies they control."

Last Sunday, The Dallas Morning News ran what it called “an investigation” of the use of psychiatric drugs to treat foster children in Texas. The story started off with a bang, or several of them:

• One in three foster children in Texas has been diagnosed with a mental illness. Wham!

• Those kids have been prescribed “mind-altering” drugs—including some not approved by the federal government! Bam!

• The drugs are being prescribed by doctors with a financial stake in pharmaceutical companies’ success! Socko!

All three of these revelations occurred in the first two sentences. That’s taut writing, sure to grab a reader’s attention. Unfortunately, the overheated language and the lack of context in this story gives readers a distorted view of mental illness in children—and the way it’s treated (or mis-treated).

The article supports the widely held view that children are being over-diagnosed with mental illness, over-treated with dangerous drugs, and that this is happening because of financial collusion between doctors and drug companies. All of those things might be true—but the Morning News investigation does not make the case.

To her credit, the story’s author, Emily Ramshaw, does qualify her slam-bang lede. Accepting drug-company money is not illegal, she points out in paragraph three, and much of it has funded “groundbreaking scientific advances.” And she notes that financial ties between doctors and drug companies are often disclosed on Web sites, and in conference programs and journal articles.

But then she resumes her investigative zeal with a fourth charge. “Multiple drugs” were “being prescribed by doctors who weren’t psychiatrists or pediatricians,” she writes, some of whom “spent less than 10 minutes examining their young patients.”

I’ll raise some questions about these charges in a moment, and suggest what Ramshaw might have done differently to make this a first-rate story. But first, a word about one of Ramshaw’s anecdotes, guaranteed to reinforce the notion of wrongdoing, even though she herself reports that no wrongdoing was found.

The story, told in seven paragraphs, is of a twelve-year-old boy who died while being restrained in foster care. At the time of his death, he had four psychiatric drugs in his bloodstream. Ramshaw tells us that an autopsy found that his death was accidental—not related to the drugs. So why juxtapose these two observations? Are we to conclude that the autopsy was faulty? Ramshaw doesn’t say. And here’s the quote with which Ramshaw ends the anecdote: “He didn’t need any meds. He was the kind of kid who if someone had just threatened to call his mother, he probably would’ve stopped what he was doing…I know Mikie and I didn’t need emotional stabilizers to save our lives.” The authority being quoted? Mikie’s teenage older sister.

Now back to Ramshaw’s powerfully delivered assertions.

1. One-in-three foster children in Texas has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

The implication is that this is very high; that healthy foster kids are being wrongly diagnosed with mental illness, and wrongly prescribed psychiatric drugs. But how high is it? Ramshaw acknowledges that foster children “have far higher rates of mental illness than the average child,” but she doesn’t clarify—or back up—the implication that the kids are being over-diagnosed. She should have said how common psychiatric diagnoses are among American children generally, and interviewed experts about whether they think Texas foster kids are being over-diagnosed.

2. The kids are being prescribed “mind-altering” drugs not approved by the federal government.

Note the hyperbolic language—“mind-altering” drugs, not the more neutral “psychiatric drugs.” And here’s an important contextual point Ramshaw leaves out: only a few psychiatric drugs have been approved for use in children. The federal government has little money for studies with kids, and drug companies don’t want to invest in that. If they can already sell unapproved drugs to kids, why should they risk a study that might find problems and eliminate that lucrative market? The use of unapproved drugs in kids is a serious problem; but the alternative for many kids, Ramshaw should have said, is no drugs, even for kids who clearly are suffering.

3. The drugs are being prescribed by doctors with a financial stake in pharmaceutical companies’ success.

Again, note the strong language. Does a doctor who is paid for a talk have a stake in a company’s financial success? That’s going a little too far. Ramshaw reports that drug company money has funded breakthrough research, but she doesn’t make clear that in the absence of that money, the research wouldn’t be done. It’s right to question research supported by drug companies—but she should have noted that in many cases there is no alternative.

4. Drugs are sometimes being prescribed by doctors who aren’t psychiatrists or pediatricians.

First, let’s dispense with pediatricians. Their training includes only the briefest exposure to psychiatry, if they have any exposure to it at all. Ramshaw is right—drugs should be prescribed by child psychiatrists, who are the experts. She fails to note that there are about 7,000 child psychiatrists in the United States—one for every 750 American children with severe mental illness. If other doctors didn’t prescribe psychiatric drugs to children, then most mentally ill children who need them wouldn’t get them. And we could have used more information—perhaps in a sidebar—about what doctors are prescribing medicine to foster kids. She is right about one thing: no doctor should prescribe these drugs after only ten minutes with the patient.

Ramshaw clearly did extensive reporting for this piece, and it had the makings of a first-rate investigation. It failed, I think, because she tried to tackle too many things—the poor treatment of foster children in Texas, questions about the misuse of psychiatric drugs by unskilled doctors, a suspect financial relationship between doctors and drug companies, and questions about the FDA’s drug-approval process for kids.

As my colleague Curtis Brainard here at The Observatory suggests, she might have done better turning her investigative skills on whether Texas foster kids are being over-medicated—a tough-enough story in itself. And if she discovered that was true, she could have reported on what might be done to correct the problem.

Or she might have confined herself to investigating the doctors treating these kids and their connections to drug companies. That, indeed, was the headline on the story: “Some Texas foster kids’ doctors have ties to drug firms.” Again, if she nailed that story, she could have followed up with reporting on what the state might do to confront that issue.

Ramshaw’s story, I fear, will leave most readers thinking that the vast majority of kids are being over-diagnosed and over-medicated by a greedy alliance of doctors and drug companies. There is no doubt that that happens. Drug companies are often far too aggressive in pushing their medications, to the detriment of patients, and doctors should not have such strong financial ties to drug companies.

Most mental health professionals, and the parents of mentally ill children, however, think that the problem is exactly the opposite: too many mentally ill kids are not getting the treatment they desperately need.

Reporters who venture into this territory cannot let heart-tugging anecdotes lead readers to faulty conclusions. We need to be acutely aware of the political and public policy debates into which our stories fall. Whether she intended to or not, Ramshaw has given lots of ammunition to critics who say we’re vastly over-medicating our kids. Fair enough, if the reporting backs it up. But in this case, the reporting falls short.

So Denver authorities are assuming, it seems, that the press, pols, and party people who'll be descending on their city next week will be high on more than Hope. Reason is reporting (h/t: Ben Smith) that Denver's own drug czar, Mason Tvert, is expecting a "surge" in pot use while the convention's in town. Tolvert, speaking yesterday afternoon to a panel charged with enforcing Colorado's lenient pot-possession policies, told his audience (emphasis mine)

that marijuana arrests in Denver, which totaled 1,600 last year, are on pace to hit 1,900 this year, without taking into account a surge that's likely to accompany the Democratic National Convention, which begins on Monday.

That same panel, yesterday, passed a resolution urging police "to refrain from arresting or citing pot smokers during the convention." But, alas, police have ignored such resolutions in the past--and, according to the AP, "city officials say the resolution is not binding." So...Is the resolution half-baked? Will the whole convention go to pot? Can't wait to find out!

Slate's front page story today addresses the all-important cultural question, why Ron Rosenbaum thinks that crossword puzzles are stupid ?

Sure, it’s a brave, contrarian stance on a popular pastime, and normally I’d agree to disagree, but here’s the thing. Ignoring the fact that crosswords are hardly the intellectual scourge of modern times, they are actually good for people.

Here’s what Rosenbaum says:

What are some of the other defenses of the puzzle people? "It trains the mind." No, sorry; it only trains the mind to think in a tragically limited and reductive fill-in-the boxes way. I'd say that instead it drains the mind. Drains it of creativity and imagination while fostering rat-in-a-maze skills.

Sorry, sir, but you’re wrong. It’s been widely reported that crosswords and other puzzles help stave off the mental deterioration associated with Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, the Alzheimer Society of Canada even offers crossword puzzles on its Web site to encourage readers to train their brains.

So, okay, having friends who brag about how they can do all the days of The New York Times crossword is a tad annoying. But it sure as heck doesn’t warrant putting down a hobby that helps seniors stay sharp.

Now, does anyone know a nine-letter word for condescending Slate writer?

On Tuesday, Kevin Drum, one of the liberal blogosphere’s most popular writers, announced that he was leaving the Washington Monthly. After over four years there, he told readers in a short post that, as of Friday, he’d be working for San Francisco-based Mother Jones.

The Washington Monthly is so well known as an incubator of journalism talent—think Jonathan Alter, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Jon Meacham, and dozens of others—that departures are a de facto part of the operating plan. The non-profit magazine’s low pay scale (and a recent very serious cash crunch, exacerbated by its chief financial backer’s losses in the housing market) has never screamed sustainability.

“We didn’t know if we could keep the doors open,” says editor-in-chief Paul Glastris.

No matter. Drum says the Monthly’s financial whirligig wasn’t much of a motivating factor in his move. “My paycheck has been pretty steady,” he drolly noted. And, he says, he’ll be making the same amount at Mother Jones. “It’s not pay,” insists Drum. “I’ve always had this thought that columnists shouldn’t be at the same place for more than five years—maybe they shouldn’t be columnists for more than five years.”

During his four years at the Monthly, Drum produced the bulk of the magazine’s online material, contributed print pieces (mostly book reviews), occasionally joined editorial meetings by speakerphone, and commented on early drafts of articles by other authors.

And, of course, he used his widely linked blog to encourage subscriptions and promote the magazine’s long-form work.

That was part of the idea back in March of 2004, when, temporarily flush with a grant from the Schuman Foundation, the magazine asked Drum, then a tech industry marketing consultant writing the Blogspot-hosted Calpundit, to come aboard. He was recommended by Monthly contributor Josh Marshall, who was already writing a one-man version of Talking Points Memo.

“This was very early on in the blog revolution,” says Glastris. “Other magazines were trying to turn their writers into bloggers. We didn’t have the staff to do that. We barely had the staff to put out a magazine.”

As Glastris tells it, they were one of the very first (if not the first) magazines to hire an outside blogger, one who had built his own audience: “He just wrote his way on to the national stage. He just did it on his own.”

Drum thinks he was an excellent fit at the New Frontier-ish Monthly, both politically and stylistically. But how will his moderate, often-academic and data-driven approach fit in with his new home, which, to paint with an overly broad brush, is named for an IWW orator, was born out of Ramparts, and was once (briefly) edited by Michael Moore? “Mother Jones is more interested in the environment, in social justice issues. The Washington Monthly is more into wonky, neoliberal, political stuff than Mother Jones will ever be,” says Drum.

The disconnect prompted some grousing in his farewell post’s comments section, prompting Drum to post a chiding addendum: “I really recommend you take a fresh look at MoJo if you haven't seen it since the 70s.”

Rightly so. Today’s Mother Jones is its own (glossy, well designed, and National Magazine Award for general excellence-gobbling) creature. (Disclosure: I worked there in 2005.) And they’re thrilled to have him.

“We got him, really, the old fashioned way, with a long and persistent courtship,” says Monika Bauerlein, who along with her Mother Jones co-editor, Clara Jeffery, has published several print pieces by Drum. “We never thought of Kevin’s work being very different from what we do. Quite the reverse.”

“He’s a very research-based blogger, he’s into finding facts and being in a fact-based conversation,” she says, noting that she think that approach fits about as well as a blogger can with the magazine’s investigative ken.

Drum’s hiring comes less than a year after Mother Jones hired David Corn, The Nation’s Washington editor, to run its booming D.C. bureau. (Until this week, that office was shared with, yes, the Washington Monthly.)

“Of course Kevin isn’t in D.C., but the Internet has made it much easier for someone who doesn’t take Metro to be in the D.C. conversation,” says Bauerlein.

Drum, who estimates that 70 percent of his readership is on the East Coast, puts the point a little stronger: “I’m not sure they’d say it this way, but Mother Jones has been trying to get a little more respect from the D.C. crowd, people who read magazines like The Nation, National Review, and The New Republic.”

And, presumably, the Washington Monthly. They’ll be keeping Drum’s archives. And, according to Glastris, in an honor bestowed to many a Monthly alum, they’ll be naming him as a contributing editor.

They’ve already arranged for Steve Benen, who helms The Carpetbagger Report, and Johns Hopkins professor Hilary Bok, who goes by the nom de blog Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, to take over.

“You never want to see your own person go,” says Glastris without a trace of malice. “But if he’s going to go, this is how you want to replace him.”

And there’s more news for Monthly readers. Buoyed by a new funding source, this week the magazine moved to a new office. While they’re keeping the details mum for the moment, Glastris is happy to say that “we are no longer on the edge. And we think we’ll be fine for a long while.”

This is the third in a series examining how the candidates’ health care proposals will affect ordinary people who live in Helena, Arkansas, and how the press could cover that angle. The entire series is archived here.

Annette Murph

Annette Murph, age 54, finds herself in a classic bind: medical problems prevent her from working. When they can’t work, disabled people lose health insurance from their jobs and seek help from public programs, often enduring long waiting periods and a lot of red tape. What irony! The American way of health care forces those with serious medical problems to battle an inhospitable system that, at times, seems designed to keep them from getting care rather than meeting their medical needs.

Healthwise, Murph has been unlucky. She got high blood pressure and arthritis when she was 28—from her mother and grandmother, she says. Nine years ago, doctors diagnosed diabetes—her parents, cousins, and uncles all had the disease. Her thyroid gland is abnormal, and she has had two heart attacks; two first cousins died young from heart attacks. Two years ago she underwent knee replacement surgery, after which she could no longer work as a buffet attendant at one of the casinos that line the Mississippi River not far from her home.

As a kid she picked and hoed cotton, as did so many in the Delta, and then repackaged pesticides and herbicides for a local chemical company. Until her knee surgery, Murph had worked at the casino for twelve years and had health insurance that covered her heart attacks. It also allowed her to regularly see her cardiologist and internist, who checked her thyroid and monitored her diabetes. After the surgery, her knee would no longer bend; it continues to hurt and swell, making it impossible to stand for long periods or move about easily. She could hardly work as a buffet attendant. The unsuccessful surgery, plus her other ailments, qualified her for Social Security disability payments.

After a remarkably short five-month period (the wait averages around two and a half years), she got her first monthly check of $758. That check, and thirty-seven dollars worth of food stamps is her entire income. More than one-third goes for rent on her tiny house, its living room decorated with pictures of relatives and Dr. Martin Luther King. She has little left for food, gasoline to power her nine-year old car, utility bills, and prescription drugs (she takes fourteen). Sometimes she gets help from drug company prescription assistance plans. If she can’t, she goes without.

Right now she is without one of her four blood pressure medicines and one of her four diabetes medications. Without the diabetes medicine, her blood sugars rise into the 300 range—too high. Since she left her job, she has accumulated over $15,000 in unpaid medical bills. Half were for care she needed from the local hospital in 2007; half reflect the care she needed this spring from cardiologists in Little Rock. On her income, she cannot pay them. “This is really frustrating. I’m not supposed to be upset because of my heart condition,” Murph says. “I’m trying to stay calm, but I can’t because of this system.”

The system to which she refers is Medicare and Medicaid, believed by most people to be a safety net for the millions of Americans who become disabled, many by the time they turn fifty. Sometimes, the net is riddled with holes. “I thought when you are disabled, you automatically get covered,” Murph says. “I’ve never been on government assistance before since I have always worked. When I couldn’t go back to work is when this nightmare started.”

Although Social Security disability payments qualify her for Medicare, there is a two-year wait for coverage, and she still has six months to go. She couldn’t get continuous coverage under Medicaid because her $758 monthly income is too high. In Arkansas, a single person can make no more than $108.33 a month to qualify for that program.

Murph turned to Medicaid’s program for the medically needy—less than ideal for someone who needs regular care. Every three months she must re-qualify for coverage. If she doesn’t qualify again, she pays her bills out of pocket. But even for this program, she must “spend down,” or carry medical bills roughly equal to three months of her income. Although she can use older bills to qualify, Medicaid won’t cover those; it does pay for medical care she needs during the three-month eligibility period. She has applied to the program three times; once she got coverage; once she didn’t. She is awaiting word on her third application. The strict rules save money for Medicaid, but they don’t help people like Murph get continuous care.

How she would fare under the candidates’ plans

Candidates are not talking about the people who fall through the gaps in the public safety net. Disabled people are the health system’s step-children, and will continue to be under either McCain or Obama. Since neither plan offers truly universal health coverage that would be extended to all citizens as a matter of right, the disabled will still need Medicare and Medicaid, and will still have to endure their gaps in coverage and in care. About 2.5 million people are expected to apply for Social Security disability insurance this year, many of whom will be turned down. The number of applicants will continue to rise, putting more financial pressure on the public programs. This crisis-to-be has barely been discussed.

Under McCain’s plan

McCain’s $2500 tax credit to buy a policy wouldn’t do Murph much good: she lacks the money to pay for the rest of the premium, and she wouldn’t qualify anyway. No carrier would take her on. She wouldn’t qualify for his still-vague guaranteed access plan, but it probably wouldn’t help her either. She would be unable to pay the inevitably high premiums, and she wouldn’t qualify for subsidies since she already qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid. Getting benefits from those programs often disqualifies people from state high risk pools, and the McCain proposal might work the same way. In sum, his plan wouldn’t hurt her but it wouldn’t help much, either.

Under Obama’s plan

Obama and his surrogates have pushed a strategy that builds on the preexisting “public-private partnership”—citizens can get coverage from an employer, buy their own, or go to a public program. Murph is already in the public part, which would probably make her ineligible for his proposed public program for people without access to employer coverage or other public programs. Yesterday, at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, he said that people “need relief now.” “So my attitude is let’s build up the system we got. Let’s make it more efficient…”

Most likely, Murph and her disabled-and-waiting counterparts won’t get much relief. Obama calls for expanding Medicaid, a move that could help her get continuous benefits while avoiding the onerous “spend down” process. But an expansion would take lots of money from both the federal and state governments, and state Medicaid budgets are perennially tight. The test of Obama’s commitment to greater coverage will come in the expansion of federal programs, while maybe even compressing the waiting period for Medicare for those getting Social Security disability payments. If the public programs don’t expand to catch more people or make things easier for those already enrolled, those like Annette Murph will still be in the same fix.

In November, thirty-five seats in the U.S. Senate will be up for re-election. Of those, twenty-three are currently held by Republicans. One of them belongs to Ted Stevens of Alaska—he of Indictment fame—and, though Stevens is fighting to keep his incumbency (the moxie!), his seat is highly vulnerable. Other seats are up in states whose political leanings are tending, increasingly, toward the left. New Hampshire’s John Sununu, Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe, Oregon’s Gordon Smith, and Maine’s Susan Collins are vulnerable, as well.

The Democrats are getting excited.

Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, recently released a video, noting that Republicans filibustered more than ninety times during this Congressional session—the most in history—and that the upcoming election could provide a shakeup that would produce a significant Democratic majority in the Senate:

One could draw several conclusions from this (after the central conclusion, of course, that Chuck Schumer likes melodrama). Chief among them: the Democrats’ winning of a sixty-seat majority in the Senate—which would, per the rules governing that body’s floor debate, make their position filibuster-proof—has officially been upgraded from Pipedream to Longshot. But, you know, attainable Longshot. “While both sides tend to use hyperbole in their fundraising pitches,” The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza notes, “it's clear that Democrats are now talking much more openly about the possibility of 60 seats.”

It’s unlikely. Very. But should the Dems find the holy grail in November, the nine-seat (or eleven-seat ?) pickup would mean, essentially, that—assuming relative party unity—they could tackle a legislative agenda with little interference from the other side. Which would be, of course—both news-wise and otherwise—huge. (The Dems haven’t been filibuster-proof since they won sixty-one seats in the ninety-fifth Congress in 1977. And the Republicans haven’t been since the cloture rule was first instituted. In 1917.)

While there’s always a bit of buzz about the Cha(n)ce for Sixty in the months leading up to Senate elections—indeed, it’s something of a tradition among political junkies to engage in the political calculus that determines whether sixty is attainable—the fact that the DSCC is actively, and publicly, working for the magic number is a story in itself. As is the fact that, at this point, Democrats and Republicans alike are expecting that the Dems will increase their Senate majority—significantly—from its current, and frail, fifty-one. Which would affect whomever wins the presidency on November 4—along with everyone else in the country. An increased Dem majority would be, of course, great news for a President Obama...and very bad news for a President McCain, who would, in all likelihood, see much of his agenda thwarted (see: “Clinton, President William J,” et al).

And regardless of who comes to occupy the Oval Office, a significant Democratic majority in the upper house would nudge the overall course of American governance toward the left. As the Spectator’s W. James Antle put it back in March,

The more Democratic the next Congress, the more liberal the next president will be in the first two years. This rule is likely to hold no matter if it is Obama, Clinton, or McCain putting their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20, 2009.

In other words, basically: bigness all around. The Search for Sixty is big. The fact that Dems are engaging in it is big. And any increase in the Dems’ majority would be big.

So it’s remarkable how little we’re hearing about the Senate races right now outside of the rarefied world of political junkie-dom. A search for coverage of the current Search for Sixty yielded few results. There was a (very good) piece in The New York Times, in March. The Search got a brief shout-out in a July WaPo story about Senator Stevens’s indictment. There’s been scattered coverage on blogs. (Chris Cillizza has been following the story closely—but, then again, he’s also a demigod among political junkies.) But the Search for Sixty story—and, more importantly, the general Senate Races story that underpins it—haven’t thus far gotten, overall and in the mainstream, the coverage they deserve.

Which isn’t to say that they demand ongoing, page-one treatment at this point; they don’t. And for the press to engage in speculation about up-in-the-air Senate races would be merely to extend the veepstakes mentality from the executive to the legislative branch. Which, you know—no, thank you.

It is to say, though, that voters would benefit from being given the fuller picture of what’s at stake in November—since the presidential race, though it may be the focal point, is by no means the full image. Particularly this week, when veepstakes nonsense has dominated the dialogue—reporters are currently camped out in front of Joe Biden’s house (the affable senator delivered bagels to his wayward entourage yesterday morning); Tim Kaine wasted several minutes on CNN this morning, finding as many creative ways as possible to say “no comment”; indeed, “no civilian could or would believe how much resources news organizations are wasting trying to break the veep stories,” Mark Halperin declared yesterday—a little perspective would be, put mildly, refreshing.

Bearing cigarettes, crackers, and salami, Krig42 returned to Tskhinvali on August 15th in search of the truth. The city, which came under heavy Georgian fire the night of August 7th before the Russians retook the city three days later, had instantly become the center of a propaganda battle between the two countries.

In the first hours of the war, Russian officials announced that 1,600 South Ossetians had been slaughtered by bloodthirsty Georgians; two days later, the count stood at 2,000. Tskhinvali, they said, lay in ruins. Georgia disputed the tally and claimed that Ossetian militias were engaging in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, burning and looting Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Tskhinvali, they countered, was not as badly damaged as Moscow claimed. Russia shot back with claims of genocide; Georgia filed suit with the International Court of Justice. In an attempt to find some measure of objectivity, Human Rights Watch waded into the conflict and found that the death toll seemed to be exaggerated: the head physician at the city’s hospital said they had treated only 273 wounded and received forty-four dead bodies, believed to be the majority of Tskhinvali’s dead.

Krig42 (the blogging alias of Russian journalist Dmitry Steshin) had seen much of this chaos firsthand. On assignment for Komsomolskaya Pravda, he arrived in Tskhinvali hours before the fighting started and had been supplementing his daily reporting with vivid frontline posts on his personal blog. His press pass accorded him journalistic authority while his LiveJournal gave him the room to describe a confusing and maddening war as he saw it, and the blogosphere—apparently hungry for just such unfiltered war stories—responded enthusiastically, making Krig42 one of the most popular bloggers in Russia.

The Russian blogosphere, meanwhile, was abuzz with speculation over the Tskhinvali charges: Had the city really been leveled? How many people had really died? And who, exactly, killed them? Just after midnight on the day Human Rights Watch published its findings, Krig42 finally weighed in:

To all you people blowing hot air about the totally destroyed or barely touched Tskhinvali, I report: I shot thirty rolls of tape and made my own “virtual tour” of Tskhinvali. I rode through it on an armored personnel carrier from north to south and from west to east, filming continuously. I filmed basements where people died. I filmed people exhuming the grave of a woman and two children, buried in the garden. I filmed a car in which two kids burned alive. I filmed the rancid cellars of the city hospital. I think these should make an impression on you.

Steshin even found the elderly doctor interviewed by Human Rights Watch, who clarified her version of the casualty story. “Could there possibly be 2,000 dead?” she told him in her broken, heavily accented Russian. “If you’re counting the entire district, then yes.” Though exhausted from traveling, he pledged to stay up and post his virtual tour online by morning. It was, he said, “a personal response to the base claims of Human Rights Watch. These fuckers thought there weren’t enough casualties in Tskhinvali.”

Almost two weeks out, the cement of the war’s narrative is starting to set, and Russian journalists, especially those who were there, are frantically blogging to make sure it sets right. It’s not always clear, though, whom they are fighting. A recent poll found that only 2 percent of Russians sympathize with Georgia. Visitors to Krig42’s blog, ambivalent last week, have been punctuating their comments on the picture of the charred, disembodied leg of a dead Georgian soldier with smiley faces.

By almost all measures, the Kremlin’s media campaign has been successful. But there are still naysayers out there, especially in the West, and, in the face of such chaos and international outcry, Russians are hungry for a unanimous, objective, exonerating verdict. They are also, however, suspicious of what they see as propaganda, both at home and abroad. “Russia,” journalist Michael Idov wrote, “is a society of conspiracy theorists. In fact, the notion that politics is mere theater and policy is determined via backroom collusion is so central to the Russian worldview that “theorist” is perhaps too weak a word. Russia is a society of conspiracy axiomists.”

Combine a culture already suspicious of all things political with the natural, magnifying outlet of the free-for-all blogosphere, and you get Russian bloggers searching desperately for the necessarily elusive key to the riddle of this war. Obviously, the thinking goes, evidence on the ground is being manipulated for political purposes. Obviously, says the rare Georgian sympathizer, we’re only being shown the wrecked streets and not the rest of the city. Or, says the Russian nationalist, the West wants to minimize the death toll in Tskhinvali so that Saakashvili can escape the war crime charges he so desperately deserves.

It is not, however, a question of looking for the skew-factor of media bias, as it would be in the West. In Russia, the question is more essential: What truth are they trying to hide from us? As Moskovsky Komsomolets correspondent Irina Kuksenkova put it in an interview after her return from the war—which she greeted, incidentally, drinking champagne and watching the firefight from the roof of the Alan Hotel where Mikhail Romanoff was later holed up with the Russian press—“There’s only one truth. There can’t be two truths.”

Evgeny Poddubny, a TV correspondent for TV Center, revived his dusty blog to present his eyewitness account of the war after his nine-day stay in Tskhinvali. “I will tell you what I saw there with my own eyes. At first, I didn’t want to write about it in my LiveJournal,” he wrote, “but after I returned to Moscow and read the stuff being said online, I just couldn’t keep silent.” He then plunges into a self-consciously flat account—“I tried to keep the descriptions as dry as I could”—detailing the war’s progression, paying careful attention to timing and tank formation, as if his precise telling will finally deflate all the conspiracy theories whirling about the blogosphere. Poddubny’s blog isn’t as rhetorically compelling as Steshin’s, but he, too, resorts to graphic imagery to make his points:

An elderly man approached us and, with a gesture, invited us into his house. We walked into the bedroom, he brought us over to the bed - a big double bed - pulled back the cover, and there were his wife and daughter, both burned and headless. Many have said, you guys are only telling us when you could show it.

And so he does.

“Of course, I didn’t include everything,” Poddubny writes at the end of his long, painstakingly detailed account. “I have to gather my thoughts…But!” he adds (and here the paths of journalistic strivings for objectivity and conspiracy theorizing diverge):

But! Georgia made the first military move! Russian forces entered South Ossetia 16 hours after the beginning of Operation ‘Clean Earth’! There was not one Western camera crew in Tskhinvali until the moment that military operations ceased! The Russian air force hit military infrastructure!

Krig42, on the other hand, more gingerly treads the line between skeptical journalist and conspiracy theorist. When Krig42’s videos finally went up on Tuesday, he showed - truly showed - the eerie moonscape of Tskhinvali: A long, rumbling drive down Tskhinvali’s Moscow Street, the early evening sun planing through the trees, falling on rubble. Broken glass still in the panes, black shadows of fires long extinguished climbing up the outer walls. The muzzle of an AK-47 pops briefly into view. An occasional grandmother hobbles along, but otherwise the street is deserted.

There is a clattering reel of a shabby, ill-equipped basement, identifiable as a hospital only because the video titles it as such. A deserted town square. Another video, called “A dead body, briefly,” just one second long, snaps a quick shot of a body in a wide muddy road as trucks detour around it.

Riding along Moscow Street, Steshin offers no commentary. All you hear is the wind and the personnel carrier trundling along. The post is titled, simply, “Watch. Count the ruins, if you want.”

The decade-long collaboration between the Project for Excellence in Journalism and several academics led by Wellesley College political scientist Marion Just concludes that the more local TV invests in quality reporting, the bigger its audience tends to be. Crime news and celebrity news, contrary to all popular and professional wisdom, they say, aren’t as appealing to TV viewers.

But are American TV audiences really pining for a local-news equivalent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer? The question is before us again, not just in the recent pages of CJR (which has published PEJ reports on local TV), but also in the April issue of Political Communication. There one can find an article by Just and Todd Belt, “The Local News Story: Is Quality a Choice?” as well as a review that challenges the conclusions reached by Tom Rosenstiel, Just, et al in their 2007 book, We Interrupt This Newscast.

That reviewer, John McManus, a journalist-turned-Ph.D. and author of a leading academic study of local TV news, Market-Driven Journalism (1994), contends that marketplace pressures stifle the capacity of local TV to serve the public interest by producing hard-news stories, basing his conclusion on a close analysis of three West Coast stations. Rosenstiel and Just, on the other hand, insist that it is newsroom misperceptions about public taste that defeat quality, that newsrooms erroneously believe that the public wants sensation and gossip rather than substance. Rosenstiel and Just’s extensive national data indicate that newscasts with quality news have bigger and demographically more desirable audiences.

McManus judges the quality of local TV news to be abysmal. Belt and Just have data to support this (only 6 percent of local TV news stories show any enterprise), but they take some cheer that a quarter of stories deal with policy, politics, and important community institutions.

It would be appealing to agree with Belt and Just that “reporting hard news with high journalistic standards attracts viewers” and that there is consonance, not contradiction, between quality journalism and economic success. But the argument has some gaps. First, as McManus observes, it does not consider the cost of quality journalism, only the benefit in audience size. Does the cost of journalistic enterprise outweigh the benefit of modest audience increases? There are no data here to answer that.

Second, perhaps it is not quality journalism that leads to bigger audiences but bigger audiences (or the added revenue they bring) that lead some stations to devote more resources to quality journalism. Belt and Just deny that there is a chicken-and-egg problem here: their statistics turn up no correlation between resources and ratings. At the same time, their observations do: “When ratings go down, budgets are contracted.”

Third, it’s possible that on the (relatively rare) occasions when stations invest in enterprise journalism stories, they promote them heavily and draw more viewers.

Belt and Just raise the important question of why, if their own interpretation is correct, TV news directors disagree with them, insisting that the public seeks schlock news. Belt and Just speculate that because TV journalists change jobs so often, they construct a common culture across stations: “After a short period of time a remarkable number of news people have worked with someone at just about any station in the country… homogenizing the views about how to produce TV news.”

What makes sense to us in the Belt/Just article and the Rosenstiel/Just book is their argument that the marketplace does not constrain TV news directly but only through the way TV news personnel understand it. And that understanding is stubborn. Even if news directors agreed that quality news brings bigger audiences, given the cost and effort necessary to produce stories of substance, it isn’t at all clear that they would (or could) easily abandon schlock. 

Gail Collins today on the Lieberman-could-be-McCain's-veep-choice buzz:

When you have a 71-year-old presidential candidate, it’s particularly important that voters be confident that he’s backed up by an experienced and qualified vice president prepared to step in and do the exact opposite about everything except Iraq.

How about someone prepared to step in and do the exact opposite about everything including Iraq? Someone like... Barack Obama? ("[I]ronically for both McCain and Obama, they would each be each other's best VP candidates" said some author on CNN yesterday during a segment that screamed please put us out of our veepstakes misery about whether selecting a running mate is more like choosing a date or hiring an employee...)

ABC News noted (veep!) that Evan Bayh's wife had her hair done (stakes!).

23/6.com imagines an IM exchange between Obama veep hopefuls in which Kathleen Sebelius (IM handle, "SebeliusBizness") has some choice words about Evan Bayh's ("BayhCurious") coiffure.

And Vanity Fair polled "three of New York's top hair stylists" on "yet another issue in John McCain’s personal life that the supposedly left-leaning mainstream media have been too timid to explore: does [McCain] have a comb-over" and will his hair "matter to voters?"

The Washington Post's Capitol Briefing blogger, Ben Pershing, explains how it was that he and several other news organizations reported yesterday afternoon that Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D, OH) was dead when (at that time) she was not:

Capitol Briefing reported at 2:10 p.m. that Tubbs Jones had died. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Associated Press, and CNN came out with similar reports at the same time, all based on anonymous sources. At that point, neither Tubbs Jones's office nor the hospital had confirmed her death.

It is not clear why Capitol Briefing's source and those cited by other news organizations believed she had died, though it may be related to confusion over a report in the Plain-Dealer saying she had been taken off life-support...

It's also not clear why a news organization would report that someone had died "based on anonymous sources" when neither the person's "office nor the hospital confirmed" it.

Beware that rush to be first. And that rush to be first to take back that first report (which, in the AP's case, led to this: "Kill the APNewsAlert saying U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones has died. A doctor says she is in critical condition.")

Really unfortunate, all around.

Factcheck.org and other outlets point out today that Barack Obama’s recent ad, “Fix the Economy,” uses outdated sound bites out of context to characterize John McCain as out of touch with the state of the nation’s fiscal health.

So, the media takes one step forward in addressing fallacies and inaccuracies in campaign ads. But then, some of the commentary which compares Obama’s attack style to McCain’s takes a strange turn.

“Only one of the ads also launches a character attack on the opponent. There may be good reasons for this. But it's worth keeping in mind,” writes Greg Sargent at TPM about the difference between McCain and Obama.

And, on his blog at the Guardian, Michael Tomasky weighs in with this comparison: “When Republicans imagine attacks, they think in terms of character; when Democrats imagine attacks, they think in terms of policy and record. Read that again. It's the key to presidential campaigns.”

While the distinction may be correct, it has a strange undertone, implying that character attacks are worse than inaccuracies. Well, maybe.

One assumption on the table may be that campaigns ought to be determined by policy, not character and, therefore, attacking someone personally is not fair game. But that’s just not true. Character plays a starring role in campaigns. That’s why John Edwards’s affair with Rielle Hunter doesn’t get filed under “personal affairs, see also, none of our business.” It’s a matter of public interest, the argument goes, because it speaks to the nature of his character.

If the media agrees that character is off-limits for political ads to discuss, then certain stories ought to be too. But until that day, we shouldn’t give Obama an easy out.

In general, the way that campaign ads are discussed sets up false expectations: There are "negative ads" and "positive ads"; there are "attack ads" and "response ads." But a positive ad is really a negative ad in disguise. You can say, "Barack Obama promises to give everyone $1 million and a golden retriever," but the not-so-subtle implication is that John McCain won't. By punishing candidates for being explicit about what they perceive as their opponents' shortcomings, aren't we, in fact, just encouraging a brand of political passive-aggression?

Ads that attack character and ads that promote false information are both designed to steal votes—or, at least, dissuade voters from looking at the candidates' policy proposals side-by-side and choosing which one they feel is right. The media's job is to help their readers come back to those issues, not to assign degrees of wrongness to one kind of deception over another.

The officially anti-Georgian media blitz inside Russia has been well documented, but now it turns out the Georgians have been returning the fire. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported yesterday that, in addition to blocking access to Web addresses ending in .ru, Georgia has been jamming broadcasts of Russian television. Now, the last chip has fallen. New York-based Russian Television International (RTVi) ran afoul of the ostensibly democratic Georgian authorities when it re-broadcast an August 14th interview that liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy had conducted with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In the interview, Lavrov was highly critical of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, saying he was “a provocateur…protecting American interests” who had derailed negotiations about South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s final status. He also suggested that there could be no negotiations with Georgia until Saakashvili stepped down. Yesterday afternoon, the channel was cut off in Georgia.

RTVi, which regularly broadcasts Ekho Moskvy programs, was the last Russian station left in Georgia’s ether. Channels Rossiya, Channel One and NTV have all been blocked since August 9th. It is apparently of vital importance that Georgians blockaded inside their own country, tens of thousands of them hungry and homeless, be protected from “biased reporting and propaganda.”

A theory of the genesis of MoDowd’s column today:

In the dead of night, in the elegantly-yet-whimsically decorated home office of a Georgetown brownstone, a clandestine meeting takes place between two writers with one goal.

“So, Sassy Mo, I’ve got an idea for our next column,” Deep Dowd says, pensively swirling a glass of pinot gris on her desk. “It occurred to me as I was re-reading The Prince on the treadmill this afternoon that both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have a vested interest in seeing Barack Obama defeated this November. So maybe, for Wednesday, we should examine that interest. I think something like that would be really useful for our millions of readers as they’re deciding which candidate to vote for in November.”

“Uuuuugggghhh,” Sassy Mo sighs, flinging herself onto a velvet chaise longue. “Sorry, Deep Dowd, but that…sounds…so…dull.” She grabs her gimlet, un-coastered and sweating onto the side table. “We’re supposed to entertain our readers, not bore them to death!” She takes a long swig, crunching loudly on the ice. “We’re Cymbalta, honey, not Lunesta.”

Sassy sets the drink back on the table, settling again onto the chaise.

“But, Sassy,” Deep says, pulling a coaster out of her jacket pocket and sliding it under the gimlet glass, “I hate to disagree…but we do write for The New York Times. The paper of record, and everything. Don’t you think we have a responsibility to give readers some substance? Haven’t we gotten this far because of our expertise? And, I mean, anyone can be witty.”

Sassy jumps up from the chaise. “Anyone can be witty?!? Are you kidding me? No one’s as clever as I am! NO ONE! Are you telling me there’s someone else out there who could have come up with Obambi? I don’t think so!”

She glares at Deep Dowd. “Take it back.”

Deep Dowd swirls her wine glass forlornly. “Look, I was just trying to say—”

“And by the way, Miss Serious Reporter, or whatever you think you are, there are tons of people out there just as savvy as you! Just because you throw around French phrases and go around quoting Candide or whatever doesn’t mean—”

Deep Dowd springs from her chair. “Oh, you did not just say that! When you dis Voltaire, you dis me!”

Deep Dowd lunges at Sassy Mo, grabbing her hair. Sassy squeals in pain, slapping Deep on the shoulder.

Deep sneers. “You slap like a girl,” she says.

“At least I am a girl,” Sassy replies.

“What, so I’m manly, or something? Whatever, at least I’m educated.”

“Whatever, at least I’m funny!”

“Well, analysis is more important!”

“No, humor’s more important!”

“Well, you took my integrity!”

“Well, you took my youth!”

“Well, I won us the Pulitzer!”

“No, I won us the Pulitzer!”

They gasp, staring at each other in shock.

Deep Dowd draws a long breath. “Okay,” she says, stepping back and smoothing her hair, “clearly we have some issues.” She sits down at her desk. “So how about, instead of fighting each other all the time, we…compromise. How about we do…creative commentary.”

Sassy rubs her eyes, sniffling. “Fine,” she says. “As long as I can still be witty.”

“Sure,” Deep Dowd replies, pulling a tissue from her jacket pocket. “As long as I can still do analysis.” She hands the tissue to Sassy Mo.

“Thanks,” Sassy says. “So…I can call Obama ‘Twig Legs’?”

“That’s fine,” Deep says. “As long as I can mention polling numbers.”

They smile at each other. “Deal,” they say in unison.

Will Bunch
on the press on the Edwards Affair:

How is it that the Enquirer can assign a team of people to expose a presidential sex scandal, and a big newspaper or TV network can't? You probably know this, but when it comes to American politics, sex scandals are the ONLY story that the Enquirer and its rivals ever cover. It doesn't have to worry that it's ignoring how the candidates would respond to the crisis in Georgia, for example, because it doesn't care! Traditional news orgs do, however.

Well, kind of.

CNN was reporting this afternoon on the "death of" Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D, OH) up until it carried live, around 2:30, a press conference at a Cleveland hospital during which a spokesperson referred to Tubbs Jones being "in critical condition at present," having suffered an aneurysm. Soon thereafter, before our very eyes, "death of" on CNN's on-screen headline was switched to "health of" Tubbs Jones.

UPDATE: Fox News, too, was reporting soon after 2pm that Tubbs Jones had died (complete with on-screen headline "FOX CONFIRMS").

Shankar Vedantam writes the Department of Human Behavior column at the Washington Post.

On August 14, he spoke at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about why reporters may not be aware of their hidden biases, and the role that such preconceptions may play in covering presidential elections. Vedantam refers to several psychology experiments that help his audience discover their own biases.

An audio file of the talk is available here.

Kevin Drum and Jonathan Cohn are giving Joe Biden the Veep nod (could Obama be far behind)?

Drum calls Biden "a good choice" and notes, "Big plus here — the press likes him, motormouth or not."

I'd say, scratch the "or not." "The press likes him, motormouth." TNR's Cohn, in a post titled, "Biden? Yeah, that works," notes, "you get the feeling that [Biden's] always on the edge of saying something imprudent. Like I said above, if Biden is the choice, the Obama communications staff will have many anxious moments."

Political reporters' favorite sort of moment.

The current Mother Jones has a slew of writers, historians and thinkers responding to this question: “Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in US history?”

It’s a disappointing showing: the people MoJo chose to ask are unsurprising, and their answers are predictable. (At PressThink, Jay Rosen questions whether Obama ever made those comparisons in the first place.) According to John Judis, of The New Republic, “Obama has run a brilliant campaign, but not necessarily a ‘great progressive’ one...But that's not to say his campaign isn't significant or important.” The other writers sharing space with Judis similarly qualify their responses, taking careful semantic care of the words “progressive” and “movement.” No, they say (almost) in unison, Obamania isn’t a truly progressive movement. In fact, it’s not even really a movement—let me tell you what a movement is. Still, let’s not forget that it’s historic; I definitely didn’t say that it wasn’t historic.

What is the point of congregating thinkers if they ultimately say so little that is new? Take this cautiously supportive statement from Obama supporter and newly minted Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Let me just state the obvious—electing a black president will be historic, and I guess quasi-progressive. But the substance of what his presidency will be for America just isn't known yet.”

Riiight. We Just Don’t Know. It’s too soon to tell, which is what author Robert Delleck writes, obviously peeved at the question: “I find the question impossible to answer. How can we possibly know at this point what Obama's campaign means? ... I certainly hope he is successful, but I don't want to predict what his achievements will be.” Or, his importance is incremental, à la Jennifer Baumgardner, writer and self-proclaimed third-wave feminist: “It may not be a movement, but Obama's campaign is at the very least movement.”

The responses tiptoe and quaver too much in tone to be effective as a series of knowledgeable opinions, and the catchphrases read too soothingly. Patricia Williams, a law professor at Columbia University, calls Obama “not the magician but the page-turner,” an adroit use of image that is nonetheless irritatingly facile. (The title of the entire piece—The Audacity of Hype?—is itself an overused pun.)

Even those that take a more no-nonsense approach can’t seem to escape equivocation. Debra Dickerson, the author of The End of Blackness and a Mother Jones blogger, writes in circles: “His nearness to the presidency is an amazing, wondrous thing, but America won't be much different afterward, blasphemous as that sounds.” And columnist Michael Kinsley starts off with, “Of course he's exaggerating. That is not a crime,” and ends with, “In short, whether this is an important historical moment or just another election is up to Barack Obama.”

The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein starts with a valid point about public culpability, but heads south with a cheerleader’s threat: “…the real fault is not Obama's, but ours. We have forgotten the kind of risk and work it takes to build transformative mass movements, and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he'd better win.”

The most satisfying response is the longest one, from Brown economics professor Glenn Loury, certainly a predictable talking head to include in the group. Even so, Loury manages to write unequivocally (if didactically) about Obama’s rhetoric, saying: “…pronouncements by prominent persons who are received, de facto, as representatives of a group can enter into the public vernacular, [and] become part of our unexamined political vocabulary.”

Pat Buchanan, a minority in a largely Obama-centric crowd, makes a somewhat (if back-handedly) similar point about Obama’s symbolism: “Barack Obama's election would be about as significant to US history as Jackie Robinson's appearance at second base was for the Brooklyn Dodgers.” If the material MoJo is getting from Buchanan and Loury isn’t that different, does it suggest consensus—or that the question inviting such drab responses (from such a predictable roster of contributors) was a hackneyed one?

It was one of the first management meetings in my career as an assistant managing editor, and our boss was talking about “aligning our values.” I was resisting drinking the management Kool-Aid, and I peeked around the room to see how the more experienced editors were taking in the message.

They looked pretty serious, so I refrained from the usual eye-roll.

The newsroom needed to change, the editor continued, because the business was changing. Our aging newsroom was entrenched in the old way of doing journalism. We needed to listen more to readers and write more for the young ones. We needed to focus more on utility and less on bureaucracy, and harness the opportunity provided by the Internet. He didn’t know how long revenues would fall, when classified advertising would rebound, or how important the Internet would be. This was 2001, after all, and no one in the industry knew, much less those of us at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

It turned out to be a prescient message, of course, but I remember not being at all interested. I’d just been promoted after nearly twenty years as a reporter, most recently on the investigative team. This sounded like business, and I only knew how to talk about stories.

Seven years later, the gloomy business talk is much the same, except that it has leaked—no, flooded—out of the management meetings and overtaken the newsroom and the industry. We got the message, finally. The journalists on the street have, indeed, changed. A recent survey by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that journalists, worried more about the business and less about quality, have embraced digital technology, citizen journalism and the like. “And in that new focus, we see signs of new openness to change,” wrote Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

But in the transition, a different kind of values gap has grown. The same Pew survey shows that fewer than a third of the journalists in the trenches feel that managers share their values. Few gave their bosses an “excellent” rating. And many more reporters than managers expressed concerns about the influence that business and advertising has had on news content.

I am convinced that newsroom leaders must deal with this if they are to retain the good journalists essential to recovery. And this time, it means the leaders need to change.

The workers have shown they’ll change how they do the work; they just don’t want to change what the work is for. Is our central purpose still “to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society,” the mission adopted seven years ago by the Committee of Concerned Journalists? Or have we lost that focus while reaching for younger readers, more unique visitors to the Web site, and shallow suburban coverage meant to draw more ads? Asked more simply, are we here to serve the community or ourselves?

The answer is crucial if good journalism has any role in the comeback. News as business feels calculated, cynical and desperate. News as community service produces passion and energy. And because good journalism is very hard work, passion and energy are everything.

I was reminded of this truth recently as Twin Cities media covered the one-year anniversary of the I-35W bridge collapse. Amid that tragedy a year ago, my old newsroom came to life again. Staffers hustled to the scene from vacations and dinners and days off. They worked tirelessly for weeks on every angle, producing investigative stories, photo pages, and multimedia packages. And for those weeks, the language in the newsroom changed. It was about the story. The focus and energy were back, and the great journalism that emerged was no coincidence.

The challenge for newsrooms is to instill that sense of purpose—and yes, pride—every day, because most days, the best stories are much harder to come by. A motivated reporter sees a story in almost every document and interview. On a bad day, the same reporter can manage to never see a story. He can file the easy 12-incher, and no one needs to know that he avoided the riskier one.

All of this seems simple to the point of triteness, but the barriers to motivation can be overwhelming. Dire industry news is everywhere, and we know journalists love to wallow in the negative. Tighter papers mean shorter stories, and a sense that there’s less appetite for ambitious journalism. Design concerns can trump content—sometimes rightfully, but not always. The earlier and heavier planning that goes into every morning’s paper can lead to more management-driven assignments and, thus, a disempowered staff. Downsizing means fewer journalists doing more work with less depth. It produces staff shake-ups, new assignments, labor strife and other disruptions. All of this understandably can keep managers in their offices and away from the staff.

Those managers must compensate by keeping the hand-wringing out of the newsroom and stressing quality journalism more than ever—even while the search for a business model continues.

Many of the best journalists I know are driven in large part by ego. They claim an independent streak, but they’ll do anything to please a boss who talks their language and challenges them to be great. They are energized by top editors who’ll stop by their desk and talk about stories—not to fulfill an MBO, but passionately and informally. They want to be empowered to find the best story, not told what the story is by a manager who hasn’t reported on the street in years. If reporters push deadlines to improve quality, they want to be seen as committed, not disruptive to the planning process.

In other words, they want leaders who share their values. Without that, more good journalists will go.

I was never going. The newspaper was the only institution I knew, and one I still love. But I left—first taking an extended leave of absence to teach journalism, and then quitting last year. No buyout necessary. I didn’t leave solely because of the desperate mood, distracted leaders, or customer satisfaction tone that I believed unnecessarily complicated news judgment. But those things did make it easier.

How badly would I miss being part of a newsroom? I wondered that aloud to a friend who also was considering leaving his newspaper. His response: “Newspapers aren’t the strong community institutions they used to be. They aren’t the places we came to work at.”

In other words, we aren’t leaving the institution as much as the institution has left us. As the business model has slipped away, some of the core values that energize journalists have, too. I hope it’s a short hiatus. Those values are vital to the newsroom—and the business.

_________________________________

The steady drip of layoffs and buyouts, slowly desiccating once-vibrant newsrooms around the country, has also produced a reservoir of anger, sadness, fear, uncertainty—even some cautious optimism here and there—among reporters and editors who invested years, decades in some cases, of their lives to print journalism. We’ve asked anyone so inclined to channel these emotions, not into rant—although there will be a bit of that—but rather into reflection on what went wrong, and where we might go from here. We will publish these periodically under the headline “Parting Thoughts.” All of the letters we publish will be collected here.

Fox News will know its tag line has jumped the shark (or is that set the standard?) when Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president of the Soviet Union, invokes it in an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing "the American news media" for having "mounted a propaganda attack against Russia" in its coverage of the conflict between Russia and Georgia:

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.

Gorbachev was also critical of news coverage when he took to the Washington Post opinion pages last week ("the humanitarian catastrophe, regretfully, received very little coverage in Western media this weekend.")

But about that Fox News tag line: I hear "Who are we to say it's not the truth?" is still available...

Here's Dr. Dennis Hurwitz, clinical professor of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, providing some much-buzzed-about "proof" of the National Enquirer's claim that Frances Quinn Hunter, Daughter of Rielle, is the self-same child awkwardly held by John Edwards in The Blurry Photo Seen 'Round the World: "I have studied babies' head and face formation for many years and I am confident that these photos are one and the same baby," Hurwitz told the Enquirer.

Well, that should settle it! This is expert testimony, after all. So it's totally fair for the Enquirer to refer to said Blurry Photo as depicting "Edwards holding his new daughter" and, later, as portraying "the former presidential contender holding his infant."

But wait, there's more! Dr. Hurwitz elaborates on his photo-comparison: "The shape of the head, the hairline formation, and the prominent brow along with the deep-set eyes are strikingly similar."

Ergo: "IT'S THE SAME BABY," the Enquirer concludes, in all caps. Ergo: Edwards simply must be the father. Since holding a baby is, you know, totally the same as siring it.

Ergo: Case closed! With proof like that, who needs DNA testing?

I'm all for reporters calling out the stagey aspects of campaigns and conventions. To that end (I think?), the AP's Nedra Pickler probes the Democratic National Convention and Obama campaign's controversial claims that "real people" "will appear" at the Denver convention:

An Indiana railroader, an Iowa mother and a Michigan truck driver are getting a moment at the Democratic convention to help portray Barack Obama as the people's champion and counter GOP characterizations of him as an out-of-touch celebrity.

The idea is for these "real people," as the campaign calls them, to share personal stories about why they are supporting the Democratic presidential candidate and how they think he will help folks like them...

And: "Real people also will be featured at an event Tuesday alongside Michelle Obama" (I'm confused, is that real real people or "real people?")

Pickler reports that the Obama campaign "formally invited these people" (um, "people?") to Denver, "providing airfare, lodging and great seats to watch Obama accept the nomination from a circular stage on the 50-yard line at Invesco Field."

"Great seats" to the (sold-out) Obama Show, Pickler says! (Why let "the GOP" have all the fun with "characterizations of [Obama] as an out-of-touch celebrity?")

Lest you think the "real people" will be keeping it real ("real?"), Pickler writes that "professional speechwriters are helping prepare their remarks...And just like any senator or other VIP speaker, an assigned staff member will oversee their schedules and logistical movements, including media interviews, speech coaching and on-stage rehearsals."

Who else will be at the convention along with "real people?" Any "fake people?" "Real robots?" A superhuman or two? Pickler reports:

Besides "real people," Obama's campaign and the convention committee on Tuesday announced more names who will speak at the convention, including former President Carter; Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee; various Democratic senators and governors, and union leaders.

According to CNN, CNN's "CNN Diner" at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City was "immensely successful" and so this year they will do it again with a "CNN Grill" in Denver and in St. Paul. Campaign Desk stopped by the 2004 version, when CNN took over the Tick Tock Diner, back in the days when there was still a Crossfire (the Diner even served a "Crossfire Island" cocktail) and Bill Hemmer hadn't yet bolted for Fox...

You think it's easy working the Veepstakes beat? Opening wide for -- and presenting as news -- those crumbs tossed out by the campaigns (Obama "will in all likelihood appear with his newly named running mate on Saturday in Springfield, Ill." but we didn't, please note, say it would definitely be their first joint appearance)? How many respectable synonyms do you know for "speculation?" How about "current conjecture?" That's Elisabeth Bumiller's coinage in today's New York Times -- "current conjecture has settled largely on three possibilities" for McCain's No. 2: Lieberman, Pawlenty, and Ridge.

Who, apart from Bumiller, is helping that changeable "current conjecture" get all nice and "settled?" "Some social conservatives," "other conservatives," "one Republican strategist close to the campaign," "associates of Mr. McCain," "some Republicans," "Republicans".... and Rush Limbaugh.

So looks like the Maddow Love is now officially sanctioned. TV Decoder's reporting that Rachel Maddow, MSNBC pundette loved by, apparently, everyone, will soon find the holy grail of televised commentary: her own show. The as-yet-unnamed program will replace Dan Abrams's Verdict (he'll be staying on with the network in various other anchoring/reporting capacities) starting September 9.

“This just completes our prime-time lineup," MSNBC president Phil Griffin told the Times. "Our lineup makes sense now.” By which he ostensibly means: our lineup is now completely populated by blatantly lefty pundits.

Anyway, though, good luck, Rachel. We're looking forward to the 9th. Just one request: could you keep those random-but-kind-of-great cartoon-ink graphics in your show, as a holdover from Verdict? We never knew why they were there, but we always appreciated that they were.

Last week, it was reported that during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games, broadcasters used footage of fireworks that was not only pre-recorded but also digitally animated.

The sequence lasts about 30 seconds. (You can watch here, about eleven minutes into the clip.) An aerial shot sweeps over Beijing as twenty-nine bursts of fireworks explode in the clear night.

Matt Lauer and Bob Costas were the commentators for the event and this is how they describe what’s happening on the screen.

LAUER: You’re looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation. A footstep a second, 29 in all, to signify the 29 Olympiads.

COSTAS: We said earlier that aspects of this Opening Ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic.

What the heck does that literally mean?

Well, it turns out that the “cinematic device” is actually “an animated three-dimensional studio re-creation,” according to Gao Xiaolong, visual-effects team leader at the Crystal Stone animation company, who spoke with the Beijing Times as the Los Angeles Times reports.

The L.A. Times wrote that Xiaolong’s “studio spent nearly a year crafting the clip. To make it as visually seamless as possible, Crystal Stone consulted with the weather bureau to re-create Beijing haze at night, and the shot included a slight shaking to simulate shooting from a helicopter.”

The AP reported a slightly different version of the story: “Because of the poor visibility of the night, some previously recorded footage may have been used."

Before we get riled up, a little background: According to NBC spokesman Greg Hughes, the network, like the rest of the world’s broadcasters, did not shoot “the overwhelming majority” of the opening ceremonies. Except for supplementary shots of American athletes and dignitaries, NBC used the world feed of the event, which included the digital rendering of the fireworks. NBC was aware of the animation ahead of time and warned Costas and Lauer, who noted it during the transmission.

Does that let them off the hook? Well, for one, Costas’ and Lauer’s descriptions of the effect fall short of clearly communicating the nature of the images to the viewers. “Cinematic device” and “quite literally cinematic” are the two phrases that the anchors chose, and they’re not technologically inaccurate. Films nowadays do often use CGI and other digital rendering to create effects. But those imaging technologies are ways to augment and expand the realm of cinematic capability, not the default, unless you’re Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay.

And, that’s not how the language comes across: Lots of things are “cinematic devices,” including a fly-over shot from a helicopter, which is what the digital footage was made to look like. The word “cinematic” might much more obviously mean, “it’s so beautiful it could be a movie,” as opposed to the more logically demanding: “it employs a technology that films also employ when the limitations of film need to be overcome.”

Describing the footage as “almost animation” is even more confusing. According to Hughes, the NBC spokesman, Costas and Lauer stand by their words, but why weren’t they more clear in the first place?

Digital rendering. Computer animation. Those phrases would accurately describe what the viewers were seeing. The Chinese crew wanted everyone to believe that the footage was genuine. In the L.A. Times story, the Chinese visual-effects guru said that “Most viewers thought these were live shots, so our work achieved its effect.” They even added subtle shaking to simulate a helicopter! But why wouldn’t the NBC anchors dispel that illusion?

The network’s spokesperson told me that “You can’t describe much of [the opening ceremony] as news. This was a preexisting event that was staged to open the games of the 29th olympiad.”

But does the fact that NBC categorized the ceremony as entertainment rather than news excuse their dishonesty? For the rest of the evening, Lauer and Costas were very engaged with the technology of how the visual effects were created—including a large LED screen—why not the fireworks sequence?

For the Chinese, the fireworks sequence was important. It would not only demonstrate their pyromania, but also to showcase the air quality in Beijing. But because of the digital image, we’ll never know what the sky looked like that night.

And for the viewing public, the fireworks matter, too. It was a chance for NBC to show that they would bring transparency to a host country known for secrecy and obfuscation. And that omission raises questions about what else NBC didn’t tell us.

On a night that found the world's top gymnasts flipping, stretching, and straining for gold in individual apparatus events in Beijing, Keith Olbermann sat in a studio in New York City, his back to Rockefeller Center's skating rink, doing some gymanastics of his own. Of the rhetorical variety, that is. And directed, unsurprisingly, at John McCain.

That's right, kids: last night was Special Comment night on Countdown. A little bit Murrow, a little bit O'Reilly; a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n roll--and always filled with vitriol. Olbermann's performance, this time around, was particularly melodramatic: as the former sports reporter swooped and spun (again, rhetorically) while railing against the "immaturity" of the GOP's presumptive nominee, he indulged in even more Dramatic Sighs and Angered Shakes of the Head than usual. Quite the floor routine.

So while Olbermann, as he generally does, bolstered his bloviations with solid reporting...the whole thing was ultimately more circus than ceremony. And one lacking in, among other things, sportsmanship.

Pity the bloggers. Alternately glorified as the harbingers of Journalism’s Future, alternately vilified as the agents of Journalism’s Demise, the press’s proverbial pajama-wearers often have a hard time fitting into the stratified social world of the political media. A one-foot-in, one-foot-out kind of thing. (Very Obama-esque.) And being, as they are, a little bit Drama Club and a little bit Mathlete, it’s often hard for bloggers to know where to sit when they board the bus for the Political Media’s Big Field Trip. Which can be, you know, a little bit Awkward.

But have no fear, ye pariahs/messiahs of the political press! Google, like the beneficent senior who takes it upon himself to take you under his wing, make you over, and Make You Cool, has totally saved a seat for you! Actually, a whole tent! And it’s a big one! Literally!

Indeed. In a piece that might just win the award for Onion-esque Article of the Day, the Wall Street Journal reports that Google, champion of screen-scribes the world over, will be providing a sanctuary for the wayward new media types who find their way to the conventions. And the company has political-party-appropriately dubbed said sanctuary the “Big Tent.” (Yep, in caps.) Two stories, and 8,000 square feet—more a mall than a tent, but details—the BT will be a haven for bloggers, per the Journal, to type and nap and suck down Pixie Stix and take refuge with others of their kind and generally Live the Lifestyle to Which They’re Accustomed:

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the "Big Tent" headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Wow, a Vanity Fair bash! Way to go, bloggers—talk about going from geek to chic!

The company whose motto is “don’t be evil” has, of course, no such edict against self-interest; and Google is, unsurprisingly, treating the Big Tent as a p.r. opportunity. “It will demo a variety of new political tools next week,” the Journal notes, “including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.” (You can read Jane’s piece about that function here.)

Still, it’s nice of Google to Consider the Bloggers and take them in. (Even if the innkeepers are charging their notoriously cash-strapped guests $100—each—for the hospitality.) Rarely do so many news-coverers assemble together for an event in which so little news will likely be made; if the conventions are a kind of field-trip-meets-prom for the political press, might as well give its participants a place to hang out together and survey the whole (see-and-be) scene. Besides, far be it from me to decry anything that involves a candy buffet.

It’s not so much the Big Tent itself that’s questionable; it's the description of it. In its reporting, the Journal falls into the same trap that so many MSM discussions of bloggers (and some discussions of bloggers written by bloggers themselves) fall into: namely, the treatment of bloggers as some kind of separate species of journalist, sequestered from the rest of the pack in their own little blogospheric biosphere. (Ooh…bloggers, in their own, natural habitat! In the flesh, and out of hibernation! What strange, fascinating creatures!)

When the trend is blending between new media and old—indeed, there are so few outlets that can truly be considered “old media” at this point that the term feels as fusty as the organizations it would designate—such blogger-as-other treatment itself feels outdated. (The “new media,” the pieces notes, “will provide their takes on events and compete with established media companies via Google's YouTube video site and other social-media outlets.” Which doesn’t merely state the obvious; it also implies a virtually non-existent division between media forms. All the journalists covering the convention, traditional or citizen or whatever, will provide “their takes” on events; otherwise, what’s the point of them being there?) While it’s great, on the one hand, for Google to provide bloggers with their own little ecosystems to inhabit in Denver and St. Paul, the other-species mentality it encourages and enforces is starting to verge on the absurd. (If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? Et cetera.)

The Journal piece goes to great lengths to stress the technological developments—possibly the most politically impactful of these, YouTube, coming courtesy of Google itself—that will distinguish the upcoming conventions from their predecessors. Google and bloggers and the conventions themselves, it implies, are about the future. Which makes it especially ironic that the article that describes their confluence seems stuck in the past.

Readers of The Atlantic, Harper’s, and the New Yorker are among the most informed when it comes to national news; Rush Limbaugh and NPR listeners are close behind. So says the latest Pew survey on news interest and knowledge. But the most exciting piece of news in the report? Get this unpredictable trend:

Nearly half of Americans (48%) say they follow weather news very closely, which is largely unchanged from 2006 (50%). No other topic generates close to this level of interest. Crime is the next highest-rated topic, but just 28% say they follow crime news very closely.

While more women than men say they are very interested in weather news—and more older people than younger people—interest in weather news is broadly shared. For instance, half of those with family incomes of $150,000 a year or more say they follow weather news very closely, as do about the same proportion of those with incomes of less than $30,000 (47%).

Where was this choice morsel when Rick Warren was crafting his questions? “How closely would you say you follow the weather?” would have made for great, um, context before the Definition of Rich question.

"It's no longer just about Hillary," proclaims the headline of Froma Harrop's report in the Providence Journal on the founding of a new, supposedly more independent, feminist organization. Harrop takes the cadre of "high-powered Clinton supporters" who met last week to create The New Agenda as emblematic of the oft-invoked women so angry about Hillary Clinton's primary defeat that they will not vote for Barack Obama.

While there is undoubtedly a core of women loyal to Clinton amongst the Democratic activists and major donors who are considering withholding their vote from Obama, there is scant evidence that he’s suffering from a feminist backlash. Harrop bases her argument on findings from a poll released earlier this month from the Lifetime television network: "Many remain scandalized by the sexist attacks on Clinton during the recent campaign. A stubborn 18 percent of Clinton's female voters vow to back McCain, according to a poll for Lifetime television networks." The Lifetime poll also finds that Obama has failed to lock up a majority of female support, with 10 percent still undecided.

But back in June, when the primary wounds were the most raw, a Washington Post/ABC poll made a startling finding. Yes, 37 percent of Clinton supporters were considering voting for McCain or staying home on election day. However, this was not because anger about the campaign's gender dynamics. "Obama is not disproportionately weaker among Clinton supporters who comprised her core groups, such as women, seniors and working-class whites," it found. "Instead he's losing those who value strength and experience over change, who doubt Obama's qualifications and who see him as a risky choice—mirroring his challenges among all adults more broadly."

What's more, Obama is not performing poorly among women. The recent Quinnipiac poll gives Obama a more commanding lead than does the Lifetime survey, showing him beating McCain amongst women by 53 percent to 39 percent, consistent with the lead he has held all summer. This is far, far better than Senator John Kerry's margin amongst women against President Bush in 2004, when he took 51 percent of the female vote to Bush’s 48 percent.

Of course, discontent amongst activists and major donors is a real story. But the angry-women-will-sink-Obama myth is yet another example of the media confusing activist opinion with public opinion in general. And public opinion generally defies such a simple—if dramatic—storyline.

Elite bloggers often portray their analytical and news-gathering skills as equal or (more often) superior to those of professional journalists. Plenty of stories support this point of view: the “Rathergate” scandal that caught Dan Rather pushing an unconfirmed story about President Bush, the multiple cases highlighting fraudulent photography from conflict zones in the Middle East, and so on. But in the case of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, the blogging world mostly failed to live up to its promises.

Days after the fighting began, even normally excellent sources of analysis and insight, such as The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum or the Small Wars Journal’s blog, were still linking to the same narrow set of news sources —sources that offered little more than thin quotes from government officials. While this isn’t necessarily a knock on, say, Reuters or The New York Times (it takes a little time to get a correspondent on scene), it is a tremendous failure on the part of the blogosphere, noteworthy for precisely how it failed to deliver on its original promise: breaking out of the mainstream media's tendency toward groupthink.

Soon after the war started on August 8th, on-the-ground reports were being filed by Russian and Georgian bloggers, some of which were even in English and, thus, required no translation. Yet most large blogs just continued to link to the same sources linking to the same stories based on official statements about the war. Or (just as bad) they linked to omnivorous pundits with little more to offer than stridently uninformed opinions. Where is the value added of such a thing?

That’s not to say that news aggregation is worthless. James Joyner, of Outside the Beltway, did that early on, and did so admirably, though his analysis—helpfully reminding us that the conflict is a “holdover from the breakup of the Soviet Union”—wasn’t particularly noteworthy.

On the other hand, bloggers who normally provide worthwhile insight into conflict provided curiously generic analysis or links to the same. Opinio Juris, for example, a blog devoted to “international law and international relations,” simply excerpted the same New York Times article everyone else had already discussed, noting that both Georgia and Russia had competing claims to the legitimacy of their actions. You don’t say.

The Small Wars Journal, famous for intense insider discussions of warfare and the many organizational and even social aspects of small scale conflict, also linked to the usual spread of western media sources. But SWJ also did something very surprising and disappointing: it linked to a very narrow set of blogs. These included generalists like Thomas Barnett, who possesses no specialized knowledge of the area and simply noted the ways this conflict confirmed his running theories of international relations, and firebrands like Herschel Smith of The Captain’s Journal, who argued that Russia “is still communist,” while the United States “has never forced anything upon a population except its own will.”

Even Instapundit was linking to well-known Caucasus “experts” like Tigerhawk, which took some time off from discussing John Edwards’s love-baby to tell its readers that, despite the inebriation, it is safe to say that Russia was the aggressor toward a peaceful American ally that didn’t at all start by invading an area under Russian protection. Well, now that that’s cleared up, back to bird-blogging!

While this wasn’t necessarily surprising—after all, these blogs all talk in a big circle, and tend to reference each other—it was disappointing. As Reason’s Michael C. Moynihan trenchantly observed, much of the commentary on the conflict resolved into very clear partisan lines: Russia on the Left, Georgia on the Right. Rather than providing the clarity, nuance, and honesty that they promise to provide, the big blogs instead retreated to their comfortable and predictable ideological corners. By keeping to their usual haunts, these blogs did their readers a tremendous disservice: they were just as incurious and ideological as they regularly accuse the MSM of being.

It’s a shame, because many intelligent voices were ignored. Steve LeVine, for example, covered the 1993 war, later wrote from Tblisi for The Wall Street Journal, and is covering the current conflict for BusinessWeek. His posts were a much-needed oasis of sobriety and calm, yet never showed up in those roundups of blogger coverage. At Global Voices Online (full disclosure: I cover Afghanistan for GVO), Yerevan-based Caucasus and Central Asia editor Onnik Krikorian spent a week filing daily roundups of local blogs discussing the crisis.

There are, of course, many others. The point is not that some blogs covered the conflict well, and fulfilled the promise of a blog network that transcends the spin and amplifies ignored voices: it is that the majority of blogs did not. Watching the most prominent blogs turn into their own worst enemies largely deflates much of their egalitarian mystique—and drives home just how important it is to remain a skeptical reader.

And if the press had decided to write a musical of the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter saga, would it have involved a singing tumor? Be forewarned of tastelessness. Courtesy of the cavalier McSweeney’s.

The guy who wrote it, Ben Greenman, has also penned musicals about O.J. Simpson (If I Did It! The Musical), Eliot Spitzer, Al Gore (Nobel! The Musical), and Larry Craig (with bit parts for Judith Regan, Little Eliot, Sean Hannity, and in the Craig piece, a Greek chorus of journalists who intone, “I had what I needed/And so I proceeded”). Somebody call next verse.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, apparently. The Times reports today that Politico--and all the other outlets declaring this to be, indeed, Obama's Week of Veep--were correct in their "predictions." And Nagourney/Zeleny go one (tentative) step further than their veep-sheepish counterparts: they pick a day for the Big Announcement.

And it's...tomorrow!

Senator Barack Obama has all but settled on his choice for a running mate and set an elaborate rollout plan for his decision, beginning with an early morning alert to supporters, perhaps as soon as Wednesday morning, aides said.

While the Times article seeps uncertainty ("perhaps as soon as"; the headline is a hedge-y "Obama Ready to Announce Running Mate"; it stresses, in its second graf, Obama's "command" to staff "not leak out until supporters are notified"; it spends only three grafs reporting new information about the announcement, and the remaining twenty-three in the kind of What Each Veep Would Bring to the Ticket style of analytic speculation that is the hallmark of pre-announcement Veepstakes journalism), it seems to have won the hour, so far, Conventional Wisdom-wise. Drudge picked up the story, reporting the Times's own prediction before its publication, and giving said meta-prediction a CW-making banner headline. (Though below that, tellingly, he included another headline: "Obama Keeps Everybody Guessing.")

And Mark Halperin, who initially contradicted Drudge's reporting ("Internetist claims NY Times plans to break Obama veep story in this news cycle--but he is wrong.")--oh, snap!--has now removed the contradiction ("Oh, Matt," it was called) from his blog...and replaced it with a "developing" semi-prediction in favor of a Biden nom. Hmm.

Anyway, though. Back to the real drama. Which is: the Vice man cometh! Soon! Maybe! Via text message! Tomorrow...tomorrow...he'll love ya, tomorrow. It's only a day...a...way!

That's the number of times the term "cone of silence" has been used in television coverage since Saturday's Saddleback interviews, per the transcript database TVEyes.

For those of you who've missed out on the story that introduces this delightfully moronic term into our political vernacular, "cone of silence" refers to the Twenty One-esque isolation chamber (okay, a room with no TV or audio—which is, of course, the same thing) that Rick Warren had set up at Saddleback to keep John McCain from hearing the questions he asked Barack Obama—the same ones McCain would have to answer—in advance of his own interview. “I'm going to ask identical questions to each of these candidates, so you can compare apples to apples," Warren told his audience. "Now, Senator Obama is going to go first. We flipped a coin, and we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence.”

Except: not cone of silence! Bus of silence! Or, rather, Straight Talk Express of Silence! Seems McCain was en route to the megachurch, rather than sequestered away in Warren's C-O-S, while Obama was giving his interview. Which, you know—scandal. So, everyone from CNN to the NYT to Politico to the Huffington Post to the Orange County Register to the cable channels has been following the story—and thus generally referring to McCain's disputed "cone of silence" without, alas, irony.

The Cone of Silence's zenith as a phrase, though, had to have come yesterday, during the course of none other than Meet the Press. Here's Andrea Mitchell discussing the "allegations" on MTP's hallowed political ground, emphasis mine:

The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that—what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama....He seemed so well-prepared.

Wow, an appearance on MTP! For C-O-S, that's quite a C-O-U-P. Now, it should be noted that the McCain campaign insists the candidate didn't hear Warren's questions in advance. “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” said McCain spokesperson Nicole Wallace. But, still: for something meant to bring silence, Warren's cone has been making a lot of noise.

Judging from dispatches following the Bigfoot press conference in Palo Alto this past Friday, reporters weren’t much impressed with the evidence presented by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer (the two men who claim to have found Bigfoot in the northern woods of Georgia) and their new buddy, Bigfoot enthusiast Tom Biscardi. When a story strains credulity, what tone do you take? What the papers chose:

Openly sarcastic (San Francisco Chronicle):

The fuzziest [photo] - the one that looked like a banana inside a tortilla - depicted what Whitton said was Bigfoot's jaw. That photograph was airtight proof of the existence of something that looked like a banana inside a tortilla.

Lightly sarcastic (Editor & Publisher): "As some have pointed out, it could just as easily be a rolled up rug."

Technical (ScientificAmerican.com):

In addition to the mixed DNA results, Tom Biscardi, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer showed the audience two blurry photos, one of a solitary figure in mixed hardwood forest and another of the mouth of what appeared to be the tongue and teeth of a primate.

Descriptive (Washington Post):

…a picture of the supposed 500-plus-pound dead biped…look[ed] like a mangy mound of fur, entrails and the pinched face of a close cousin to "Star Wars' " Chewbacca.

Dignified (Agence France-Presse): "Many scientists believe Bigfoot is folklore instead of fact."

If you’re a poker player, when you “cull” the cards you have selected a bunch of good cards and arranged to deal them to yourself or someone you want to win. (That’s cheating, by the way.) But if you’re a cowboy, when you ride out to “cull” the herd, you’re looking for the sick or weak animals to cut out.

In other words, “culling” can mean taking out the good (the cards that will help you win) or the bad (the cows that are sick). But “culling” can also have a totally neutral meaning: to choose or collect. (“Cull” is from the Latin colligere, which also gave us “collect.”)

Dictionaries merely muddy the waters. In Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the one used by most news publications), the first definition of “cull” is “to pick out; select b) to pick out in order to discard or destroy ,” which seems to be both neutral and negative at the same time. Merriam-Webster goes the other way: “a: gather, pluck b: to pick out and collect: choose .”

New York's free biweekly The L Magazine is, perhaps, the most consistently well-written free publication in the city. Yes, it's mainly an event guide, and it doesn't do much original reporting—but The L boasts clever features, regular and thoughtful book coverage, a great column on sustainable living, and—every so often—a story that is tell-your-friends good.

As part of its current "Best of New York" issue, Adam Bonislawski walks the length of Broadway and writes about his journey. This could easily have been cloying and terrible ("My feet started to hurt around 96th St..."), but it turns out to be a beautifully realized piece of city reporting. In clean, measured prose, Bonislawski simply writes about what he sees. Here, he comes to the George Washington Bridge:

Here, after an early morning spent wandering the sedate upper reaches of the borough, is the city. Traffic streams down the hill and across the river. A line of cars moving opposite pours out into the streets, flowing in all directions. A pair of dump trucks go grunting by on 179th, climbing uphill past the bus station toward the bridge — the elegant gray latticework hanging in the distance, from this vantage point, seemingly, supported by nothing but sky. Heading onward Broadway climbs out of the valley and up a ridge, the sidestreets now falling away toward the water. A drug store two blocks down has taken as its name the “St. Jesus Pharmacy”. This seems like something of a demotion.

By keeping himself out of his story and focusing on details that most pedestrians might miss, Bonislawski does what the best reporters do: he takes something familiar (in this case, New York City) and makes it seem new again. We're eager to read more from him.

In the history of the Democratic Party that Michael Lind laid out Friday in Salon, Democrats abandoned economic liberalism for social libertarianism sometime in the late 1960s and early '70s. Arguing that the "Roosevelt Party" evolved into the "McGovern Party," Lind writes: "The Roosevelt Party ran on economic issues, and didn't care whether voters were in favor of sex or against it on principle as long as they supported the New Deal. The McGovern Party, by contrast, has made social issues its litmus test."

Lind is right that Democrats have paid dearly in national elections since 1968 for their championing of what have come to be known as "social issues." But Lind is wrong that Democrats made "social issues" central in American politics. Indeed, the very fact that Lind sees so-called "social issues" as separable from "economic issues" demonstrates how successful conservatives have been in framing politics in a way that hurts their opponents.

Although Lind derides Democrats' embrace of a laundry list of social issues from pornography to illegal immigration, the ones he considers most foolhardy are reproductive rights and affirmative action. "Economic conservatives have had a home in the McGovern Party,” he writes, “as long as they support abortion rights and affirmative action, but social democrats and populists who are pro-life or anti-affirmative action are not made nearly as welcome."

Once again, it's time for a visit from the history patrol. White men may have the luxury of seeing reproductive and civil rights as symbolic issues with no economic components. But to the women and people of color who, together, make up the majority of Americans, those issues are economic to the core.

Before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision made abortion a defining political issue, the birth control pill—introduced in the early 1960s—was controversial in its own right. Together, they gave women greater control of their reproductive lives, contributing to the dramatic workplace gains women have made over the last fifty years. Even critics who consider abortion and contraception immoral would have a hard time disputing their role in revolutionizing the labor force.

Let's talk about civil rights, particularly affirmative action. Though southern whites opposed civil rights laws from the start, whites outside the region supported them in large enough numbers that the federal government made a priority of rooting out segregation. Non-southern working- and middle-class whites began supporting reactionary politicians like George Wallace and Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, as they saw their standards of living stagnate, while African Americans—who had been barred from many economic opportunities for centuries—began gaining ground thanks to new laws. The resentment of white workers, who were in fact being squeezed in much the same way the middle class has been under the Bush administration, towards initiatives like affirmative action is understandable. And real questions can be raised about whether it is consistent with the ideal of laws that are racially neutral. But there can be no question that affirmative action and other civil rights initiatives were substantially about reversing centuries of African-American economic disadvantage.

Even gay rights, which many Democrats decry as a distraction from a more broadly popular economic agenda, have a substantial economic component. Don't believe me? Ask a gay person whose been fired from a job because of his sexual orientation, or a lesbian who's been denied the right to rent a house. The economic stakes of gay marriage, including access to health insurance and retirement benefits, are especially high, though seldom discussed.

Lind might have had a point, had he argued it more subtly: Democrats have done a poor job managing tensions within their coalition, and too often they have failed to talk about these issues in economic terms. But, as it stands, he’s fundamentally wrong: The Democratic Party's focus on these so-called "social issues" is not a departure from its tradition of using government to intervene on behalf of the economically disadvantaged—it is an extension of that tradition.

Editor & Publisher notes the results of a recent Nielson report tracking the top 30 newspaper Web sites for the month of July, measured by unique traffic.

The top five: nytimes.com (with a 38% increase in unique traffic compared with last July), usatoday.com (-2%), washingtonpost.com (-2%), latimes.com (66% increase, largely due to the city’s end-of-July earthquake), and the Wall Street Journal Online (94% increase).

The beleaguered Chicago Tribune was 12th in line, behind the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. The plucky newcomer: Kentucky.com, of the Lexington Herald-Leader, 27th on the list, above the Boston Herald and The Detroit News.

In many ways, Robert Scheer’s career encapsulates the long march of progressive journalism in postwar America. After an early stint at Ramparts, he moved from Playboy to the Los Angeles Times (from which he was defenestrated in 2005, after nearly three decades at the paper). More recently, he has co-founded an online magazine, Truthdig.com, and published a collection of interviews, Playing President: My Close Encounters With Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton—and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush (2006), as well as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (2008). In a conversation with CJR’s James Marcus, the seventy-two-year-old contrarian mused over good and evil and the Internet, and revealed some surprisingly nonpartisan preferences. Who would have thought that this supposed pinko and hale companion of Eldridge Cleaver would have such a soft spot for Dwight David Eisenhower?

You’ve been associated with print journalism for more than forty years and are surely one of the few reporters to have gotten married in the city room. Yet you’re now editing Truthdig.com, an online magazine. What’s that transition been like?
Let me give you more information than you need. I originally studied engineering, because I had pretty serious dyslexia; until computers came along, I really couldn’t have been a writer. I was always a good reader, but I couldn’t do cursive script, and nobody could read my handwriting.

But you did lots of journalism in the pre-computer era.
That was mostly due to going out with women with good editing skills. But I’ve never had a Luddite mentality, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve always loved computers.

So you go way back with this stuff?
I did my graduate work in nineteen-fifty-nine on one of those big IBM machines, the kind that took up a whole room. And I was using the Internet when it was three-hundred baud, reporting from Moscow and everything. So I love the technology. I find it very liberating—it lets you edit, run long pieces, avoid cutting down trees.

But does the Web dictate any difference in approach for journalists?
No. Ever since I was at Ramparts, where I started, I never really made a decision about whether I
was alternative or mainstream. I assume you’re going to do the same kind of work whether you’re writing for Hustler or Esquire or the L.A. Times. I try to hold on to my own voice, even when I have to lose the first person. I always feel that the readers are getting me. I also try to be fair, to keep an open mind—although not so open, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti says, that your brains fall out.

You’ve worn a lot of hats in your career: reporter, correspondent, columnist, editor. Is there one in particular that you prefer?
I’m not a good editor, I won’t make that claim. My twenty-six-year-old son Peter is running Truthdig, and I don’t tell him what to do. I never wanted it to be my blog or my Web site or something that was particularly identified with me.

But do you set the political tone?
We don’t have a political tone. My only guideline is that we won’t be homophobic or anti-Semitic—beyond that, we’re going to let people have different views. There will always be things in the magazine that I don’t agree with. And look at the irony in The Pornography of Power. In my chapter on the Boeing air-tanker scandal, which I researched pretty well, John McCain is a kind of hero. And Barbara Boxer, who I really like, doesn’t come off so well.

Which brings me to my next question. I think it’s fair to say that you’ve been identified with the left throughout your entire career. But in both The Pornography of Power and Playing President, you’re surprisingly nonpartisan in your appraisal of the players.
Yeah. You know, my mother was an old garment worker who retired and came out from the Bronx to live with me. When I wrote my Nixon profile for the L.A. Times, she sat there for two hours reading it. Finally she finished, and I said, “So, Ma, what do you think?” She looked up at me, this eighty-six-year-old woman with her glasses at the tip of her nose, and said, “He needs you?”

She thought you were too kind.
Yes! And I’m getting that same thing with McCain now! But I don’t think there’s any sense in being a journalist if you’re not prepared to be surprised. If you can’t say, “Hey, I’m full of shit; this guy’s got something,” then you’re in the wrong line of work. Meanwhile, I’ve always rejected the idea that you couldn’t be on the left and also be honest and objective and truth-seeking. I admire guys like Paul Goodman or Murray Kempton or Sartre. Or Bertrand Russell, whom I interviewed when he was ninety-four.

Since you’ve just run down this pantheon of the left, who are some people on the right whom you admire in the same way?
This will get me into trouble with Gore Vidal, but I think Buckley falls into that category. He could be mean-spirited, as he was in that television debate with Gore, but he does fit the bill. And Graham Greene. I think he was the greatest journalist of all time, frankly.

How about conservatives who haven’t died yet?
You’re asking me which neoconservative or ideologue I respect. And there I’m really hard pressed. Tony Blankley seems to be a thoughtful fellow. Then there’s David Brooks at The New York Times, and [David] Frum; they’re both guys I respect.

You feel like you could have a real dialogue with them?
Oh, sure. Look, something terrible happened to the conservative moment. These people became—well, nasty. But my new book is dedicated to Eisenhower. And this is not just in retrospect: when Eisenhower was alive, I admired him; I had an “I Like Ike” button and everything. So if he’s a conservative, I don’t have any problems with conservatives.

But it’s not merely that you’re willing to give a fair shake to both sides of the aisle. When you write about, say, Richard Perle in The Pornography of Power, you seem genuinely perplexed about his motivations, and fascinated by them as well.
I’m not a religious person, but I do think we’re always struggling with our own innocence. Am I talking to you now because I really want to get across a better way of dealing with the world, or because I want to sell some books?

Let’s just say you’re a complicated person.
We all are! At least those of us that remain sane. I met Perle when he worked for Scoop Jackson. I followed him over the years, and he’s certainly not a simple person. But let me explain something. I was born in nineteen-thirty-six. My father was a German Lutheran with a thick accent. My mother was a Russian Jew, also with a thick accent. And as a kid, I had to struggle with this issue of why one part of my family was killing the other part. After the war, I met my father’s younger brother, who had remained in Germany and was wounded at Stalingrad. My uncle and his family were great people, terrific people, but there was one conversation that was very difficult to have: How did it happen? So I’ve spent a lot of time in my life thinking about the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt referred to it. Most evil is done by good people.

There are no villains in the equation?
The villains are recognized, and people stay away from them. Richard Perle and John Yoo are not recognizable villains. They’re charming; they can talk a good game; they probably struggle with their own demons. So as a journalist, you simply can’t divide the world into good guys and bad guys.

In that vein, let me ask you something. You’ve clambered out onto many a limb in your career, often to impressive effect. But are there some positions you now regret?
The biggest error that I made is that I exaggerated the strength of the political center in America. I assumed you could up the ante, you could make demands upon it, and it would become better.

And this was when?
The sixties. Look, I never had a revolutionary notion. I’ve always believed in limited government and respect for the individual, which set me apart from people with a more cavalier attitude toward state power.

And what about your Red Family days in Berkeley?
The most radical thing I did in the Red Family—where I was never really allowed to be a member; I was on probation—was to take care of the food budget. I went out to the wine country and brought back five-gallon jugs and redistributed it to these other groups. And look, the irony is that I was ultimately pushed out of Ramparts because I wasn’t radical enough. They accused me of being too bourgeois.

What, did you have a thing about clean linens?
Maybe. But I do want to answer your question about mistakes. I think the New Left critique of liberalism was wrong in many ways. I think I was too harsh about Bobby Kennedy. And let me tell you about my most recent error! If you read my book Playing President, which is a cautionary tale, it’s pretty hard to predict Obama.

Although it might have prepared you for Hillary.
Oh, it definitely prepares you for Hillary. You know, the amazing thing to me, and this is going to sound incredibly egotistical—

Fire away.
The amazing thing to me is that a significant percentage of what I’ve written has turned out to be valid. I’m one of these guys who gets up at four in the morning after I’ve handed in a column, thinking that I got it all wrong. But The Pornography of Power—I was really surprised. I read the galleys and I liked it. That’s something, considering that I don’t trust myself any more than I trust the politicians I write about. 

During this weekend’s Pander to Evangelical Voters Forum Pander to Rick Warren Forum Purpose-Driven Forum Saddleback Civil Forum—an event during which, any faithful recounting of it should note, our Bickerers-in-Chief good-naturedly if somewhat awkwardly hugged it out on stage—forum moderator Rick Warren asked John McCain and Barack Obama the same, single question about education policy:

America right now ranks nineteenth in high school graduation. We're first in incarcerations. Not good. Eighty percent of Americans in a recent poll said they believe in merit pay for teachers. I'm not asking, do you think all teachers should get a raise? Do you think better teachers should be paid better, they should be made more than poor teachers?

Obama’s answer, basically: Yep. Give ’em merit pay. Or, swaddled in Obamic Nuance:

I think that we should—and I've said this publicly—that we should set up a system of performance pay for teachers negotiated with teachers, work with the teachers to figure out the assessment so they feel like they are being judged fairly, that it is not at the whim of the principal, that is it not based on a single high tests. But the basic notion that teaching is a profession, that teachers are underpaid so we need to pay them all more and create a higher base line but then we should also reward excellence—I think that is a concept that all of us should embrace.

Pretty straightforward. Teachers are underpaid; let’s pay them more for a job well done. And on their own terms. Yes on merit pay. Got it.

McCain’s answer is a bit harder to parse, possibly because he actually gave two answers to Warren’s question. There was his initial, straightforward-if-curt response to the merit pay query (“A yes. Yes. And find bad teachers another line of work”). But when Warren (kinda) pressed the candidate on the issue—one of the few faux-follow-ups the pastor attempted during the two-hour-long event—McCain’s second answer got a bit lost in conflation:

Warren: Let's talk about education. America ranks nineteenth in high school graduations, but we're first in incarceration. Everybody says they want more accountability in schools. About 80 percent of America says they support merit pay for the best teachers. Now, I don’t want to hear your stump speech on education—

McCain: A yes. Yes. And find bad teachers another line of work.

Warren: You’re answering so quickly.

McCain: Can I—

Warren: You want to play a game of poker?

McCain: Can I just say: choice and competition—choice and competition, home schooling, charter school vouchers, all the choice competition. I want—look, I want every American family to have the same choice that Cindy and I made and Senator Obama and Mrs. Obama made as well—and that was we wanted to send our children to the school of our choice. And charter schools work, my friends, home schooling works, vouchers in our nation's capital works. We've got thousands of people in Washington, D.C. that are applying for a voucher system. New York City is reforming. I go back to New Orleans. They were—as we know, the tragedy devastated them. They now have over thirty charter schools in the city of New Orleans, and guess what? It's all coming up. It's all coming up.

It's a simple principle, but it's going to take dedicated men and women, particularly in the teaching profession, to make it happen. And by the way, here in—I won't go any further, but the point is it's all based and it's being proven that choice in competition for every American family and it is the civil rights issue of the 21st century because every citizen’s child now has an opportunity to go to school. But what kind of opportunity is it if you send them to a failing school? That's why we’ve got to give everybody the same opportunity and choice.

McCain has a point in conflating merit pay for teachers with school choice and other species of “competition” in education: there’s certainly a connection between incentivizing teacher excellence and school competition in general. But “merit pay”—or “pay for performance,” as it’s sometimes known—is more complicated than the Civil Forum’s participants let on. And, considering that merit pay is a favorite ed-related topic for reporters to bring up with the candidates (concise? check! but loaded? check! but can still be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”? check!), journalists would do well to provide their audiences with a bit of context when it comes to the subject—to do just a bit of courtesy parsing when it comes to (yep, we’re gonna go there)…the merits of merit pay.

As its name suggests, “merit pay” implies bonuses paid out to excellent teachers—excellence, in this case, as generally determined by student achievement (as, in turn, generally determined by testing). On the surface, merit pay is an obvious solution to the national problem of woefully under-compensated educators—not to mention a species of capitalistic motivation that is, you know, oh-so-American.

And yet proposals for merit pay—though favored, as Warren noted, by some 80 percent of the country—remain controversial. Teachers unions, in particular, generally dispute merit pay as both a concept and a policy prescription, arguing (often correctly) that its implementation would threaten the contracts they negotiate (often painstakingly) with school districts. (The collectively bargained contractual provisions generally stipulate tenure-based raises, with teachers’ salaries increasing at a uniform rate, regardless of performance.) Per the union perspective, and the premium-on-seniority mentality that tends to go with it, the slippery-slope aspect of merit pay could eventually lead, as McCain suggested, to the firing of poorly performing teachers. However much sense those firings might make from a school-management standpoint, they’d be unpopular among educators who’ve become rather fond of their job security.

Considering the traditional conventional wisdom—that as go the teachers unions, so goes the Democratic Party—Obama’s advocacy of merit pay marks a significant departure from traditional party orthodoxy. A departure worthy, as such, of follow-up from reporters.

In the meantime, though, the drawbacks of merit pay—if reporters give the idea itself some follow-up—stretch beyond the unions. The fact that the bonuses would generally be determined by student test scores could provide fodder for that classic bête noire, “teaching to the test”—and perhaps exacerbate it even further. (Nothing abets a bête quite like economic self-interest.) Some worry that fostering competition among teachers will lower morale, rather than bolster it. There are data that suggest merit pay programs don’t, in the long run, increase student achievement. And then there’s that standard concern, the question that should be, perhaps, permanently appended to every question asked of the candidates about our under-funded education system, whether related to merit pay or anything else: Um, how would we pay for it?

None of which is to say, necessarily, that merit pay is a bad idea. It is to say, however, that it’s a complicated one—or, at least, one more complicated than the candidates and the press have thus far given it credit for. If we’re going to focus on merit pay as a touchstone of the education debate, then audiences deserve a fuller picture of what it is. (There’s a lot of good coverage of the issue out there, but all too often, the quality coverage doesn’t make it into campaign reporting.) And merit pay is, of course, only one example of the need for nuance and term-parsing. There is, as Trudy Lieberman has been pointing out elsewhere on this Web site, “universal” health care. There is, as McCain mentioned in another Saddleback segment, the dicey idea of “victory” in Iraq. Et cetera.

Rick Warren, in the Saddleback case, isn’t a journalist, so the simplicity of his single education-related question—“merit pay: yea or nay?”—is forgivable. But political reporters are often similarly reductive in their questioning—particularly in one-on-one interviews, which often glorify the “gotcha” of the yes-or-no question. Which is unfortunate, since, after all, providing context for their audiences is one way reporters merit their own pay.

That Barack Obama is so coy. We've been waiting for months for the Democrats' Intended to reveal his choice of (running) mate to the watching-and-waiting American public. And so far, you know, zilch. As we’ve been collectively plodding through one of the most drawn-out public courtships in Nominee Bachelor history (the awkward group dates! the intimate, one-on-one outings!), our anticipation—not to mention our speculation—has been building. Frenzy, meet frustration. (Hey, Obama, just give someone your rose already!)

But then, this morning, Politico reports that the Final Rose may soon be bestowed. Our national nightmare of unknowingness (when it comes to Obama, anyway—McCain’s still playing coy) may soon be ending. Beause this week, Politico says, this week of weeks:

Love is in the air!
Oooh oooh oooh, Oooh oooh oooh
Love is in the air!
Oooh oooh oooh, Oooh oooh oooh

Okay, what they actually say is more along the lines of, “Obama likely to announce VP this week." But, still! This is it, guys! We're finally—this week—going to learn the identity of Obama's Intended! Very exciting.

Now, one could quibble and note that, Obama’s convention starting exactly a week from today and all, there’s really no other week but this one left for him to announce his veep choice. One could note the myriad times when other publications have predicted the Veep Revelation's timing prematurely. Or one could note the extremity of the base-covering with which Politico has presented the finer details of its predictions when it comes the timing of Obama's announcement. (“A person familiar with the campaign's planning noted that Obama's schedule at the end of this week is open, but said the announcement could come 'as late as the weekend'....There’s also a chance that the Summer Olympics, which run through next Sunday, could push the campaign to delay the move until the beginning of the Democratic National Convention the next day.")

But, you know, details. And hey, who are we to argue with Love? Especially this week, when that Love is so clearly in the air? (Oooh oooh oooh!) See you at the Rose Ceremony!

On Friday, the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships' class of 2009 arrived for orientation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the program's home base. Leading the pack is a new director, Philip Hilts, author of six books and former prize-winning health and science reporter for both The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is only the third director since the program was founded in 1983. The fully subsidized nine-month fellowships allow mid-career science journalists from around the world (with a minimum of three years experience) to take classes at MIT and Harvard and participate in more than forty private seminars. The program also offers a number of multi-day or weeklong "boot camps" for other, non-fellow journalists. Despite some indication that applications for specialized reporting fellowships have declined, Hilts says that the Knight program is "really stable, running well, and the finances are good." CJR's Curtis Brainard talked to him about what's happening and how he plans to put his own mark on the 25-year-old institution.

Curtis Brainard: What's new with the fellowships, besides your directorship of course?

Phil Hilts: When these programs were built in the early 1980s, science journalism was doing great, I mean probably the best in history. Newspapers across America were hiring science reporters and, in fact, creating new science and health sections. It was really booming, and the idea was, let's bring some of these mid-career folks in and give them another year in the university to pick up more science, or more specific science, to recharge their careers. It was a moment when things were going very well and the idea behind the program that it was a way to keep that going.

Now, that's changed. Journalism is sinking and many science journalists are now being bought out or laid off. So what you have to do here, is think, all right, now what do they need? The program has to be the same on the standards - we have to be a place to go to look for the best standards and the best ideas about standards; that won't change. But before, when the fellows came in, we never really worried about their skills - they were all professional journalists. Now, we have to say, all right, they need to get blogging; they need to get podcasting. So we're making sure that our fellows will be taught that, if they want it. Also, many more of the fellows are freelancers, partly because staffs are shrinking; so we have to be ready to take somebody who is fleeing one organization and trying to set themselves up in another place or as a freelancer. So now the program is a little different that way—we had fewer of those people ten or fifteen years ago—and the fellowship has to be a way for them to help make that transition. For example, if you've been doing general science, we can help you learn more about a specific field.

CB: And are you still getting as many applicants as you used to?

PH: I think so. There were sixty-one applications this year, but I'm not sure what the numbers going back are. What's really on our minds is the number of science journalists who are doing real reporting on science, health and environment, and is that number changing? We don't know. We'd like to believe that the number is still substantial and that people are just moving rather than disappearing into other professions. It's important to keep that core number the same. It's also important to find out whether those reporters are still doing real reporting as opposed to aggregating. That's a serious problem; if a New York Times reporter goes over to Discover TV and does a blog and he's just aggregating what's going on around the world, we've essentially lost him as a reporter. So it's important to try to keep track of that and make sure that the reporters have the ability to come here, learn to do the blogging and podcasting, and go back and continue to do reporting.

CB: Do you have those numbers yet?

PH: No. That accounting has never happened before as far as I know. So what we've done is started to talk to academic researchers, like Sharon Dunwoody at the University of Wisconsin, and ask them: All right, now if we wanted to find out who's doing what and whether just moving, or what they're doing, can you help us do the research. So we're starting to do research so that at some point we'll be able to say to the young journalists, hey, it's not so bad, there are jobs out there, they're just in different places—or give them the bad news that actually, in fact, you better go do something else. I don’t know which is the case. You think about The New York Times—they're losing bodies on the newspaper staff, but gaining bodies on the online side, and pretty soon those reporters are going to start looking the same. There's going to be no distinction between whether you're an online Times person or a newspaper Times person - I think many staffs are going that way. But is there a net gain or net loss? We have to find out.

CB: Is this how will you put your own stamp on the fellowships program?

PH: The assessment will be part of it. What it will actually be making sure that the fellowships keep up with the new media. We're also going to have our Web presence grow and make our site destination. For example, at MIT, all of the 1,800 courses here are online. If you want to take a course in physics you go to the open courseware and you find the physics professor on video, teaching, and all his course materials there. On our end, we have to do the same thing. Our Medical Evidence Boot Camp is in about its eighth year, and now we've taken the person who does the statistics lecture, the basic stuff on epidemiology — how does this work, what do you have to look out for as a journalists, what numbers to you have to pay attention to — she is now on video, online there, if you want to learn epidemiology for journalists. We also had this Future of Science Journalism conference in February, so now all those audio talks are up and online. We're going to have more blogs. The Knight Science Journalism Tracker will be gradually built up so that it's worldwide. You'll be able to look every week and see, in the Spanish-speaking world for example, what's being covered in science journalism.

CB: What do you hear specifically from fellows in terms of what they want to learn?

PH: Each fellow is a little different. Some of them come in blogging already, and others say “Hey, I want to learn that.” We're going to try to make sure that we have teachers available for them for whatever they want to learn so that when their employers say “You need to do a blog or you need to do a podcast,” they can do it. But the main thing, still, is that they take any classes they want at Harvard and MIT. That's what they spend most of their time doing—going to classes, finding scientists, talking to them, getting sources, getting their stories.

That's still the core. Then we have forty-five seminars a year of own, which happen twice a week, where we bring in people. For example, this year, alternative energy is crucially important, so we're going to have to have several seminars on the new energy technologies. And of course at Harvard and MIT there are all these folks doing it—solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal. We have to keep journalists up to speed on all of that. But we do a full range of seminars—from exo-planets, to stem cells, to new nuclear plants—and try to cover all the topics, but the topics change. A few years ago, we had no nanotechnology—that's here now. And the cognitive sciences have exploded because of the imaging techniques that are possible, so there are more seminars on cognitive science than there were ten years ago. We're basically trying to shape ourselves to the science. That is to say, the more new stuff in an area, the more we're going to go find it. It's what you'd expect of reporters—they want to find out what's the newest stuff and how does it work.

CB: And you try to bring in international fellows so that this is all global in scope?

PH:Yes. In the early days, it was American reporters, but gradually it developed to be more international or for the past seven or eight years, it's been about 50/50—half American fellows, half from abroad. And we'd like to keep it there. It's such a great thing to have people from different countries sitting in the same room talking about journalism. Standards really are international, and we have the same problems with them as everybody else. We need to have a world community of science journalists and the existence of the World Federation of Science Journalists really helps.

Journalism is really flourishing in the rest of the world even though it's crashing here. They're building up more newspapers, more readers, more literacy, and more money. We'll be at the world federation's meeting in June 2009, where we'll have at least one presentation. We'll bring in bloggers from Africa, China, India and Latin America and hear about what's going on in their areas. For example, in China blogging is taking off very fast and is a pretty serious form of science communication. That may be very important for them because of the structure of journalism in China—there are certain topics you can't easily do or get away with, but with blogs you may be able to. In Africa, there are many fewer people with computers, so the question is, are we going to use cell phones more than computers to convey science information? Each region has its own issues.

CB: And you were at the Unity conference in Chicago last month, shooting for a similar kind of diversity with American minorities, right?

PH: Exactly. I was there to recruit African Americans, Hispanic, Asian and Native Americans. So we had a booth there and collected about a hundred names from people who were interested in the program. A lot of them were students, so they're young, really, but we talk to them early and try to make sure that we're open, that folks in the minority communities know we're here.

CB: So, as the new director, you must be pretty busy?

PH: Yes. Constantly. I have to read more. I had areas of my own carved out that I cared about and worked on—global health, you know, and I can offer some of that to the fellows. But I'm definitely starting to read more and more and more. You have to be soaking it up, you have to start listening, you have to wander around campus and talk to people. It's an education for me, or reeducation—there's just a massive amount of stuff out there. And my job is really reporting, except that what I'm doing is finding the topics and finding the speakers, but not actually writing about them. It's a big challenge, but I must say, I really like doing this.

Once again, ABC This Week’s roundtable tilted off-center, even without semi-regulars Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts to do the honors. (Perhaps Ms. Roberts, having sneered last week that Obama was making a big mistake in taking his vacation in “exotic” Hawaii, was on vacation someplace tidily normal, like Hilton Head, Rehoboth Beach, Kennebunkport, or even that fabulously apple-pie, heartland-homeland-Main Street town of her birth, New Orleans.)

It was left to old reliable George Will and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson to continue the wearisome work of insulating McCain from close scrutiny. Gerson, a right-wing evangelical whose expertise, I suppose, extends primarily to the question of evil, was presumably there to comment upon the Saddleback Church’s double interview of McCain and Barack Obama Saturday night. Will and Gerson did share one (probably inadvertent) nice moment: While Gerson rattled off an extended nonanswer to a George Stephanopoulos question about Russia, the camera caught Will looking away—unimpressed, I’d like to think, with all the smoke being blown by the man who wrapped George Bush’s lips around some of the emptiest phrases in human history.

What predominated were unanswerable questions about the effects of the Rev. Rick Warren’s interlocutorial exercise. E. J. Dionne of Brookings noted that, to prevail, Obama needed only to peel off a small percentage of the fundamentalist audience—a valid tactical point, but Dionne lacked the opportunity to make any argument against McCain as such. The fourth, ostensibly uncommitted seat was taken by network reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg, who proceeded to repeat the conventional blather about McCain the rodeo-riding, tall-in-the-saddle, staunchly stand-up independent maverick: “McCain again and again reaches across party lines.” No one intruded to disabuse her with the inconvenient facts.

If pundits want to note McCain’s maverick moments, fine. He’s had some. But it never ceases to amaze me (call me naïve) how this flattering label circulates uncorrected. (This same morning on Meet the Press, David Gregory let motormouth Bobby Jindal designate McCain a—surprise!—maverick and then roar on unimpeded.) Talk about Teflon. If I had a nickel for every time an anchor, moderator, or roundtable chief reminded listeners of the growing percentage of times McCain has voted with George Bush in the Senate—most recently 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent in 2008—I’d have…a nickel, or maybe a dime.

Speaking of vacant chairs, a visiting Martian on an inspection tour of the news media’s treatment of the world’s most important political event might wonder whether ABC’s round table, or anyone else’s, could find room once in a while for the authors of two recent McCain-deflating books: Matt Welch of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick and Cliff Schecter of The Real McCain. Welch, the editor-in-chief of Reason, is even a libertarian—bonus attraction!

The visiting extraterrestrial might also wonder why we have heard so little from the Arizona reporters who have been covering McCain for years. One of them, Amy Silverman, recently published a not awfully flattering profile in Phoenix’s alt-weekly New Times last week, featuring examples of McCain’s general nastiness and specific misogyny. True, Silverman’s examples are old ones, from the days when McCain was reinventing himself after being tarnished by a close association with the crooked banker Charles Keating. Still, given all McCain’s years in public life, it ought to be possible to bring forth observers of his career who can look beyond his often-noted and not exactly newsworthy years in Hanoi. Anyone interested in his years as a Navy lobbyist? His years of favor-granting for well-connected Arizonans?

To bring this column full circle, the following anecdote from Amy Silverman is apropos:

“I learned the [Washington journalists’] love lesson firsthand during the 2000 election, when — cajoled into doing an interview about McCain for a piece by TV newsmagazine 20/20 — I flew back and forth to Washington in a single day to be interviewed by Sam Donaldson, only to learn later from his producers that, whoops, Donaldson had decided he really liked McCain and didn't want to include anything negative in his profile.”

Tossing euphemism overboard, Time’s Joe Klein reached the acme of his nonfictional career this week when he wrote that “there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the ‘putting America first’ front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used….[McCain] has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama's patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000.” Who will dare carry such Straight Talk onto the Round Table Express?

To be sure, photo manipulation has long done away with the adage, seeing is believing. And it didn’t take the invention of Photoshop for governments, including that of Joseph Stalin, to apply rudimentary image alteration techniques to make a picture tell a different story than was first recorded onto film.

And yet, when the National Enquirer first came out with the account of catching John Edwards at the Beverly Hilton, we at CJR kept asking, where are the photos?

Soon enough, the Enquirer produced this blurry photo and our instant, collective skepticism about the photo’s authenticity made it clear how misplaced our original clamoring actually was.

And so it's topical that Newsweek offers up this Q & A with John Long, the ethics committee chair for the National Press Photographers Association about the nature of photojournalism in the hyper-digital age.

(Strangely enough, Newsweek's peg for the piece is the Montauk Monster.)

Long doesn't really offer any help for navigating the brave, not-so-new, world of imagery, authenticity, meaning, and trust between those who provide the images and those who consume them, but the piece does remind us that our hunger for photos might, in the end, be quenched by empty, unsatisfactory, inconclusive, calories.

Kevin Roderick of LAObserved points out that though the Los Angeles Times boasted about the “1180 pages” that comprised this past Sunday’s print edition (up from 828 pages the Sunday before), it’s just misleading talk. Why? Well, according to Roderick, 374 pages of that sum total came from an Ikea catalog that was included in the paper’s Sunday bundle, which I guess technically counts, if you’re counting the number of pages dropped off at subscribers’ doorsteps. But it’s hardly reason to brag.

We probably haven’t found Bigfoot! Or at least, that’s what an AP article has to say about the alleged discovery of Sasquatch, by two men in Georgia (yes, you heard right: Georgia).

And whom do you use as sources in this fine, yet inconclusive, story?

1. Bigfoot researcher: Jeffrey Meldrum. Check. ("It just looks like a costume with some fake guts thrown on top for effect.")

2. The discoverers: Matt Whitton, a police officer on medical leave, and Rick Dyer, a former corrections officer. Unreachable. (“Messages left for Whitton and Dyer early Friday on their Bigfoot Tipline were not returned.”)

3. A government official: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Reserve spokesman Tom Mackenzie. Check. ("It's not on endangered species on any list that we've got.”)

The two men are apparently holding a press conference tomorrow in Palo Alto, where they’ll share photographs and DNA results that they claim will prove, without a doubt, that they’ve bagged the right Creature of Mystery.

Until then, the corpse of Bigfoot is stuffed in a freezer, unfortunately not topping any official endangered species lists. You got that from the AP.

Recently The Atlantic’s James Fallows took on the laudable but unenviable task of watching all 47 of the primary debates. He arrives at some fascinating conclusions about these vaudeville inquisitions—conclusions that were hard to see when the debates machine gunned through the early part of the season.

For example, take this explanation of the evolution of the “raise your hand” question:

[W]hen the show-of-hands question made its unwelcome debut in this season’s debates, in the inaugural Brian Williams session, it appeared in a form that was hard for the candidates to duck without seeming evasive—whether they’d ever owned a gun—and by the time they saw what was happening, the pattern was set and there was no going back.

As Fallows notes, the tactic reached its ludicrous nadir (or zenith) when the Democratic candidates were asked to raise their hand to say whether or not they’d be willing to kill an unspecified number of civilians to get Bin Laden. Come on now: put those hands up!

Other gems: Fallows’s classification of the five worst question types, his theory that they can be viewed as a rather predictable television serial, and, and his forecast for the fall Obama-McCain showdowns. Read the whole thing here.

NBC comes in for bashing from critics, both professional and otherwise, every four years,over its choices of what Olympics action to air, when to air it, and whether the action is live or taped. Beach volleyball isn’t a sport! How dare they air the gymnastics final after midnight! Who put Tiki Barber on the air?! OK, that one is fair….

So let’s praise NBC for something that it’s doing right—embracing the world feed. The world feed is the all-seeing eye of the Games. All events are shot by the independent Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, which uplinks the pictures to each nation’s host broadcaster. NBC augments this coverage with its own production teams, which are largely concentrated on the marquee events.

After years of ignoring most of the world feed, and leaving dozens of events unaired and therefore anonymous, almost everything is given some airtime this year (mostly online, at NBCOlympics.com). This means that fans of soccer, table tennis, weightlifting, and all the other events where Americans usually aren’t medal threats are rewarded.

Here is where the Peacock has been honest—announcers in New York, not Beijing, are calling many of these events. An analyst and a play-by-play man sit in front of large monitors and call the action off TV, just as many of us do in the privacy of our homes. (Wait, did I just admit to that?) Although the home viewer would be otherwise unaware, NBC has nonetheless had its announcers state up front and often that the action is being called from the States.

I talked with JP Dellacamera, who is calling soccer for NBC from New York. JP (no periods, thank you) is a veteran of calling games by remote, having often done so for ESPN (the boys in Bristol got some egg on their face during June’s European Championships, when a thunderstorm in Austria exposed the unadmitted fact that ESPN announcers were calling the games from the U.S.). Dellacamera says calling games off TV “is not easier, but it is simpler. You only worry about what you can see, and that is the picture on the monitor.”

I worked with JP on the 2002 World Cup, which was also mostly called from Bristol off TV. During that tournament, a seven second delay gave a heads-up to the announcers and producers that something of significance was about to happen. But this time, Dellacamera says, “It’s all live—there’s no safety net.”

He acknowledges that being at the site of the contest is better, to get a feel for atmosphere, but Dellacamera also points out that a remote call is that rare instance where “broadcaster and viewer are seeing exactly the same thing.” As any sports fan knows, that cuts down on the ‘what game is he watching?’ factor.

Dellacamera also points to an unusual benefit of calling the games from New York—groupthink. “We have four play-by-play guys, and four analysts, and between games and even at halftime we can share opinions and chat about the action. If we were all at different sites, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”

So while Bob Costas and the guys at the swimming venue get all the plaudits, give some credit to the people waking up at three AM in New York every day to call thirteen different events. And to NBC for being open about the fact that it’s being done that way.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal to speed the immigration-status interrogations of gang members in county jails. Inmates have been quizzed about their immigration status since 2006 (the idea is to quickly transfer illegal immigrants into federal custody, freeing up space in crowded county jails), but the approved plan would put gang members at the front of the interrogation list.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported the straightforward story on Tuesday, writing 825 words about the board meeting, during which county residents debated the proposal and the board submitted its recommendations:

Under the Tuesday motion, the board asked [Sheriff Lee] Baca to direct the 12 custody assistants conducting immigration interviews to give the highest priority to inmates who are known gang members.

KABC 7 also reported the story on Tuesday (you can see the video here), then posted an accompanying print story online. Unfortunately, they reported some gobbledygook, making it sound as though the plan will affect all inmates. From the print report:

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors has approved a plan to root out illegal immigrants in county jails…In the past, inmates were interviewed after they were convicted, but under the new plan, they'll be interviewed shortly after they're arrested. Those found to be gang members in the country illegally will then be moved to federal custody.

But Tuesday’s approved plan only speeds the interrogation of alleged gang members, who are pre-classified (not “found to be,” as ABC7 phrases it) using CAL/GANG, a flawed but universally implemented state database of gang suspects.

Sheriff Baca himself made that distinction at the board of supervisors meeting, as the official transcript clearly shows. Here is Baca:

So the culling out of a new group would be exclusive to gangs alone. And so in the analysis of change, it would be that our current practice continues with the exception of gang members who might be undocumented.

ABC7’s TV report got yet another thing confused, conflating the interrogation-in-jails discussion, which falls under the auspices of the county sheriff’s department, with a plan to modify Special Order 40, an LAPD rule that limits officers’ abilities to inquire about suspects’ immigration status before arrest (which is a city mandate, and therefore under the auspices of the Los Angeles City Council).

The confusion didn’t stop there. The blog LAist promptly linked to ABC7’s story, explaining the plan as a new one wherein “undocumented immigrants…may now find themselves turned over to federal authorities following arrest,” and mentioning at the end that, according to ABC7, the plan "specifically targets gang members.” That addendum isn’t untrue; in fact, it’s the only part of the plan that’s new—which LAist, taking its post from ABC7, didn’t seem to realize.

Where was the Los Angeles Times in all this? Its only notice of the story this week was in a Monday post on the week’s upcoming news, which listed Tuesday’s impending review of the proposal. But there was no follow-up, apparently.

It’s particularly odd because if any outlet could have covered this well, it was the Times. Over the past few months, the newspaper has dedicated numerous columns, articles, and blog posts to what is obviously a significant topic among its constituents: the role local authorities should play in monitoring illegal immigration, traditionally a federal enterprise.

The issue came to the fore following the March killing of high schooler Jamiel Shaw. Shaw was killed by a Latino gang member who had just been released from jail and was also in the States illegally. Shaw’s death was something of a crucible moment, and has left the city council, the LAPD, and the county sheriff’s department all scrambling to enact countermeasures that might appease public discontent.

A spate of Times pieces appeared on the subject throughout April and in the following months. On Sunday, April 20, the paper dedicated a whole page to discussing Special Order 40. (A city councilman has proposed a motion to change this rule; the change would require officers to inquire about immigration status even if an arrest hasn’t been made.) Another article detailed the standoff between the police union and the city’s police chief, William Bratton. (The former supported local immigration enforcement as practical; Bratton said it would lead to increased cases of racial profiling.)

A piece written by an assistant professor at Arizona State University presented the results of a survey of police chiefs in the 450 largest U.S. cities, to see how many of them supported the idea of local police taking on the federal task of monitoring illegal immigration (not very many). In June, it ran a cover story about increased county funding for the jail screenings. And in July, an opinion piece discussed the dual charge that San Francisco and Los Angeles are “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants.

The Times is obviously invested in the city’s and county’s policies on—and their ramifications for—illegal immigration. Its columnists have displayed strong opinions on issues like Special Order 40. (Initially considered a crime-fighting move, it was created in 1979 to encourage illegal immigrants to approach the police with information without fear of being deported, and remains a controversial mandate.) And readers, via the comment sections of the paper’s blogs, have shown that they are interested in reading about such issues as they evolve.

One reader, who is presumably a supporter of local immigration enforcement, wrote a letter to the Times on July 31:

Kudos for the front-page article exposing San Francisco and its mayor for flouting federal immigration laws. I'm looking forward to a similar front-page story regarding Los Angeles and its Special Order 40, supported by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

You can read the story, about Minutemen protesting San Francisco’s sanctuary policy, here. There’s a difference between SF’s policy and L.A.’s Special Order 40, but the reader’s underlying point is true. The Times has been diligent in tracking the rollercoaster of concerns surrounding illegal immigration in the L.A. area. Even if the Board of Supervisors’ motion—putting gang members on the fast track to immigration interrogations in county jails—is just one step (forward or back) in a drawn-out process, the Times should have stayed on the ball. Especially if others aren’t doing it as well.

At first, this hot hot campaign dispatch from the Aloha State seems to be going well. Obama’s at the beach. He goes shirtless to swim. Naturally the Reuters scribe writes this up, and reminds readers of the great day when Barack’s bare chest made its entrée into the national conversation.

People magazine published a photo of the buff-looking senator emerging from the ocean in January 2007 on a page with other Hollywood stars.

But wait! What’s that word? “Other”? Other Hollywood stars? Meaning that…

I can see the McCain press release now: “REUTERS AGREES: OBAMA JUST ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD STAR”

The name of this WaPo piece, Entirely Michael Phelps-free Column!, just reminded me about the insane number of Phelps-related stories.

The New York Times has one, two, three about Phelps in today’s paper alone.

Maybe Michael Phelps should run for president, since he got more headlines than the Presidential candidates; they had to share one headline in today’s Times.

And it’s not just the Americans that are head over heels for this guy. The AP reports that France's Nouvel Observateur dubbed Phelps "The God of Olympia."

And, he eats. A lot. Pancakes and pasta and pickles, oh my. (Okay, I added that pickles part for alliteration.)

If you’re of strong stomach, check out the Guardian’s Jon Henley attempt to consume Phelps’ daily menu.

Can you blame the press for gorging themselves on Phelps? He’s a terrific swimmer, an affable young man, whose personal story seems to be without tragedy or hardship, which require a more delicate touch in the telling.

Yet, his success at swimming isn't a simple story. The slew of technological advances in swimming don't cast doubt on Phelps' ability as an athlete, but they do paint a more complicated picture than the majority of coverage tends to present. This isn't to say that every piece has to be written in a "Yes, but..." fashion, but the Times has to be careful to avoid becoming Tiger Beat. If the end sum of these Olympic games is just the public's impression that Michael Phelps is dreamy, well, that's a proposition to make one a little queasy.

Yesterday, Julia blogged about Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan's brush with an angry, armed fat guy while covering the war in Georgia. Turns out that Harrigan's cameraman, Mal James, blogged about it too. James, "who has a Pakistan Airlines Frequent Flyer Card....and boasts about it," delivers a gripping first-person account of what it was like to run from "a crazed Ossestian wielding a pistol firing at journalists" while still shooting footage:

With fifty yards between us and the gunman I yelled for Steve to start talking, the drama and tension as I ran on with the camera pointing back at Steve, at this moment in time framing and lighting even exposure takes second place. It is a matter of capturing the impact...

I remember my arm finally touching the handle and opening the door to scramble in and I turned the camera still rolling to my face, my eyes shot with blood, my breathing and heart rate pulsing to the maximum. Lifting the camera I turned to Steve and said go...

He's got pictures, too, and stories from other war zones where he's worked. Somebody get this guy a book deal.

This is the second in a series examining how the candidates’ health care proposals will affect ordinary people and how the press could cover that angle. The entire series is archived here.

James Bell III and James Bell IV

Father and son walked into the Dr. Vesudevan Wellness Center, a Delta Area Health Education Center jointly funded by the state of Arkansas and the federal government. The elder James, age sixty-two, looked healthy; his son, age forty-three, did not. James Bell IV was a diabetic and had been for eleven years. He had trouble breathing, and it was almost hard for him to talk. He said he hadn’t seen an eye doctor in years; his feet were numb and often swollen, making it hard to stand or walk,or hold a job. He had thought about applying for a job at Wal-Mart, but a worker there told him the company might not hire him because he was so sick. His HBA1C level, a marker of how well the disease is controlled, registered a nine—too high, and he knew it, but he had no insurance or money to buy the insulin and the test strips needed to monitor and control his blood sugars.

The Bells had been to a health clinic in another town, but it had no insulin to give out and wasn’t much help otherwise. “They’ll give you a meter (to test your blood) but not the strips,” said James the younger. Strips cost eighty dollars for a supply of 100. A doctor’s visit costs thirty dollars, but to someone without money, it might as well be thirty million.

His father, who works two jobs as the county’s head jailer and as a grill cook on the night shift at McDonalds, was trying to help, but his own income is only about $30,000 a year before taxes. At least he has health coverage—a 70 percent, 30 percent arrangement. The insurer pays 70 percent of a bill; he pays 30 percent, along with copayments for doctors’ visits and premiums totaling $480 a month. (Add to that another $30 for blood pressure medication.) His wife of forty-four years has no coverage, as he can’t afford to add her to the policy.

The health center helped the younger Bell apply for assistance from a drug company that makes medicines available to the very poor; he qualified for both insulin and test strips. Abbott Laboratories was willing to give him free strips as long as he applied for Medicaid and was rejected. He was. In Arkansas, single men without children generally don’t qualify for Medicaid. Getting to a doctor regularly, though, is problematic. “I don’t have any money to take him,” says his father. “I’m just broke.” What spare cash he once had, he used to send his youngest daughter to college. Still, he was planning to use eighty dollars from the $570 paycheck he would get the next day to buy test strips for his son to tide him over until Abbott’s supply arrived.

How they would fare under McCain.

Neither father nor son would fare well under McCain’s proposals. Bell the elder would have to pay taxes on the value of his health insurance benefits. Economists argue that removing the tax exclusion for employer-provided benefits is a move toward equity, since the exclusion now favors highly paid people who get rich benefits. Equity or not, Bell would have to find the money to pay the extra taxes on an income that hardly covers the essentials. In exchange, he would get a $2500 tax credit to buy his own coverage, as an incentive to leave the county’s health plan.

The flat tax credit would favor younger people, enabling them to buy more coverage; policies in the individual market cost less if you are young. Using the credit, Bell might be able to spend less on premiums for an Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield policy with a $1000 deductible and 20 percent coinsurance—if the carrier would insure him at all and if it didn’t tack on a 50 percent surcharge for having high blood pressure and being overweight (as measured by the insurer). Under McCain’s scheme, insurers would not have to cover people who are already sick.

Bell the younger would have the same problem. Even with the $2500 tax credit and additional federal subsidies, most likely he would still be uninsured. His diabetes makes him uninsurable. McCain proposes putting people like him in a special high risk pool for the sickest of the sick, where premiums would be sky-high and benefits may be limited. Without an income to pay the premiums required by the high risk pool, or very generous subsidies, it’s hard to see how this would be much of an option. Bottom line: James Bell IV would still have troubled getting needed care.

How they would fare under Obama.

Neither father nor son would be required to buy insurance. The elder Bell could keep his coverage, which will probably get more expensive. Although Obama has promised that he would lower the cost of premiums by $2500 for the typical family, health analysts dispute whether this is achievable. Obama talks of a public plan option: Medicare-like coverage that people could choose instead of buying from commercial carriers. Whether this option will be cheaper depends on who provides the coverage.

If the government offers the benefits, as it does for Medicare, it’s possible that Bell’s premiums and other out-of-pocket expenses could be lower. There would also be a uniform comprehensive benefit package. If private insurers, with their high marketing and administrative costs, offer the benefits, then it’s not clear which option would be preferable. Too much is unknown, and, as the Democratic Party’s platform notes, all this will be thrashed out in the legislative process anyway.

Bell the younger has a shot at getting the consistent, ongoing care so necessary for diabetics. Under an Obama plan, he might be able to choose coverage in the public plan, assuming subsidies that are high enough to cover the premiums. If by some chance the legislative sausage grinder turns out a provision for automatic enrollment in existing public plans, like Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), he would qualify, giving him fairly comprehensive benefits and a way to pay for care. All this assumes, of course, he can still pay the modest copayments that would likely be required, and that the federal government offers the states enough funding to provide additional coverage for currently ineligible people like Bell the younger.

If a public program doesn’t come out of the legislative give and take, or if insurers are successful at maintaining their ability to turn away bad risks like Bell, he might remain uninsured, relying on his dad to pay the doctors and Abbott Laboratories to give him the test strips.

Once the crisis in Georgia broke out late last week, it was inevitable that the campaign press would soon try to assess each candidate’s “handling” of the issue, and which one appeared to profit politically from it. We don’t have a problem with that. The events in the Caucusus could have a real impact on the race, and there’s nothing wrong with the press trying to describe that impact.

Still, we were hoping for something a little less shallow than what The New York Times offers today. In a story headlined “McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes,” Michael Falcone reports that, in contrast to Senator Obama, who has been on vacation and has publicly addressed the fighting in Georgia only once this week, “Mr. McCain and his surrogates … have discussed the situation nearly every day on the campaign trail.”

Falcone adds: “The fluency with which Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, discusses Georgia, citing the history of the region and the number of times he has visited, lends an aura of commander in chief.”

Wow, it’s really not hard to impress The New York Times. Sure, some voters, knowing little about the Georgia crisis, might be swayed toward McCain by his aggressive approach to the issue. But it’s the press’s job to go further—to try to assess not just how things might appear to people who might not be paying much attention, but how things actually are.

That would involve raising some, genuine, substantive questions about McCain’s “performance.” For instance: Did encouragement from U.S. hawks—including McCain himself and Randy Scheunemann, his top foreign policy advisor, whose firm lobbies for Georgia—lead Georgia to believe, wrongly, that it could count on American military support if it tried to retake its breakaway provinces? What are the benefits and the risks of McCain’s confrontational tone toward Russia? If Georgia had been a NATO member would that have deterred Russia, as McCain’s camp argues, or would it have committed us to a military intervention that’s not in our national interest?

It’s not that straight news stories have to offer any opinions about who’s right (God forbid!) on these complicated issues. But any assessment of the political impact of the events in Georgia should at least make an attempt to grapple with those questions, rather than settling for a raw count of who’s talked about the crisis more times, and surface observations—“an aura of commander in chief”—that would feel superficial even from a theater critic.

Want to read Chicago native John Cusack’s ramble on sports in the Windy City? Head over to the Huffington Post, where you can feast your eyes on this adoring line:

Every visit to Wrigley Field adds six months back onto one's life expectancy—doctors have proven this many times.

The Chicago edition of HuffPo went live yesterday, an attempt, according to Arianna Huffington, to be “part local news source, part resource guide, and part virtual soap box.” The content is pretty standard opening fare in that mushy reflective essay kind of way—lots of testimonials about Chicago from Chicago folks, famous and not—with, of course, lots about Wrigley Field. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, for one, waxed poetic:

I learned half of what I know about life from the Bleacher Bums, the motley collection of night-shift workers, drunks, layabouts, geezers and lesbians who frequented Wrigley in those years.

Harkening back to a different stadium, Sam Panayotovich reminded us that in the late 1960s,

Chicago was a hockey town and everyone lived and died with the Blackhawks…After long days at work, men would get together at the local watering holes to have a few boilermakers and watch Tony Esposito tend goal.

Who needs a sweet shop, with such nostalgic rhapsody? Sharing space with the euphoria, Lynn Sweet’s earnest piece, reposted from the Chicago Sun-Times, about the odds-and-ends jobs the Obamas have held down, pales in comparison. Michelle Obama worked at a Chicago book bindery in high school? Oh, how…um…go Wrigley!

Earlier this week, CJR received a nice invitation for a party on the eve of St. Paul's Republican National Convention from the folks at the Minneapolis-based Utne Reader, or as I like to call it, the Readers’ Digest of the Left.

Tucked inside a (handmade in Rwanda, of recycled materials) elephant-bedecked card is a note offering food, a brewery tour, and plenty of beer.

But given the host, I’m assuming they’ll mostly be serving leftovers from other media parties.

(Just kidding, Utne. We love ya. And we’ll try to make it, unless City Pages wants to treat us to a wine tasting.)

Much has been made of Obama’s cold feelings toward frozen treats , which is maybe why the senator let himself be photographed enjoying some shave ice on his vacation in Hawaii.

What can be made of Obama’s dessert desires: Does his preference for shave ice over ice cream reveal an attempt to appeal to the southern states where the treat is popular? Is the choice based on calorie-consciousness? Is he an ingrate for rejecting ice cream when Ben & Jerry not only endorsed him, but even dedicated Cherries for Change to him?

Whatever the verdict, here’s the headline I want to see next on Fox News: Is Obama flip-flopping on the 31 flavors?

Numbers can mislead. That’s the oldie-but-goodie lesson from this week’s Wall Street Journal article which reports that the international media can’t agree on “who’s winning the medals race?”

The reason is due to a divide between the U.S. and the rest of the world. The U.S. —actually its media, including The Wall Street Journal —ranks countries by all the medals a team wins.…The rest of the world ranks countries by golds.

In the current standings, China leads the gold count with 26, but the U.S. is ahead in totals with 45.

The rankings aren’t sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t matter, the WSJ says, because some nations may cut funding to sports where they won’t win gold.

“Most of the world wants it as gold, and that's how we do it," says Paul Radford, global sports editor of Britain's Reuters wire service. As for the Associated Press in New York, it "has always aggregated it by total medals for as long as we can remember," said its sports-statistics editor Paul Montella. For non-U.S. customers, however, AP provides the gold-first table.

It’s unclear whether the U.S. approach stems from a more inclusive “every medalist is a winner” philosophy, or if it is an attempt to put our athletes on top via some number crunching, but what’s telling, perhaps, is that Wikipedia, that great repository of all human knowledge, chose to order their tables in the international, gold first, style.

This is the first in a series examining how the candidates’ health care proposals will affect ordinary people and how the press could cover that angle. The entire series is archived here.

So far, mainstream media coverage of health care during the campaign has been characterized by stenographic reporting—simply transcribing what the candidates say, buzz words and all. Blogosphere coverage has trended the opposite direction—way too much wonk talk, angels dancing on the head of a pin-type stuff. What have been missing are the people stories. Exactly how will all these economic and political calculations and pronouncements affect those who struggle daily to fill their prescriptions, find a competent doctor, or pay their medical bills? These are the people whose stories the media have yet to tell.

Plenty of coverage has depicted the McCain and Obama plans in broad brush strokes: McCain wants to rip up the employer-based health care system, replace it with tax credits for families and individuals, and require workers to pay income taxes on the value of their health insurance benefits from employers. He also wants families to make medical decisions. Obama would let people keep insurance from their bosses but make it easier for those who are uninsured to buy coverage through a public plan like Medicare. Neither would require people to carry health insurance (except Obama requires it for kids). Both candidates promise tax subsidies. How big they will be and who they will help is anyone’s guess.

This week, NPR aired just such a broad-brush plan-comparison story, featuring a health care policy researcher who drew distinctions between the two approaches. The most telling point he made was that “we pretty much have the same solutions that we’ve always had.” Okay, the solutions may be shop worn, but that’s no excuse for not showing people how they will be affected by them.

To begin what I hope will be an ongoing narrative about the candidates’ plans and where ordinary people fit into them, I went to Helena, Arkansas, a town of 6,300 along the Mississippi River, whose population and importance peaked in the early 1900s during the sharecropper era. It’s like many old river ports and tiny towns across America, in that the population vanished when the jobs did. There aren’t many opportunities to go out and find employment with good insurance, the standard advice for decades. Helena’s median family income in 1999 dollars was $21,500, compared to $50,000 for the U.S. at large.

The people I talked to represent the socio-economic strata of the town—from the head jailer and the garbage collector to the insurance agent and the soybean farmer who owns 5,000 acres. They all have health issues. Most people do. Twenty-seven percent of the population is disabled, and all will be affected one way or another by the strategies for reform pursued by John McCain and Barack Obama.

What struck me was that even with insurance, which many had, people were still paying large medical bills out of pocket, reflecting the big cost shift from those who traditionally pay the health care tab to patients themselves. They are the underinsured, that group of 25 million Americans just now coming into public focus but hardly mentioned by candidates or the press. Another thing stood out: How little they knew about the coming health care battle being waged in their name.

“We’re getting socialized medicine like Britain and Canada,” one man told me. How did he know? “The people on TV told me,” he said. All the words the media have produced are not sinking in. People need to see themselves in the context of the proposals. They need to know what’s at stake for them. As Irwin Landau, my former editor at Consumer Reports, reminded me recently: What touches you personally will be more interesting than what is not personal. It will not only be more interesting, but it will help people evaluate the ad messages, the special interest spiels, the propaganda, and the demagoguery that will surely come. Judging from the people I met in Helena, the media have a big job to do going into the election and beyond.

Since last Friday afternoon, when the news of John Edwards’s marital infidelity broke through to the nation’s major media outlets, bloggers and commenters across the Internet have crowed—as they did periodically since the story surfaced three weeks, eight months, and one year ago—that that darn liberal media was covering up for one of their darlings. And they are not pleased.

What’s the evidence? Well, in the end, it seems to boil down to one rhetorical question: How else can you explain the silence? Q.E.D.!

Sheesh. I’ll grant this: over the last few weeks we’ve heard some pretty lame explanations from our heavy hitters on the story’s absence. To state the obvious, dodging Rielle et al because of ideological affinity would be a bad reason to hold your reportorial fire. A very, very bad reason.

I don’t buy it though. John Edwards was hardly a press fave. As old Gawker hand Maggie Shnayerson wrote on her personal blog—which I quote as an insight into the snarky dark corners of an honest journalist’s mind—the silence “certainly wasn’t out of party loyalty or our undying John Edwards crush—the guy’s a dick and always has been. Son-of-a-millworker, my foot and ass.” How many times did you hear about questions of “credibility”—his mansion, his hair cuts—from our primary punditocracy, painting the candidate as an opportunistic snake-oil salesman. Fair hits? Maybe. But it’s hard to see how that’s the sort of systemic bias abetting a conspiracy of silence.

In any case, bias is hardly the only answer to the silence question. There’s been some smart writing on this elsewhere. On Friday, August 8, when Edwards admitted an affair to ABC (shall we call it E-Day?), James Poniewozik, a Time TV writer, posted a thoughtful, worth-reading-in-full list suggesting why most of the press—himself included—avoided the accusations. As comprehensive as it is, the list doesn’t offer a hard conclusion.

And that’s not surprising. Decisions about coverage and newsworthiness rarely hinge on a single point, and this case presented a plethora of head-scratching counterfactuals and logical dead ends. In the end, it was a gut call, and queasiness can be hard to articulate.

At heart, the biggest problem was the source of the accusations. Yes, as we’ve heard endlessly these last few days, the National Enquirer has gotten a lot of politician sex scandals right in the past. But on Monday the Smoking Gun posted documents suggesting that the tabloid got another recent (re: Ted Kennedy, c. 2006) “love-child” story dead wrong. Seems that the paper’s better-than-you’d-think track record still deserves a sprinkling of salt.

Since July 22, the Enquirer has been relishing its spotlight, and taking time to rub their “scoop” in the face of Edwards and, more relevant to our discussion, the press. “We drew ‘em a road map to the story. All they had to do was follow it and do a little basic reporting,” Enquirer editor David Perel said. “They can, too—if they want to.”

But is that true? The Enquirer is well known—and often derided—for paying its sources, a journalistic line that major outlets are loathe to cross. It seems likely, as Perel suggested to Howard Kurtz over the weekend, that that was the case here. Related questions: Did Hunter’s gushy email, quoted in the Enquirer’s
story from October 2007, come free? I’m speculating, but I’d guess not. Why would anyone eager to see that information spread for its own sake choose to leak it to a credibility-challenged tabloid over a more respected outlet like, say, the New York Daily News? And what about that “Spy Photo”? Anything else?

It seems reasonable, even necessary, to have treated the Enquirer’s October allegations as a reportable news tip, as the Charlotte Observer did. And from what I’ve been able to gather, lots of other reporters did, too, making calls and visits to California, New York, and North Carolina. Why didn’t this pack produce a story? The simplest explanation is that they just couldn’t confirm the sourcing at a level with which they were satisfied.

Before the photo was published, much, though not all, of the Enquirer’s sourcing boiled down to one massive “trust us.” Yes, as the Kennedy case shows, the paper can come up on the short end of libel suits, a threat which certainly encourages publications to have their facts in order. But witness the clamor that ensued when The New York Times—which, you know, is kind of the most respected news outlet in journalism—published a story where a key sex scandal allegation against John McCain was anonymously sourced.

The parallel is far from perfect. But given that reaction, and given the Enquirer’s sensationalistic reputation, it’s hardly a surprise that the rest of the press passed on the scoop. (That’s especially the case given the Edwards’ camp’s post-hotel encounter
refusal to give any kind of denial—a brilliant jiu-jitsu move that took advantage of press procedurals. It’s “balanced” to run almost any accusation if it’s paired with a denial from the accused party. Remember, when Edwards denied the affair in December, there was a flurry of mainstream coverage.)

In the Times’s now infamous lady-lobbyist influence story, the paper at least told readers that “several people involved in the [2000] campaign” were the relevant sources. It’s not transparent—that’s why it’s called anonymous sourcing!—but it’s at least some evidence that there’s reporting going on, that there’s some structural underpinning to the story. You don’t get that at the Enquirer. For example, take this claim from Wednesday’s story:

And now The ENQUIRER has uncovered that … [Rielle] was whisked away on a private jet two days before he confessed their extramarital affair on national TV!

Oh boy! But wait—how did they “uncover” that? Aviation records? Reportorial witness? Conversations? Although at this point they’ve earned some benefit of the doubt on this story, put yourself in an editor’s shoes, pre-E-Day. The Enquirer’s lurid phrasing and facts without attribution aren’t exactly confidence inspiring, are they? Especially when you’ve got denials from everyone involved, and another man stepping forward to say he’s the father.

It’s not fair to discount facts for the way they're presented, as long as the reporting behind them is trustworthy. But it’s another psychological barrier that anything coming from the Enquirer has to clear.

The bottom line is that there are some stories that can’t be uncovered under the conventional rules. Some cover-ups work. And it looks like this one did, for quite some time. This time, the Enquirer’s methods netted an important story, one that doesn’t end with the sex and narcissism. The facts are still unclear, but there are plenty of unanswered questions about how and whether Edwards used his campaign and para-campaign funds to hire, fly and overpay his mistress. That may be illegal. It certainly seems unethical, and exploitive of his donors and the federal matching fund system. And I bet many workaday Democrats, who could have seen Edwards face this story as their nominee, would like to know what his campaign advisors knew but chose to ignore or conceal.

Certainly some of these questions can be answered without payments and with some explanation of sources and methods. Edwards’ hometown paper, the Raleigh News and Observer has promised to keep reporting. ABC seems to be on the case, and The New York Times too. Let’s hope they have plenty of company. And who knows: good performance from the traditional press on this part of the story might assuage some who were disappointed with the first act. But enough outlets and resources need to be on the case so any silence will be seen as failure—not as bias-based lack of effort.

Forget what I said about American reporters rarely training the cameras on themselves. Fox News went to Gori, Georgia (still occupied by Russian troops, by the way) and got an unconventional welcome: gunfire!

In a scene straight out of The Blair Witch Project, Fox reporter Steve Harrigan and his colleague run to safety, panting and raging as they go (“they’re obviously irregular, undisciplined, angry and humiliated!”). Georgian fighters, it seems, are not fans of Rupert’s network. That, or they don’t like it when the safari-jacketed Steve Harrigans of the world show up to film them getting overrun by the enemy and not taking orders from their own commanders. Oh, and who pointed a gun at Harrigan? Some “fat guy.” And scene.

On a dreary day in October 1922, a young man from Pana, a small town in southern Illinois, walked into the Paris office of the Chicago Tribune. In experience, he scarcely came up to the knee of most journalists. There had been a stint at the Chicago Daily News, from which he was fired; a few months covering scandal for the New York Daily News; and a few months more in Europe, writing the greater part of a novel that was eventually lost. Now Vincent Sheean needed a job and hoped to find one at the Trib, which hired him as a utility man for its Paris newspaper and for the Paris bureau of its foreign service. “In a click of time, I became what was called a ‘foreign correspondent,’ ” he later wrote in Personal History.

The six-foot, two-inch James Vincent Sheean…“Jimmy” to his friends and “Vincent” to the Tribune editors who nixed the idea of a “J. V. Sheean” byline…was never inconspicuous, even at the University of Chicago, from which (in keeping with his early career) he did not graduate. A classmate, John Gunther, described Sheean in awestruck terms: “He hummed Mozart, wore green pants, and spoke better Italian than the Italian professors.” But for all his panache, Sheean was not the only hopeful young journalist walking the streets of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Would-be foreign correspondents “rolled up in waves,” as an editor at the Paris Herald put it, in that city and throughout Europe. Some of the most important names of twentieth-century journalism…Gunther, Eric Sevareid, William Shirer, and Dorothy Thompson, to name just a few…wandered in the way Sheean did, as cubs, and left as lions.

What elevated Sheean even among luminaries in journalism was the literary quality of his reporting, his uncanny ability to situate himself in the slipstream of monumental news, and the intensity of feeling with which he viewed those events. All of that is on display in Personal History, published thirteen years after he found his job at the Tribune. For correspondents who stood witness to events rushing the world to war, Sheean’s chronicle became a defining narrative. And although the book is largely forgotten, it is still a potential beacon for journalists seeking to recover the purpose and credibility they see slipping from their hands today.

Sheean’s first decade or so of foreign correspondence, the framework of Personal History, was a tutorial in world news. He covered the Separatist revolt in the Rhineland, the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, the early days of Mussolini’s fascist state in Rome, and Primo de Rivera’s Spain, where he was arrested. In Morocco, Riff rebel leader Abd el-Krim was willing to talk to any correspondent who managed the hazardous trip past Spanish or French forces to reach him. Donning a turban and a loose-fitting jellaba, Sheean finagled passage through the French lines and returned to Tangier under a hail of Spanish bullets.

Sheean wrote a book about the adventure, An American Among the Riffi, and a year later made the behind-the-lines trip once again. From there he went to Persia for the installation of the new Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who had knocked his predecessor off the Peacock Throne; to China, where Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces consolidated their hold on the country and ousted their Communist partners; to Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the revolution, an event marked by Stalin’s arrest of Trotsky; and to British-controlled Palestine, where in August 1929 Arabs clashed with Jews bent on creating their own state.

Between the first and second Riff adventures, Sheean and the Tribune parted company. The circumstances of his exit remain both murky and typical of that paper. Colonel Robert McCormick, the newspaper’s proprietor, gave Sheean a fancy dinner to celebrate his triumph and safe return from Morocco. Not long afterward, the star reporter was fired. McCormick subsequently wrote to his cousin, Joseph Patterson, that Sheean was “suspected of bad practices. I have forgotten whether he left the Foreign News Service or was fired.” Sheean himself was unfazed. He would not have stayed long, even if the mercurial colonel had been steadfast in his admiration. Sheean’s motto, after all, which he recorded in a 1946 diary entry, was “My own job in my own way.”

We forget how many outlets freelance correspondents had in the interwar years. Sheean wrote for Asia magazine and the North American Newspaper Alliance, which serviced a number of American dailies. Both used him extensively, but without monopoly. His reporting, along with short fiction, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Woman’s Home Companion, Collier’s, Century, Saturday Evening Post, Commonweal, and The New Republic. In France between assignments, he worked for another English-language Paris newspaper, the Times, which lacked circulation and revenue, but not talented journalists. The newspaper appeared to have correspondents everywhere…in fact, its clever staff more or less imagined what was happening abroad, and wrote it with authority. In between this and more travel in Europe, Sheean wrote another book of reporting, The New Persia, and his first published novels.

Sheean’s swashbuckling adventures in the Riff brought him a Richard Harding Davis sort of fame. Rumors during the first trip circulated that he was killed; on the second, he was supposedly shot as a spy. As useful as this was to his career, Sheean was impatient with superficial thrill-seeking, as well as “professional indifference to the material of journalism.” Davis, in his A Year from a Reporter’s Notebook, found coronations and wars “interesting”…a word he liked quite a lot. For him, these were merely events without any profound significance. But Sheean dove below the surface of the news to seek its meaning. It was this quest that energized Personal History, which ended this way:

Even if I took no part in the direct struggle by which others attempted to hasten the processes that were here seen to be inevitable in human history, I had to recognize its urgency and find my place with relation to it, in the hope that whatever I did (if indeed I could do anything) would at last integrate the one existence I possess into the many in which it had been cast.

The decade in which I had pursued such a conclusion through the outer storms had ended, and I was on my way back to a civilization that could never again be so sure of itself, never again so blind.

Personal History, Sheean wrote in a preface to a later edition of the book, “is, I suppose, a hybrid form, and is neither personal nor historical but contains elements of both.” In one way, the book was all about him. His experiences appeared on every page. Yet the autobiographical tone was deceptive. Much of his life was left out or obscured. The focus was on the events he witnessed. His persona was that of a self-deprecating guide. He could be any American searching for answers to the pressing political and social questions of the day.

A poignant foil in this drama was the beautiful revolutionary Rayna Prohme…another young American who also happened to be from Illinois. Sheean met Prohme in Hankou, China, where he had gone in 1927 as “your plain seeker-after curiosity —tending, more and more, to treat the whole of the visible universe as a catering firm employed in his service.” This industrial city had become the base for Communist operations after Chiang Kai-shek gained control over most of China and purged leftist elements from his government. Prohme worked for Mikhail Borodin, an agent of the Comintern, the Soviet Union’s organization for promoting revolution abroad.

Sheean fell deeply, if platonically, in love with Prohme and her commitment to Communism, about which they sparred for hours. After Hankou fell, Sheean smuggled Borodin’s wife out of the country. Prohme and Sheean subsequently met again in Moscow. Hers, he wrote, was “a marvelously pure flame, and even though I clearly could not hope to share its incandescence, it seemed to me that I must hover as near it as possible.” When she died of encephalitis in 1927, some seven months after they met, Sheean wept and drank disconsolately. He would go on to dedicate Personal History to her, and the concluding section of the book was an imaginary conversation with the deceased woman.

When Personal History appeared in early 1935, the praise was nearly universal. Mary McCarthy, known for her acid reviews in The Nation and elsewhere, pronounced Sheean “a human being of extraordinary taste and sensibility, who throughout fifteen years of turbulent experience has been primarily interested in moral values.” Malcolm Cowley, literary editor of The New Republic and a fellow sojourner in Paris, thought “the most impressive feature of the story is that besides being an extraordinarily interesting personal document, it is also, by strict standards, a work of art — [T]his autobiography, with a few names changed to give it the appearance of fiction, would certainly rank among the good novels of this decade.”

Bookstore sales were as enthusiastic as the critical reception. Personal History was the fourth best-selling nonfiction title of the year. And when the National Book Awards were inaugurated in 1935, Personal History won in the biography category. Not long afterward, producer Walter Wanger purchased the film rights. The resulting movie appeared in theaters as Foreign Correspondent (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Although much rewritten to keep up with political events in Europe, the theme of the independent journalist willing to take a stand was pure Sheean, and the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Personal History became a journalistic sun that drew other correspondents into its gravitational field. In the past, correspondents either wrote colorfully of their adventures, as Sheean had about his exploits in the Riff, or produced desiccated tomes on foreign affairs, one of the most erudite examples being Paul Scott Mowrer’s Our Foreign Affairs. In Personal History, Sheean showed how to be both engaging and serious, an approach that was perfect for a time when fearful Americans were desperate to make sense of the world. In 1937, two years after Personal History appeared, Saturday Review of Literature editor Henry Seidel Canby scanned the shelf of recent books by foreign correspondents. He pronounced Sheean’s the archetype of a new genre that sought “to break through the crust of the news to see what lies underneath.”

This was saying quite a lot, as many correspondents’ memoirs had received rave reviews. In 1936, the year after Personal History appeared, three memoirs by foreign correspondents showed up on the list of the ten most successful nonfiction books of the year. One was The Way of a Transgressor by Negley Farson, who was identified by his Chicago Daily News colleagues as a “combination of Childe Harold and Captain from Castile.” The second was I Write as I Please by The New York Times’s Walter Duranty, the doyen of the Moscow correspondents. The third, Inside Europe, was by another Chicago Daily News reporter, Sheean’s classmate John Gunther.

None of these personal histories was exactly like Sheean’s, whose prose, insight, and intensity were difficult to match. But he was the touchstone. United Press correspondent Mary Knight, author of On My Own, had “joined the parade,” wrote a reviewer, after Sheean “set so many worn portable typewriters clacking.” The dustjacket of UP reporter Webb Miller’s I Found No Peace: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent proclaimed: “Like Vincent Sheean’s Personal History, another absorbing biographical record of an American newspaper correspondent.” John T. Whitaker’s And Fear Came, Robert St. John’s Foreign Correspondent, Quentin Reynolds’s A London Diary, Shirer’s Berlin Diary, and Sevareid’s Not So Wild a Dream…the last two best-sellers…picked up Sheean’s métier, as did scores of others.

“Sheean established, as had nobody before him, that what counts is what a reporter thinks,” observed fellow correspondent Kenneth Stewart of the books that followed as “extensions and refinements” of Personal History. “I should guess that no book published in our time had a greater direct response from the working press itself or gave the public better insight into a newspaperman’s mind.” John Gunther put it more simply: Vincent Sheean was “the father of us all.”

Through the rest of the 1930s and the war, there wasn’t a media door that Sheean could not walk through. He authored more novels, translated Eve Curie’s biography of her mother, Madame Curie, and Benedetto Croce’s Germany and Europe: A Spiritual Dissension, and wrote a play, An International Incident, for actress Ethel Barrymore. He continued to report for newspapers and magazines, as well as on CBS radio with Edward R. Murrow in London, and produced three more memoirs, which he wanted to title Personal History II, III, and IV, but ended up as Not Peace but a Sword (1939), Between the Thunder and the Sun (1943), and This House Against This House (1946).

The emotional intensity that continued to suffuse Sheean’s books was not a literary put-on. As far as he was concerned, those imaginary conversations with Prohme were real…and ongoing. “I see her, Bernie,” he blurted out to a colleague, while they sat drinking in a Paris bistro. “There she is. There’s Rayna.” Sheean conversed with her while his companion looked on. Nervous breakdowns and wild drinking were mixed with eerily accurate premonitions, the most spectacular of which was his prediction that Gandhi was going to be assassinated by one of his own kind, a Hindu. With credentials from Holiday magazine, whose range of interests belied its title, Sheean went to India. A few days after he arrived in early 1948, a fanatic Hindu fatally shot the Mahatma while Sheean stood a few paces away. Afterward, he wrote Lead, Kindly Light, which mixed his experience with a study of Gandhi’s spiritual life.

As happened with so many correspondents, when cold-war certitudes about Communism drove out other questions, Sheean’s fame faded. By 1949, when Lead, Kindly Light appeared, not one of the ten top-selling books for the year was by a journalist, let alone a foreign correspondent. The public was hungry for lighter fare: three of the top sellers were how-to books about winning at canasta, and another was Norman Vincent Peale’s A Guide to Confident Living. “One wonders,” wrote a reviewer of This House Against This House, “if this type of intimate, first-person journalism hasn’t about outlived its usefulness as a serious contribution to world thought.”

It is a question still worth pondering.

For the modern reader, Personal History celebrates a lost golden age of foreign correspondence. News outlets were plentiful. The dollar was strong and the cost of living abroad cheap. Americans were well liked. Editors could not yet reach a reporter on the steppes of Russia by pressing a few telephone buttons. In those days, American correspondents enjoyed great freedom, and large numbers of them spent years abroad, roving and learning. When it came to foreseeing the impending World War II, Sheean wrote, “International journalism was more alert than international statesmanship.” This self-confidence makes for a poignant contrast with our current pop-cultural image of the foreign correspondent, a disheveled figure most often freighted with angst. “It’s not a fucking forties movie,” says a character in The Killing Fields. “You can’t just get on a goddamn plane and make the whole world come out right.”

We cannot bring back that era. But in a world in which our security is threadbare and questions abound about what is happening and why, the need for foreign reporting is no less urgent…and Sheean’s approach no less compelling.

The drive for credibility has pushed journalists toward greater caution. When USA Today correspondent Jack Kelley was found to have fabricated news, the home-office solution was to double-check quotes in reporters’ stories and comb expense accounts to see whether they had been where they said they were. Such scrutiny may avoid more Kelleys (or it may not). But it does not encourage correspondents to interpret the world for an audience that often doesn’t have the background to weigh a leader’s quote or judge the relevance of a distant fact.

For all its emotion, Sheean’s approach was more objective than the pseudo-scientific artifices of attributing all insights and opinions to others and of balancing unequal points of view to avoid seeming “biased.” Like a proper scientist, Sheean brought expert observational skills to his reporting…he told the reader what he saw, the conditions under which he saw it, and what it meant.

That was strikingly apparent in 1938, when Sheean covered Germany’s annexation of Austria for the Herald Tribune. He rejected the widespread argument that the Nazis succeeded by terror alone. The party’s message, argued Sheean in the paper’s banner story of July 5, had mass appeal:

I am unable to name any sources or any authority for what I say, since nobody in Vienna is willing to be quoted, but investigations in the last ten days have given me one firm belief…that nothing will shake the power of national socialism here until it has completed its historic functions and has reached its natural and inevitable conclusion in general war.

This was not the antiestablishment free-for-all of the New Journalism that emerged in the 1960s. Nor was it the self-centered blogging of today. It was informed reporting of the highest order.

Journalists of a certain age remember Sheean. As I was working on this article, long-retired cbs correspondent Marvin Kalb mentioned that he read Personal History when it came out and said to himself, “I’ve got to be a journalist.” May it inspire a new generation of correspondents as well. 

Although the NFL season is still a month off, desperate sports fans can get their Tiki Barber fix during the Olympics. The former New York Giant running back has moved on to broadcasting, of course, and when he’s not creating tabloid headlines by slamming his former coach and teammates (who are doing just fine without him), Tiki is proving his expertise about things other than sports by…commenting on the Olympics? A true Renaissance Man, that Tiki.

While fellow Football Night In America commentator Cris Collinsworth has a featured primetime role on the NBC mothership’s coverage, Barber is relegated to MSNBC. He is co-hosts the daily Olympic Update, airing at 5PM EST. There is a chirpy female host back in New York, and another alongside Barber in the Chinese capital. The show engages in the all important Phelps worship, summarizes other highlights of the day, soft-pedals the weather in smoggy Beijing, sends a goofy correspondent (not Tiki) out to “compete in” (read: goof on) ping pong and epee and other “sports.” Generally, it looks to replicate a morning show vibe during the cocktail hour.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and Barber, who has forfeited much of his hardcore football cred (partially because his team won the Super Bowl without him), isn’t unsuited to the format. He has the fake smile and forced enthusiasm of a TV vet, or a Today host, which is what he is now (at least for an hour a day). But even Katie Couric is faring better as CBS Evening News anchor than Tiki is in Beijing.

Olympic Update is on for two hours a day, but as far as Barber is concerned, it’s Amateur Hour. During a segment discussing the USA hoops squad (assessing whether they will do better than in 2004, something of a ridiculous topic after a single game), he referred to the team’s coach, Mike Krzyzewski, Duke’s fabled Coach K and the winner of three NCAA titles, as “Mike Rezevski.” Barber also opined that the team was playing better this time because it had spent much more time together this summer, which isn’t the case—just under three weeks pre-Olympics, this year and four years ago.

In another, more cringe-inducing episode, MSNBC aired footage of hundreds of Chinese volunteers gathered at the troubled sailing venue, cleaning up algae with their hands. It’s an embarrassing situation, one that could get much worse, and certainly nothing to joke about—but somehow, the MSNBC producers thought it was funny to spotlight in an “ain’t these foreigners wacky?” kind of way. Tiki compounded the inappropriate situation with a jocular “Can I have that job?” Which is the sort of dimwitted crack your local affiliate anchor might make, after which you would vow never to watch him again.

One more—in discussing the famously brutal water polo match in 1956 between the Soviets and recently invaded Hungary, Sir Tiki called the winner that day “Hungaria.” Keep in mind, it’s only the fifth day of the Games. Barber isn’t likely to challenge Emmitt Smith in the malaprop department, but he’s becoming appointment television, and not for the right reasons.

OK, everybody makes mistakes. But not everybody was so self-righteous about his abilities as a communicator when it came to defending his reason for leaving the NFL. And precious few have been handed such prestigious announcing slots with so little experience. Barber has his dream gig, apparently, but this viewer, for one, would prefer he don shoulder pads and helmet again.

In my idealistic mind, good journalism could save the world. As a high school senior, I believed that journalists were the best storytellers. I still do. We can turn a magnifying glass to governments and schools. We can turn it on our neighbors and ourselves. Our words can sting, and soothe.

And in these difficult economic times it hurts to see the profession turned upside down.

We've all learned how to write more stories with smaller staffs. We've learned to hold back tears as our colleagues are hastily escorted out after another round of layoffs hits. We've learned that sometimes our complaints fall on editors who are just as frustrated. Last December, I decided I could no longer handle the emotional roller coaster and began my path out.

I was one of the lucky few who decided to walk out of the profession on my own. Faced with the industry’s uncertanties, I decided to go the route of graduate school and pursue pastoral ministry at Boston College. It was something I'd kicked around for years but could never go through with it—until I sat through two rounds of layoffs at my small daily newspaper. The first stung a little and the second felt like someone had punched my stomach.

I can't pinpoint what went wrong in the world of dailies; whether it was trying to monetize our Web site, or trying to focus wholeheartedly on our video presence. Being a print journalist buried under breaking news requirements and video training classes made me throw up my hands in frustration.

Turning to new media for ideas, newspapers and Web sites have started using more links to social media sites like Facebook. But the trouble is that news organizations haven’t really figured out how to bring in the profit from multimedia.

Even as a frequent user of social networking sites and multimedia tools, I still can’t face what’s happening to daily journalism. This destruction of daily journalism, where newspapers are gutted from the inside out, is too hard to watch up close. Tears sometimes hit the keyboard when I think about the life I’m walking away from.

My newsroom colleagues sometimes joked about my decision to go do God’s work. Leaving the cynical and sometimes atheistic surroundings of a newsroom to seek a deeper meaning of faith did seem like a strange choice. My boss told me once that newsrooms are filled with non-believers.

Maybe he's right. But I'd like to think that the people who held my hand through my first murder story or taught me how to write my first high school sports gamer really believed in something. Maybe it wasn't God. But maybe they believed in truth in the world, believed that sometimes life is horrible, and if not for the journalists who stood up to take notes and make noise, then nobody would?

I believe there’s a goodness in newsrooms, in journalists. There is pride and honor associated with the profession. We stand up for those who can’t speak. We investigate issues in your schools. We dig into your local government.

My advice to young journalists is that your words will make a difference. Readers will sometimes be stirred by your words enough to make changes in their neighborhoods. Parents will become emotional over their son or daughter’s obituary that you crafted. Strangers will befriend you because they know there is power in your words.

Newspapers may be dying, but you signed on to something you believed in because of that idealism, that hope. Be that strong-willed voice for change.

_________________________________

The steady drip of layoffs and buyouts, slowly desiccating once-vibrant newsrooms around the country, has also produced a reservoir of anger, sadness, fear, uncertainty—even some cautious optimism here and there—among reporters and editors who invested years, decades in some cases, of their lives to print journalism. We’ve asked anyone so inclined to channel these emotions, not into rant—although there will be a bit of that—but rather into reflection on what went wrong, and where we might go from here. We will publish one per day, under the headline “Parting Thoughts.” All of the letters we publish will be collected here.

Last week, Slate columnist Ron Rosenbaum criticized the July/August issue of Columbia Journalism Review for what he perceived as an ironic contradiction between our editorial and a feature about the future of climate-change coverage.

Rosenbaum praised the editorial, "Dissent Deficit," in which we argued that the media, rather than engaging "speech that strays too far from the dangerously narrow borders of our public discourse," have effectively ignored or marginalized dissent. Rosenbaum then accused us of betraying our own advice a few pages down the road in a long article by veteran science reporter Cristine Russell. According to his column:

[O]ur CJR author appears to believe that the green consensus, the anthropogenic theory of global warming, has some special need to be protected from doubters and dissenters, and that reporters who don't do their job to insulate it are not being "helpful." When faced with dissent from the sacrosanct green consensus, the author, as we'll see, argues that the "helpful" reporter must always show the dissenters are wrong if they are to be given any attention at all.

That's not what we were suggesting. In fact, the article doesn't use the words 'dissent,' 'protect,' or 'insulate' at all. To be clear: Journalism should be founded on a sacrosanct respect for free speech, and it is unethical to dismiss dissenting information or opinion simply because it contradicts an existing idea or thesis. Rosenbaum's insinuations about CJR's position seem to result from his misunderstanding of what we mean by "helpful" reporting. Here’ s one of the passages in our article to which he refers:

The era of “equal time” for skeptics who argue that global warming is just a result of natural variation and not human intervention seems to be largely over—except on talk radio, cable, and local television. Last year, a meteorologist at CBS’s Chicago station did a special report entitled “The Truth about Global Warming.” It featured local scientists discussing the hazards of global warming in one segment, well-known national skeptics in another, and ended with a cop-out: “What is the truth about global warming? … It depends on who you talk to.” Not helpful, and not good reporting.

Our problem is with so-called "he-said, she-said" reporting, in which a journalist presents one voice saying, "Humans are warming the globe," next to another saying, "No, they aren't," without any additional context. That is not journalistic "balance." Real balance values honesty and accuracy. And honestly, journalists have a responsibility to report that the vast majority of the scientific community supports the most fundamental conclusion of climate science — that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary cause of global warming. This should be noted if the question at hand is as simple as that. Many well-trained scientists and science journalists agree that to do otherwise leads to "balance as bias." There is nothing wrong with a reporter noting that are also many scientists who disagree with the majority, even on this fundamental point. It's true. But the real question is, is it okay not to mention that minority?

Without having done an official count, it certainly seems that many reporters, at least at print/online publications if not in television, have grown more comfortable with omitting the mention of scientists who think humans are not responsible for global warming. One must realize, however, that climate-science stories have mostly moved beyond that basic question. Governments and industries around the world are operating under the assumption that, even allowing for uncertainty, we ought to at least take small steps to mitigate global warming by shifting to more energy-efficient lives and economies.

Thus, appropriately, many recent climate-related stories concern subjects like carbon capture and storage, battery technology, and cap-and-trade schemes. Where energy isn't concerned, it's the potential impacts of global warming that most people want to know about—what's happening with hurricanes, ocean acidification, floods, droughts, health and species, polar ice and sea level rise? Where such questions are the focus of the new story, it’s absolutely reasonable for the reporter not to belabor the basic question about humans causing global warming.

None of this is to say that there is no room for skepticism about the soundness of various mitigation policies or technologies. Also, assuming greenhouse-gas emissions continue to climb as they have for the last hundred years, there is room for skepticism about how fast the world will warm, whether or not there will be cool periods in the process, and when, how, and where a given amount of warming will affect this planet. It's a lot, right? Too much to address in every news article? Absolutely.

Another reason that Rosenbaum may have misunderstood the meaning of CJR's article, is that he still writes about "climate science" as being monolithic rather than an incredibly multi-faceted subject (a double shame, because our piece was precisely about the issue's polymorphic transformation). No one news item can settle "the debate" on climate change, as if such a singular thing even existed. Rosenbaum wants "equal time" for "different arguments" about climate change, but the amount of attention that should be given this or that argument really depends on the story’s subject matter.

For example: Reporters covering hurricanes’ relationship to warming should note that their intensities could either increase because of higher sea-surface temperatures or decrease because of greater tropospheric windshear. Another example: There is no doubt that the seas will rise and polar ice will melt if warming continues. Reporters must note, however, the disagreement about how quickly the world will warm and how sea-rise and ice-melt proceed, even given certain temperature patterns.

Rosenbaum, quoting the dean of Columbia's Journalism School, which publishes CJR, advises journalists to "find the arguments." He is quite right—they should. But his advice is dangerously incomplete. In a blog post that was also critical of the way Rosenbaum cited his work, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin added that science journals "find the agreements." Put the two together and you have the bottom line. Climate journalists have to accurately describe the most significant scientific arguments and agreements involved in various aspects of global warming. But, again, it all comes down to what the article is about. Not every fact of climate science can or ought to be mentioned in every article. When judging the media's (or a single outlet's) treatment of dissent, critics must differentiate between individual stories and the entirety of its coverage.

That said, from time to time, publications have a responsibility to revisit the fundamental question of the anthropogenic basis for global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is ever more certain that humans are culpable, but there is enough dissenting science out there to warrant investigations of warming's relationship to the sun, the Earth's orbital patterns, and other alternative hypotheses. But until something changes, journalists must still note, in any such piece, that the majority of scientists dismiss these explanations in favor of human industry.

Journalism is not about quashing dissent, but nor is it about providing "equal time" to every Tom, Dick, and Contrary Theory simply because they exist. Journalistic "balance" is not physical balance, with two equal masses on each side of a fulcrum.

The problem is not that press quashes dissent (the public knows that there are skeptical climate scientists out there—roughly half, if not more, of the public is itself skeptical) or even that, as environmentalists argue, it gives dissent too much attention. The problem is that the press has done a poor job, over all, of delineating the various questions that pertain to climate science and of accurately characterizing the weight of the agreements and arguments that pertain to each.

Under the Dot Earth post about Rosenbaum, one of the regular commenters on Revkin's blog asked why journalists have such a tough time explaining climate in a way the public "gets" and why CJR has often applauded the Times' efforts nonetheless. He wants the press to go after ExxonMobil and other nefarious entities and expose how they have manufactured dissent about global warming—then, maybe, all will become clear. While it's true that such artifice has been a serious problem (Revkin did most of the original digging into the White House's role, one reason we have held him in esteem), there is plenty of legitimate scientific dissent that journalists must also contend with before the public will "get" climate.

A comprehensive picture depends upon answers to a lot of different questions. Journalists, contrary to the old maxim, must start focusing on the trees if people are to understand the forest.

N.B. There are two other accusations by Rosenbaum that I simply couldn't let go of. First, he accuses CJR of "misunderstanding or misstating of the way science works," because Russell's feature reminds journalists that scientific consensus develops incrementally. To support his argument he reiterates Thomas Kuhn’s tired, old argument that science suddenly moves forward in great leaps when "paradigm shifts" overturn the prevailing conventional wisdom. Well, that can happen, but it's rare. Technology may often improve dramatically overnight, but physical and life-sciences research is a miserably slow process. Second, Rosenbaum repeatedly accuses CJR of blindly defending "green" journalists and the new, "green religion" of environmentalism. He might note that the only time Russell used the word "green" outside of "greenhouse gas" in her piece was negatively, as in "greenwashing" and "green fatigue." Go figure.

"What always impresses me are the people who are obsessed. People who are gifted, perhaps, but people who are obsessed. And they can't even imagine themselves doing anything other than covering the political campaign or writing about the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or, for that matter, writing fiction at the level of an Alice Munro or a George Saunders or whoever you happen to like."

(Grisham? Sparks?)

There you have it. The secret to finally seeing your byline in the New Yorker: be "obsessed." That, along with those clichéd bits of Advice For Young Journalists, which Remnick also invokes while talking via Mediabistro: hard work ("work like a nut"-- again with the be crazy stuff?) and a little luck ("be a little lucky").

On your marks... get lucky...stalk the story!

For Radar's September issue (excerpt online), Ana Marie Cox explains how "the press corps" really feels about Michelle Obama:

Michelle seems to have intrigued the press corps as much as her husband has, albeit in a less obvious way. She is treated like a combination of a misbehaving movie star and a lottery winner: exceptionally stylish, slightly annoying, and obviously lucky. She is both the celebrity on Oprah's couch and the lady in the audience going home with a brand new car. We are rapt.

"Celebrity," you say? Isn't that this election's c-word?

Cox writes that Michelle Obama is "very private, very busy, and very disciplined. She doesn't give many interviews," which sets readers up for the let-down a few paragraphs later that Cox also didn't get an interview with Michelle Obama for her Michelle Obama cover story.

And so the stacks of profiles and puff pieces about the striking would-be first lady have to make do with scraps of information about her diet, her health, and her favorite things, wrapping up the Michelle paradox in the comforting costume of celebrity.

So as a service we gathered and parsed the available information (and diligently footnoted our sources) to answer all the questions you may have about Michelle, but might be a little, you know, too scared to ask.

Cox writes that "Washington logic has it that the press punishes political figures who don't grant access." Does Cox "punish" Obama? I guess you're supposed to buy the magazine to find out.

Jack Schafer bemoans the flock of "pressies" who descend on the typically newsless political conventions ("Slate, I'm embarrassed to admit, is sending a team of eight to Denver and six to St. Paul. Attention! Don Graham! We're spending your cash like it's Zimbabwean bank notes!") and offers a few suggestions for how to report at these events:

If the political press corps were honest, they'd start every convention story with the finding that nothing important happened that day and that your attention is not needed. Or they'd go searching toilet stalls for somebody with a wide stance. Instead, they satisfy themselves by being the co-producers of a bad reality-TV show about the coronation of a man who would be king.

Given the non-newsiness of these gatherings, Shafer predicts what the "average political reporter" "might" do (I'd say "will undoubtedly" do --to death):

This year, his eyes might glow with visions of a Clinton-Obama feud. When he stoops that low, you'll know you've won the debate.

The best media response so far to what The New York Times's Harvey Araton called "the Spanish slant-eye controversy?" No, not Bill Plaschke's oddly jingoistic "Let the Spanish act racist in the privacy of their own little country." It's this gem from the Canadian National Post's Kelly McParland:

The Chinese, who lost to the Spaniards Tuesday night, aren’t offended. In fact, they announced that in sympathy with their brother Spaniards, they were all going to eat a huge lunch and spend the afternoon sleeping.

Zing!

From Pajamas Media comes the upsetting news that more teenagers than ever before are now using heroin:

Why is this addictive opiate making its way through the suburbs, taking down kid after kid while the parents remain naive and oblivious to its presence? Why are kids who seem to have it all reaching out for a drug that has more of a social stigma than methamphetamine and ecstasy, the drugs of choice of the teenagers before them? The answer might be found in looking at the effects of those drugs. While meth and ecstasy are stimulants and offer a user increased energy and heightened awareness, heroin is a depressant that blocks out pain, dulls the thought process and takes one away from life.

The explanation offered by author Michele Catalano is that, for today's children born of professional families (or "good kids," as she calls them), the pressure to get good grades and excel in extracurricular activities and get into fancy colleges leaves them unable to cope with failure, causing some deep anxiety that occasionally manifests itself in a nasty heroin addiction.

Dear God, being white and middle class is so damn hard.

Is the stress of being a suburban teenager now really so terrible that we're seeing a rash of heroin addictions? While it's certainly a fascinating idea, the problem is that it's not really clear that middle class heroin (and other hard drug) use is any more prevalent these days than it ever was. Remember Traffic? Hell, remember Diff'rent Strokes?

In fact, journalists have been bemoaning the rise of heroin use among residents of places like Suffolk and Rockland Counties for more than thirty years. While the author seems to focus on the good kid/bad kid thing, she’s really talking about social class. The hitch here is that, in terms of middle-class suburban communities, heroin use is nothing new.

From today's Honolulu Star Bulletin:

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is keeping the candidate away from much of the typical Hawaiian vacation imagery -- hold the lei and aloha wear.

It's a strategy that appears based on political reality, as the 50th state gets bashed on the mainland as too "foreign" to be a presidential destination.

He hasn't worn aloha shirts, either, instead favoring his customary casual wear: solid-color shirts and khaki pants. When he weighed in on the Russian-Georgian conflict, he added a black windbreaker despite the warmth.

Then readers hear from (I swear!) the "vice president of the Association of Image Consultants International" -- based in Eugene, Ore., natch -- who explains:

[Obama] might not want to offer the opportunity to be classified as a beach party guy. A presidential candidate needs to convey at least some air of gravitas. We always tell clients, 'If you want to look authoritative, you put on a jacket.'

The article goes on: "Every image counts for a presidential candidate, and his campaign handlers don't want to give critics any photo fodder that could be used against him."

But, wait. That picture accompanying the article? Oh dear. What is Obama wearing on his feet there? Are those...

Despite the concerns of his image handlers, Obama showed some local style when he went to a movie theater to take in "The Dark Knight" and then out to dinner. His choice of footwear? Rubber slippers.

Oh, phew. Just "rubber slippers."

Predicting the election outcome from August polls is not much more accurate than reading tea leaves. As the presidential race stagnates in the shadow of the Olympics, pundits are raking increasingly soggy indicators. Today, the much-hashed discussion about Obama’s problems with white voters is rehashed again, in papers including the London Daily Telegraph and The Washington Post.

Boston Globe contributor David Paul Kuhn asks whether white men pose a particular problem for the Illinois senator. He rightly points out that Obama’s problem with this demographic is not unique to him. “Not since 1976, when Democrats last achieved a majority, has a Democrat won more than 38 of every 100 white, male voters,” he writes.

This is a useful historical fact anchoring much less grounded speculation about how race will affect the November election. But Kuhn then messes up his own historical account, missing the important link between race and gender—or, more accurately, the white backlash and the backlash against feminism—in driving white men into the Republican Party.

Kuhn takes issue with those who say that white resistance to civil rights legislation explains Democrats’ underperformance with white men. “Many Democrats explain their failures in a respect that reaffirms their self image; the good fight for black equality caused a racially motivated ‘Southern flip,’” he writes. “In the Deep South, that was true. But nationally, political white flight occurred in the South and the North. It also reached its crescendo with Ronald Reagan's election—not during the peak of civil rights debates.”

OK, let’s review the history. First, although the civil rights backlash began in the South, it rapidly spread to the North. Chicago, Detroit, and Boston were all epicenters of some of the most pitched battles over housing and school integration, which became increasingly bitter under court-imposed busing. Middle-class whites, many of them union members and Catholics, watched as their hard-earned economic gains eroded in the economic downturn of the 1970s, while African-Americans enjoyed upward mobility thanks to government intervention against discrimination. Alabama's segregationist governor George Wallace made three shockingly successful presidential bids between 1964 and 1972 thanks to these voters, running strong in states like Wisconsin and Michigan. Nixon and Reagan’s opposition to busing and affirmative action—with a healthy helping of racially coded “law and order” rhetoric—brought many of the voters that Wallace pried loose from the Democrats into the Republican Party.

The racial tensions of the 1970s and ‘80s were accompanied by the equally important, but less often remembered, backlash against feminism. The most important item on the feminist agenda—passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) barring sex discrimination—was passed almost unanimously in both houses of Congress and was endorsed by Republicans including Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond, and Gerald Ford. It was rapidly ratified by the states—within a year of its passage, only eight more states needed to adopt the ERA in order to amend the Constitution.

The feminist juggernaut foundered in North Carolina, thanks to the grassroots activist Phyllis Schlafly and segregationist senator Jesse Helms. Conservative women mobilized in opposition to the ERA, casting doubt on whether feminist organizations actually spoke for American women. According to Marjorie Spruill, a University of South Carolina history professor writing a book on the feminist backlash of the 1970s, Helms helped Schlafly turn growing anti-feminist sentiments into a lasting movement in 1977, when he held Senate hearings legitimating her allies who dissented from the feminist movment. These forces helped put ERA opponent Ronald Reagan in office, and the amendment expired during his administration without winning the necessary ratification.

Integration and feminism both represented massive changes in America’s social life, and they were linked in popular debate with many other social problems of the ‘70s and ‘80s—rising crime rates, the collapse of American cities, unrest on college campuses, open homosexuality, the deindustrialization of Northern manufacturing centers that hurt middle and working class men. Anti-feminism came along at a moment when overt racism was becoming politically unacceptable, and conservative women gave political cover to politicians who wanted to denounce liberal feminists. Historian Spruill explains that resistance to civil rights legislation and feminist legislation are united by a belief in “innate differences” and “hierarchy.”

Discomfort with the Democratic Party, which embraced both civil rights and feminism, lingers. That is why, as Kuhn correctly notes, Obama may face many of the same problems with white men that have plagued previous Democratic nominees.

Thanks to Obama’s race and unusual background, he enters this dynamic with extra baggage. It is interesting to speculate whether other nominees would be doing better with white men. Despite her stronger performance amongst white Democratic primary voters, it seems hard to imagine that Hillary Clinton would be more popular among this demographic. John Edwards (sans scandal) might be, though Bill Clinton had plenty of difficulty with the group once known as “angry white men.”

Much has been made of the Democratic plank acknowledging sexism in the primary, which is theoretically designed to heal internal wounds. But if Obama faces a challenge in confronting his party’s racial legacy with white male voters, he also must manage his party’s feminist legacy. And, if their prognostications are to be taken seriously, commentators have to understand the historical significance of both.

She knows low-brow! She knows high! In a single paragraph, she proves her pop culture IQ spans centuries (and oceans)! Not every Big League columnist is hip to Shakespeare and American Idol (not every column reader, either, but for the showboater it's never about the audience). Not every opinion writer can look at Bill Clinton's "howl[ing] at the moon-- and at reporters -- about Obama" and immediately think/write, "[Clinton's] starting to make King Lear look like Ryan Seacrest." But yes, Maureen Dowd can.

We puzzled over the Clinton-Lear-Seacrest connection here in the office and, with some help from an English major among us, came up with: King Lear demanded flattery; Ryan Seacrest is ever the target of mockery (on and off Idol). Bill Clinton's "howling" (which Dowd reads as really about adoration lost) makes King Lear (that notorious adoration junkie) look like Ryan Seacrest (that notoriously good-natured punching bag)? Or...?

Also: looks like Dowd's really looking forward to the Democratic Convention. Hasn't she heard there's "very little real news" there?

This week’s Chronicle Review has an article about cognitive linguist (and Chomsky nemesis) George Lakoff, who has written a new book entitled The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics With an 18th-Century Brain. A few years back, as CJR's Todd Gitlin notes in the article, Lakoff "'was more than the flavor of the week. He was the messianic flavor, the flavor to end all flavors.'" These days, it seems, the linguist has fallen out of flavor.

The article's definitely worth a read, if only because the brand of thinking that Lakoff so adamantly champions (to the detriment of his academic reputation)—very simply put, that emotionally driven arguments are more effective with voters than reason-driven ones, and that assuming otherwise is stupid—has, for better or for worse, become manna for many a political campaign. From the article:

An unabashed liberal (he insists on the label "progressive"), he says that Republicans have been quick to realize that the way people think calls for placing emotional and moral appeals at the center of campaign strategy. (He suspects that they gleaned their knowledge from marketing, where some of the most innovative work on the science of persuasion is taking place.) Democrats, Lakoff bemoans, have persisted in an old-fashioned assumption that facts, figures, and detailed policy prescriptions win elections. Small wonder that in recent years the cognitive linguist has emerged as one of the most prominent figures demanding that Democrats take heed of the cognitive sciences and abandon their faith in voters' capacity to reason.

The article, written by Chronicle staff editor Evan Goldstein, goes on to discuss Lakoff's influences, which include a lecture delivered by Charles J. Fillmore, a linguist who worked with the idea of semantic framing—the idea that "words automatically bring to mind bundles of ideas, narratives, emotions, and images":

[Fillmore] called those related concepts "frames," and he posited that they are strengthened when certain words and phrases are repeated.

Wait. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Let's take a look at a bit part from the HRC Memos. From a Mark Penn strategy memo that addresses tactics by which to favorably contrast HRC against Barack Obama:

Shows these are just words. Shows he is not ready. Simple frames people relate easily to and are not hyperbolic… These frames of not ready, just words, all will accrue to one central fact that will swing men and superdelegates even further—he cannot win, you can. Once people again believe that, he is done and we are the nominees—the rest is a matter of time.

In the following section, titled "Undoing Obama," Penn reiterates: "The frames are simple—not ready for president and it's all just words, not actions."

It’s funny, because, as Goldstein notes, many linguists—working in a field that is often considered abstruse and recondite even within the academe—have dismissed Lakoff as a joke. (So have intellectuals from other fields, like Harvard’s star psychology prof Steven Pinker.) But political strategists, unsure whether to gratefully utilize what many consider his quick-fix theories or reject them as sales-y garbage that mutes the expression of concrete ideas, haven’t unilaterally embraced him, either.

This “caught in the middle” position, one that Lakoff has intermittently occupied since the mid-90s (when he first started considering how framing could be utilized in the political arena), explains the article’s headline: “Who Framed George Lakoff?” Maybe Lakoff can work on a different framing scenario for himself. Or maybe he needn’t bother, because, though worrisome, it’s clear from Penn’s memo that his terminology has caught on behind the scenes. The cat is out of the bag.

When you’ve got an ethics question, there’s only one place to turn. We asked Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist" at The New York Times Magazine, to weigh on the Edwards debacle.

Hypothetical: I’m an editor at a reputable newspaper. One day, I see an article in a tabloid publication—one with a history of getting some big stories right—about a former presidential candidate’s involvement in a love affair that may have led to the birth of a child. What do I do?

You investigate any potential important story that you think may have possibly happened. The Enquirer story wasn’t a one-shot report. This went on for some time and was on the blogs. I’d probably ignore one story in the Enquirer.

It’s easy to criticize journalists in hindsight. What I thought was striking was how quickly the big important editors at the big important papers forgave themselves.

But wait, what about the idea that sex may be a private matter?

Mores change. What level of privacy is afforded to people, these assumptions change. In the post-Bill Clinton era, these things have been picked over assiduously.

Might not be more be made of the McCain comparison? I think some parallels might be made with him and his affair. I’m astonished at what a free ride McCain gets, but some figures tend to get protected.

What I don’t understand is why you would talk about this? It seems the proper response for Edwards is “None of your business.” Why one would chose to respond to this, I can’t imagine.

The journalist’s job isn’t to pander to the prejudices of the readers, the journalist’s job is to regard this as an important story. It gets very hard, because once other people regard people’s sex lives as important, that makes it news.

But don’t you, by covering this story, tell readers that this is important and that they should care about it?

Those judgments get played in what prominence you give the story. While you as a reporter may think it is irrelevant, you may simultaneously believe that it’s important because other people think it’ll affect the elections.

How do you frame the story? In some of the stories about public officials’ private lives, the unspoken assumption says that this reveals something about that amorphous thing “character,” and that translates into an ability to predict how someone will do their job.

With Obama, questions about race were raised, but virtually no reporter thinks his race affects the way he’s gonna do his job. But many people think it might have an effect on the election.

If you look through human history, and you think, “Hmm, Is there a correlation between the ability to perform in higher office and one’s sex life?” you’d be hard pressed to find it.

Your story can essentially be that this irrelevant fact about someone—that has no effect on the ability to do that job—can affect the election. In an election it can get tricky because this type of thing can influence how are people are deciding.

Ethics and professionalism blur together so much. Why were JFK’s infidelities given so little play for so long? Is it because all the editors, who were middle-aged white men, identified with Kennedy?

So, why the interest in politicians’ dirty laundry?

Well, there’s been an increased belief in the importance of transparency in a democratic society, and that broadcasts itself in business governance and in political governance.

There have been all sorts of sunshine laws—freedom of information—and an increasing acceptance of legitimate things for citizens to ask about information that would not have been exposed before. There’s a kind of cultural openness.

Well, what about the ethics of talking about affairs and such in the private realm?

Not only is it okay within a certain limit, it’s inevitable and it’s profoundly human and not in a bad way: if I knew about some astonishing, intimate doing of one of my friends, how could I not talk about it?

With this caveat: Your interest is inevitable and your eagerness to talk about it is not just inevitable, but also quite wonderful, because conversation is better than silence—but you have to be aware of the consequences of your actions. And how you navigate your interest is very important.

There are things people say about one another “behind their back” that would be very hurtful were they to be said to their face. I mean, look, I know there are things that my friends say about me that they would never say to me. I respect their compassion and discretion in not saying them to me. They love me; they’re my friends.

I’m very pro gossip. It’s a pejorative term, but it really means “Are you interested in other human beings? Are you interested in the most fascinating, revealing, intimate decisions they make?” Yes! I am!

AIso, is what you’re saying true? That’s not unimportant. To simply pass along something you heard that is false is more dubious.

I think it was Alice Roosevelt Longworth who said, "If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." The goings on of other people, those that involve strong feeling, charged with emotion, violate the conventions of society, those are the most interesting things about life. Those are the things of novels.

I know there are people to claim such rectitude to be above the fray, and deprecate these conversations as gossip.

But I think it’s important to ask: Is their interest filled with tenderness and affection? Are they mindful of what’s true and not true?

If gossip makes snide comments about a person that’s designed to lacerate your friend and the falseness of the relationship can be revealed, if it’s intended to wound someone, I'm against it.

Your motives count. There’s gossip and there’s gossip. But a conversation that reveals your concern with tenderness and affection, that’s the highest form of gossip.

The Boston Phoenix's Web site features a captivating photo essay on the Mass Games, North Korea's creepy annual homegrown take on the Olympics (less swimming, more joyless dancing). The Mass Games are "state ideology set to music, says photographer Michael Gao, who also calls them "the most surreal sight in the most bizarre nation on the planet." After viewing his photographs, I'm not inclined to disagree.

Photo credit Michael Gao, Boston Phoenix

Fox News' Megyn Kelly may have just now stumbled upon a new tag line for Fox News ("Fair and Balanced" has had a good run) or any cable news channel, for that matter (that whole "The Place For This" or "The Best Team For That" stuff isn't aging well).

"Who are we to say it's not the truth?" is how Kelly just concluded what might be the Best. Cable. Segment. Ever. (This week, at least.)

The segment was an interview with a man "known as The Big Foot Hunter" who claims "Sasquatch's remains" have been found in the woods in Georgia and offered Fox viewers photograph proof (some kind of lifeless, hairy ape-like thing in a plastic cooler -- "the Sasquatch on ice," Kelly ventured) which shared screen time on Fox with Fox's "File" footage of "Big Foot" lumbering along a mountain, as the following "Fox Facts" flashed on the bottom of the screen:

Big Foot Said to Inhabit Remote Forest Areas
Big Foot Sometimes Described as Large, Hairy, Bipedal Hominoid
Big Foot Described as Being Btwn 6-10 feet Tall
Most Experts Consider Big Foot To Be Combo of Folklore, Hoaxes

Hey, who is a cable news reporter to say it's not the truth?

Here are some media-related snippets from the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign’s strategy memos and e-mails, recently released by The Atlantic.

In a Dec. 21, 2006 memo, Mark Penn characterizes the national and local press's opinions of HRC:

The national press is relatively hostile and only grudgingly willing to see any of the Senator’s great strengths. They want to be king makers and Hillary is already the king, so they are typically looking to find that someone “new” who can be their own. They have done this with Dean last time, with first Warner and now Obama this time. They focus on every Hillary Clinton weakness while ignore the weaknesses of opponents in a vast media festival that has now become an ingrained part of the process. The NY press in contrast is becoming kind of cheerleaders, especially the Post and News…Newsweek is gone, Time may be salvageable. NY and DC press a day to day reality but their influence is waning unless they have a scoop. Blog effort is definitely worthwhile.

Penn, on Mar. 19, 2007, on the lack of national columns dedicated to Hillary (How about MoDowd?):

We can either leave things as they are, or start our response operation going, calling every reporter every time they write nonsense, commenting on wrong info… Right now we are just taking all this with limited defense. [David] Brooks wrote a critical column in our favor, but we are not generating more such columns. We may have plenty going on behind the scenes, but it is not yet bearing fruit.

Tucked into a Harold Ickes memo on the delegate system, sent around Dec. 22, 2007, is a footnote that illuminates a polling source for the campaign: "Projections for the 4 early states were calculated using the average of available public polls conducted for each state as of 12.20." (Ickes went on to cite the Web site Real Clear Politics.)

Just prior to the Iowa caucus, a strategy memo from Penn discusses “a press that likes to cover the process and not the substance of what Hillary Clinton says and does.” He also states: “The press is becoming emotionally ready for a tie.” And then here’s his take on Edwards’s image in the media:

Edwards may pick up some momentum from Iowa, but he is not seriously regarded by the press as a real alternative; they see him as a phony, with a case that is tailored to win, but that is not real.

A letter of complaint from Washington Post editor Philip Bennett to HRC campaign manager Maggie Williams calls out the campaign on spreading the false rumor that Anne Kornblut, a New York Times political reporter who was recruited by the Post in 2007, had initially been fired from the Times. From Feb. 11, 2008: “It was not the first time that a colleague had told Anne of a Clinton campaign official claiming that Anne had left The Times under a cloud.”

From a March 5, 2008 Penn strategy memo, a tidbit on the 3 a.m. scare spot that the HRC campaign ran, addressing presidential preparedness:

Shift at least 50% if not more of all media to negative or implied negative like 3 am that make big arguments on why you can’t trust just words with your future.

Penn got excited about a NYT Long Run article that ran on March 9, which looked into Obama’s senatorial role:

We will take on his Iraq vote. The NY Times today provided a clear roadmap… The NY Times today—one year into this race—finally admitted that Barack Obama was no leader on Iraq in the Senate. It was an amazing story. It provides a roadmap for undoing Sen. Obama…They said: ‘He was running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol’s corridors.’

Further down in the memo, Penn reiterates: “‘He was running for president even as he was still getting lost in the Capitol’s corridors’ is a devastating quote from the article.”

(A correction has since been appended to the article that Penn cites, saying that it referred incorrectly “to [Obama’s] position on a drawdown of troops from Iraq.”)

Robert Barnett e-mails HRC and her senior staff on March 6, 2008, frustrated by the press’s coverage (by Anne Kornblut, for one) of back-biting among members of the Clinton campaign. Referencing the WaPo story:

After this campaign is over, there will be plenty of time to access blame or claim credit… Right now, we have a real chance to win this nomination. That is where our focus should be—not on each other.

Finally, there’s an interesting portion of a Penn memo from March 30, 2008, with the somewhat amusing meta-label “The campaign about the campaign,” which states:

Here we are not winning as they paint us as negative, and have a chorus of people calling for us to pull out…we can try to strike back on the negativity with an ad that exposes all his hypocrisy once and for all—that shows all the words of him and his advisers and surrogates that have constituted negative personal attacks. This could be a good free press play.

Because, Mr. Penn, the press is always ready to jump.

Westword, Denver's altweekly, had a great post last week debunking a sort of semi-official convention rumor--one that made it as far as the august pages of the New York Post. Apparently, someone told someone that someone had been asked to piss in a pail as part of pre-convention protest prep. Three months ago. And that contribution, supposedly, was a drop in the bucket: as the story goes, somewhere in Denver, a "House of Urine" awaits tapped-out ne'er do-wells interested in filling up projectiles.

As the piece points out, three months is "a long time to be storing someone else's piss."

Let Westword (and basic logic) take it from here:

Where is this mysterious house? How is it that the house is "full" of urine? Does it brim to the ceiling or to the attic? Does urine spray out of the mail slot when the postman comes around? Does the neighborhood smell like piss?

CJR's verdict? Golden reporting.

The New York Times reports on CNN's plan to do more with less by assigning "one-man bands" to assorted U.S. cities, in effect "doubl[ling] the number of domestic cities where the cable news network has outposts." CNN, in its words, is "harnessing technology that enables us to be anywhere and be live from anywhere." And by "us," CNN means, one of us. In a cubicle on loan from a local TV news station. To be sure:

The quality of a report produced by a four-person news crew is often superior to that of a one-man band. But for many assignments, especially ones on the Web, a single skilled journalist will suffice.

At 6:19 p.m. this past Saturday, Russian journalist Mikhail Romanoff added a two-line post to his personal blog from the chaos of Tskhinvali: “They’re shooting like fucking mad over here.” Eighteen hours and a couple posts earlier, he was blogging from the basement of the city’s Alan Hotel, where he was holed up with Russian journalists and peacekeepers. “Interfax is here, REN-TV, Channel Five,” he wrote. Romanoff, a twenty-something native of Yakutia who works for the New Times of Moscow, had come to South Ossetia to track the rising regional tensions two days before the fighting broke out, leaving a prescient post - “I’m off to volunteer for the Georgian War! Ciao!” Now he was stuck. “I had planned to leave tomorrow,” Romanoff blogged from the besieged hotel. “I ordered a car for five a.m. It’s unclear if it’ll come. Hell, nothing is really clear anymore.”

Like most Russians his age, Romanoff is an active user of LiveJournal, a sort of blog-meets-social-networking site that has become a vital outlet for meaningful political discourse in a country where the mass media has been happily gobbled up by the state. Some blog for their friends, others have wider followings with thousands of commenters, putting them at the top of rankings done by Yandex, Russia’s search engine.

Though many Russian journalists at the front reported that access to many Russian websites had been shut off by the Georgians, LiveJournal was still accessible because of its .com suffix, rather than the suddenly problematic .ru suffix. And so, even as a geopolitical nightmare unfolded around him, Romanoff continued to blog. When he wasn’t posting himself, Romanoff would phone his entries in to his friend Ilya Yashin, head of the youth branch of the liberal (and defunct) Yabloko Party, who would then post for him. While young Russians love their LiveJournals like Americans love their Facebook, Romanoff’s dedication to keeping his LiveJournal humming from the trenches is stunning.

He’s not the only one who did so. Take Krig42, the right-leaning, WWII-obsessed LiveJournal alter ego of Dmitry Steshin, a political correspondent for the tabloid-y Komsomolskaya Pravda. Steshin’s LiveJournal dwarfs Romanoff’s brief “I’m alive, I’m scared, don’t believe your TVs” posts, however. Trapped in Gori when the fighting started, Krig42 had been blogging feverishly up until his escape yesterday morning over the Georgian border into Armenia. His terse, vivid entries recall the frontline journalism of Vasily Grossman and Mikhail Koltsov, and have boosted his blog’s Yandex ranking nearly 300 spots in the last day alone. A sample from August 9th, the day he decided it was time to get out:

“I went outside. Everything is deathly silent; there is booming somewhere on the outskirts. Georgian troops are lounging along the walls. Gori’s city square is piled up with the garbage of war: ammo transportation boxes, crates, bandages. Packs of NATO MREs, but with Georgian labels. Fuck, this is someone else’s war. ‘What am I doing here, on this side?’ I ask myself again. All for the sake of fucking objectivity…The soldiers try to strike up a conversation with me. Mutely I slide past them - it’s better than pretending to be a sorry-looking Englishman.”

Later, he meets David, a Georgian his age, who invites him into his home for tea. David has rushed home from his construction job in Thessaloniki to get his elderly parents out of Gori, but they won’t budge:

Men were swarming outside of David’s house. There was a Georgian veterans’ recruitment station nearby. Even invalids on crutches showed up…With his huge hands, David pushed me into the last (or second-to-last) refugee van. Everyone who could had already left last night on ‘more comfortable buses like the Icharus.’

In muted, shocked prose, Steshin describes a ruined country. There is rubble everywhere, buildings turned to funeral pyres. His van waits out a gunfight in someone’s yard before being mobbed by a crowd of refugees. People stream south, roads jammed. Just before midnight on the day he fled for Tbilisi, he posted a picture he took from the hill overlooking Tskhinvali, three hours before the war broke out there. A wooden cross, a sunny valley below: “Tskhinvali,” he wrote, “which no longer exists.”

He describes how his friend, also a journalist, traveling unarmed and unmarked, gets out of a truck to find himself staring into the muzzle of a machine gun. Behind it is a female Georgian soldier. “I’m a journalist!” he yells. She lowers the gun and “folds in half,” shot dead. Another colleague, Sasha Sladkov of Vesti, a state-owned news program, is wounded while hiding in a roadside ditch.

Romanoff posts an ode to Grigol Chikhladze, a soft-spoken Georgian photographer who worked for the Russian language edition of Newsweek. Although Romanoff barely knew him, he is pretty shaken up by Chikhladze’s death. (“I knew Gia only casually,” Romanoff wrote, “but you don’t need much time with him to realize that you’re talking to a solid, intelligent and kind person. He was riding with the Georgians, but fell behind and was gunned down by the Ossetians.”)

Steshin also posts the wartime observations of his colleagues. There’s a triumphant sense of camaraderie here as journalistic competition falls away in the hell they’re all witnessing. Via Steshin’s LiveJournal, in a post that was picked up across the Russian blogosphere, Moskovskiy Komsomolets special correspondent Vladimir Sakirko recounts how his friend, journalist Alexander Kots, was wounded:

Someone yelled ‘Incoming! Incoming!’ Two Georgian jets hit the column of troops with a couple of rounds. We fell to the ground. The battle began. One Georgian plane was hit. We decided to stay close to the center of the formation, started moving and ran into the film crew of ‘Vesti’ - Sasha Sladkov and the guys. We thought that, by lunchtime, we’d get to the city with the troops. But that didn’t last long. The shooting was getting worse and worse.

Crawling through the bushes with a few other officers, they come under fire again.

We fell to the ground. On one side, a battalion was repelling an attack; on the other side, firing soldiers. And we lay right in the middle. I raised my eyes towards Sasha, and he’s suddenly so pale. ‘Is everything okay?’ I ask him. ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘D’you get nipped?’ I reached for his hand and saw blood. We had no bandages, nothing. You couldn’t raise your head, bullets spraying from both sides. All we could do was wait.

As the official Russian press trumpets the Kremlin’s line—something to the tune of “March on Tiflis” and “Georgia is America”—the Internet sings a different, more conflicted song. Much has been made of the liberals’ flight to the Web, but it is by no means a liberal haven. Online, one will find as many people cheering for Karadzic as for Obama. What is surprising is that, in the face of the near unanimity of official press coverage, there is a very lively debate going on in the Russian blogosphere. Commenters debate questions that the Kremlin has already answered for them: Who really started this war and what does it mean for Russia’s geopolitical future?

To be sure, there are plenty of people advocating “showing Georgia who’s boss” in a way that resembles sodomy, plenty of people who echo nationalist fears of American meddling, bias, and double standards. But there is also a good number of more introspective commenters who are critical of Russia’s role in the conflict. And for all the bloggers going crazy over Saakashvili’s embarrassing dive on Monday (he was roundly reviled as unmanly on various LiveJournals), mostly everyone is horrified by the images coming out of Georgia and Ossetia, which these young journalists, thrust by fate into war, are readily providing them. Take Steshin’s ghost photograph of Tskhinvali before the war. Though it is a tacit condemnation of the Georgian forces that first attacked Tskhinvali before the Russians arrived to finish the job of leveling it, Steshin is more stunned by the enmity between two cultures that used to adore each other. He arrived in Gori hours before the war because he wanted to hear the Georgian side, and he comes away feeling that they too have lied. “Everyone,” he wrote after his escape, “got what he deserved.” Although his commenters ask, he's unable or unwilling to assign blame. He’s too caught up in the horror.

“When the shooting died down, the troops began to move forward,” Vladimir Sakirko continued on Steshin’s blog. “Nearby, I saw a severely wounded major and I crawled up to him. I look and I see that there’s a wound the size of an eyeball on his forehead. There’s liquid dribbling out of it and you could see the pulsating of his brain. His arms and legs were battered. I rooted around in his bags and found two packets of gauze. I bandaged Sasha as well as I could…”

Sasha survived, but the commentators, usually ready to debate to the death, were shocked: they all wanted to know what happened to the wounded major. These young Russians, who missed the traumas of Chechnya and grew up in a largely prosperous decade of cell phones and iPods and petrodollars, are suddenly faced with a nationalistic war, and, like the generations before them, they are drawn in by its pathos. It’s as if these images hit a cultural switch: the politics dissolve as the drama of war looms large. For all their country’s recent wealth, it is still actively haunted by World War II. Now the press is filled with first-person “I was in the trenches” press accounts, even close-range video interviews with wounded journalists lying on gurneys—the kind of stuff one rarely sees in the West. This fascination with the warrior-journalist is especially notable in Russia, ranked the world’s third-most dangerous country for reporters (after Iraq and Afghanistan), where journalists aren’t encouraged to go poking around in dangerous places. War, however, is sacred, and the Russian blogosphere is singing mournful hosannas. Krig42’s entries, for example, occasionally verge on the melodramatic but his commenters cheer him on for his “objectivity,” “accuracy,” and, most of all, “heroism.”

For his part Krig42—he never acknowledges that he is, in fact, Dmitry Steshin—keeps a stiff, heroic upper lip. Having slogged across the border to Armenia, he writes: “I’ll just rest a bit and head to Tskhinvali.”

According to the new PEJ study of campaign news coverage, "policy debates accounted for about 31% of the campaign newshole studied last week," with, among other subjects, "the debate between the two candidates over energy policy and gas prices" filling 23% of last week's newshole and "differences over the economy (4%), Iraq (2%)."

* Of course, covering "the debate between the two candidates" over policy X or Y often does not equal coverage that helps voters understand the candidates' positions and what they might mean for America (beyond the way the camapaigns tell it). And, yeah, it's possible for a campaign story to not be distinctly policy-focused (about, say, strategy) and still have some substance...

Contrary to what it may seem, many Olympics fans are interested in more than Michael Phelps’s attempt to chase the record for most gold medals won without benefit of a cheesy porn mustache, or prepubescent girls doing tumbling runs. Every four years, hugely dramatic events play out in sports as arcane as weightlifting or Greco-Roman wrestling.

So it’s great news that NBC and its various (jargon alert!) platforms are offering an unprecedented amount of sports coverage—some 3,400 hours in all, according to the network’s Web site, nbcolympics.com, much of that tonnage online.

Unfortunately, that very site, which should be the best stop for deciphering the labyrinthine schedule of events, is not very user-friendly. For my money, the New York Times’s Web site is a far better option. Its Olympic Tracker is everything NBC’s site should be, but isn’t—clean, easy to decipher, and free of the invisible, insidious hand of marketing.

At NBC’s site, before I could check the starting times of today’s basketball games, I was forced to provide both my ZIP code and the name of the cable or satellite system on which I’m watching the Games. As my wince deepened, I was then asked to enter the call letters of my local affiliate here in Atlanta— the one on which I wouldn’t be watching basketball, as it happens, since much of the action is foisted off on one of NBC’s corporate cousins.

Finally—finally—I arrived at the pulldown schedule menus that allow you to hunt by your chosen sport, by date, or by channel. So far, so good. The basketball matchups and times were there, along with where to find them. But interspersed, seemingly at random, were capsule previews of what to find on other channels. In other words, the fact that the USA-Angola game would begin at 8AM EST and be carried only online was bracketed on NBC’s site by items reading “Multiple Sports” and telling me that soccer and tennis and water polo could be seen on USA and MSNBC.

Looking closer, I realized that the various “Mulitple Sports” notifications weren’t randomly placed—they were above and below the USA hoops game because they were on at the same time. In other words, someone looking specifically for the time and channel of the “Redeem Team” game is being asked to watch something else at 8AM.

Not only is this confusing, difficult to decipher, and displeasing to the eye, it would appear that NBC wants you to always be changing channels, looking for something else to watch—a dangerous tactic, given that a viewer bored by a USA blowout might easily get sidetracked by a Law And Order rerun or baseball highlights on SportsCenter and never come back.

Contrast this with the Times’s site (full disclosure—I contribute to the Times sports quarterly Play, but have nothing to do with its Olympic coverage). On a single screen, you can find your sport of choice, go to a specific date, and have the full day’s schedule pop up. It’s cleaner and far more visually appealing than the NBC monstrosity.

The Times version isn’t perfect—for one thing, not being in the business of promoting NBC’s business, it doesn’t list the channel broadcasting or streaming the event. And NBC beats the Times in having the results right there under the game listing, rather than another click away (although following the Times link gives you a full accounting of the action, rather than merely a one-line review).

But those are quibbles. The takeaway is that for all the billions NBC has spent on the Olympics, a humble effort by the Gray Lady offers a superior schedule-surfing experience. Who said that newspapers were dead?

The cover of today's New York Times Science Times section carries two stories, a feature and a column, concerning the ultimate limitation of science: that it can tell us what our options are (or might be) in the face of certain problems, but not which one to exercise. Where the reporter understands full well that she is writing about ethical choices, however, the columnist, seemingly, does not.

Cornelia Dean's lead story, about the ethical dilemmas involved in implementing, and even studying, "geoengineering" strategies to mitigate global warming, is an excellent example of covering the morality angle in science journalism. John Tierney's column calling for the legalization of doping in sports, on the other hand, is an example of a piece that misses a beat. It's not Tierney's position that bothers, but his failure to lay bare the ethical rationale behind his argument in way that would be helpful to readers.

In June, I wrote about how journalists must cover the moral questions revolving around what to do (or not do) about climate change. Science journalists are responsible for explaining how science informs the decision-making process, but also for delineating where objective reasoning ends and subjective answers begin.

Dean's feature fulfills this charge. Rather than going through the technical aspects of geoengineering strategies like launching sun-reflecting mirrors into space, her article focuses on the ethical implications of such technologies:

Ethical and philosophical issues have long occupied biotechnology, where institutional review boards commonly rule on proposed experiments and advisory committees must approve the use of gene-splicing and related techniques…

But such questions are relatively new for scientists and engineers in other fields. Some are calling for the same kinds of discussion that microbiologists organized in 1975 when the immense power of emerging knowledge of gene-splicing or recombinant DNA began to dawn on them.

As Dean observes, every geoengineering scheme so far envisioned "would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo." The real question, then, involves the levels and types of risk are we willing to assume given different sets of circumstances and degrees of scientific uncertainty. Journalists need to explain and account for those variables in a variety of scenarios. Given a 50 percent chance of a one-foot rise in sea level by 2099, for example, is the public willing to take a 50 percent chance of precipitating an uncontrollable algal bloom in the oceans by fertilizing them with iron?

Actually, and fortunately, we haven't come to the point where the public, or journalists, must really turn to such endgame questions. One of the most interesting points that Dean makes in her column is that scientists are still grappling with the ramifications of even broaching certain studies:

…[R]esearchers working in geoengineering say the worry that if people realize there are possible technical fixes for global warming, they will feel less urgency about reducing greenhouse gas emissions… On the other hand, some climate scientists argue that if people realized such drastic measures were on the horizon, they would be frightened enough to reduce their collective carbon footprint. Still others say that, given the threat global warming poses to the planet, it would be unethical not embark on the work needed to engineer possible remedies…

Unfortunately, none of this ethical nuance can be found in Tierney's column advocating the legalization of performance-enhancing drugs and other treatments in sports. Again, it is not the position that he takes that casts a shadow on his work. One year ago, during the Tour de France, I wrote a column about what one longtime sports writer called the "shockingly fashionable" opinion among journalists that athletic authorities should at least consider legalizing doping. The problem with Tierney's piece, rather, is that he does a disservice to readers by not explaining how he cleared the ethical hurdles that have, historically, buttressed anti-doping arguments.

Tierney begins by quoting an editorial in the current issue of the journal Nature, which argues that poorly calibrated doping tests have damaged athletics with false results and created "a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear." This, and a Science News article about some trainers' quests to always stay ahead of current detection systems, leads Tierney to conclude:

So what we have now is not a level playing field. The system punishes some innocent athletes and rewards others with the savvy and connections not to get caught. The more that the authorities crack down on known forms of enhancement, the more incentive athletes have to experiment with new ones - and to get their advice from black-market dealers instead of doctors.

Granted, there is an ethical strand to Tierney's argument here, and he later quotes a doctor of sports medicine and two bioethicists' opinions that legalized doping would "encourage more sensible informed use of drugs in amateur sport…" But as every good columnist knows, part of mounting an effective argument involves a rebuttal of contrary opinion. Here, Tierney's work is lacking. He quotes an article in the British Medical Journal, endorsed by thirty other scholars, which criticizes healthcare professionals for inflating the dangers of drugs like anabolic steroids based "on scant evidence tainted by a misguided moralistic motivation to protect sport."

What are these misguided moralistic motivations? Tierney doesn’t elaborate, but the BMJ does:

Four reasons are conventionally advanced in favour of anti-doping: the need to ensure a "level playing field," the need to protect the health of athletes; the need to preserve the integrity of sport; and the need to set a good example. All four assumptions have at their core a need for moral certainty, and all four are flawed.

The article then goes on to explain, in detail, why the authors think each of the four arguments is flawed, an act of cost-benefit analysis that would have improved Tierney's column immensely. From him, readers get only the much-too-simplified rationale that performance enhancement should be less taboo because "The fans, after all, include people with laser-corrected eyes, chemically whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies." He also throws in the idea that legalized doping could "point the way for lesser mortals to coax more out of the their bodies." By "lesser mortals," he seems to mean the elderly and the injured. Ignoring the callous turn of phrase for a moment, one might ask why he thinks it is ethically justified (or even necessary) to permit sports doping in order to achieve medical progress.

Tierney's failure to fully explain the ethical underpinnings of his anti-anti-doping argument is not his only problem, however. His proposed solution to the current system also falls flat. Both the Nature and the BMJ report cited by Tierney stop short of supporting the legalization of performance enhancement, though Nature suggested as much a year ago. Instead, they discuss the need for a massive overhaul of anti-doping policies and procedures, offering suggestions about how they might become more effective and fair. Tierney's plan:

I'd like to see what would happen of someone started a new anthing-goes competition for athletes over 25. If you have any ideas for how to run it or what to call it — Max Match? UltraSports? Mutant Games? — submit them at nytimes.com/tierneylab.

Mutant Games might be a stretch, but who knows, Tierney could be right. Again, though, he fails to outline the ethical questions behind his argument that might better inform readers. If the system is broken, why does he favor abandoning it, rather than fixing it? Or if we keep the current system, but institute a parallel one that allows doping, how does that address the four moral qualms outlined in the BMJ report?

Much like geoengineering, people will come to very different conclusions about the cost versus the benefit of sports doping based on the same set of scientific facts and uncertainties. Where Dean clearly indicates the boundaries where science must give way to ethical decisions, however, Tierney does not, and therefore fails to make his case.

If you're a "former close friend to [John] Edwards’ mistress" with something[s] to say about The Edwards Story, TV news wants you!

Pigeon O'Brien, whom a Fox News chyron this afternoon ID'd as "[Rielle] Hunter's FMR Friend" (FMR=Former), wants the world to know that "Edwards lied on timing of affair." O'Brien told Fox News' Shep Smith that Rielle Hunter (her FMR BFF) told her (back in 2006, when she and Hunter were still in touch) that her relationship with John Edwards began several months before Edwards is saying that it did.

How can viewers know whether to believe Pigeon O'Brien? Even if Fox News's Shep Smith really tried to pin her down ("You own a PR firm, is that right? Anytime someone comes on here to trash somebody, I try to figure out what their motivation is. What is your motivation?" and "Are you enjoying this process? TV stations and TV stations?"), how can viewers really know whether to trust her?

Smith got her to swear on her mother's life on-air that her claim is true.

SMITH: You were talking before the segment began about how much you love your mother. If your mother's life were on the line, could you be 100 percent sure that she was dating John Edwards [early in 2006]?

O'BRIEN: Oh, 100 percent sure...

SMITH: ...If your mother's life were on the line...

O'BRIEN: Yes. And I love my mother...

(Every reporter knows what to do when your mother says she loves you -- you check it out -- but what do we do when someone says they love their mother?) Also? Pigeon thinks John is the father of Rielle's baby because "Rielle would never have a baby with someone she wasn't in love with."

Which is exactly what Pigeon O'Brien told CBS News's Maggie Rodriguez during her turn on The Early Show this morning.

RODRIGUEZ: Do you think that John Edwards is the father of her daughter?

O'BRIEN: I do.

RODRIGUEZ: Why?

O'BRIEN: I don't see any other explanation. She would not have a child with someone that she didn't love, and she loves him.

O'Brien also shared with Rodriguez her claim that Edwards's affair began earlier than he says it did. Next time, Rodriguez, get her to pinkyswear it.

We were pleased to see that the Society of Professional Journalists has given an ethics award to Glen Mabie, the former news director at WEAU TV-13 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Last January, Mabie resigned in protest after the station agreed to run medical stories suggested by Sacred Heart Hospital, featuring employees and services the hospital wanted to promote. The partnership also meant that the station could not talk to any rival hospitals in the area. So much for getting all points of view! Mabie quit, saying that his conscience would not allow him to defend the deal to his employees. The TV station later canceled the arrangement with the hospital.

It takes balls to do what Mabie did, and he has become something of a cause celebre in journalistic circles. The deal that WEAU struck with Sacred Heart is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Similar arrangements exist all over the country, and the public is unaware that the five o’clock news story on the latest imaging device used on patients at a local hospital—perhaps reported by the TV anchor—is really an ad in disguise.

We at CJR know a lot about “news” that crosses the line into advertising and misleads viewers and readers. We reported on the practice in the magazine’s March/April 2007 issue. Our investigation showed that, although these deals vary, they are usually the “product of a marriage of the hospitals’ desperate need to compete for lucrative lines of business in our current health system and of TV’s hunger for cheap and easy stories.” Last March, a new variety surfaced in Maryland when The Capital, a 47,000 circulation daily paper in Annapolis, sold its weekly health page to the Anne Arundel Medical Center, relinquishing all control of stories, pictures, layout, the works. The paper did run a disclaimer, and, in a column, the publisher said the paper was “experimenting with a new concept that could alarm some readers.” Some were so alarmed the day the hospital page debuted that the paper scotched the agreement.

What to do about all this? The Association of Health Care Journalists and SPJ have issued a joint statement urging local broadcast stations and newspapers to avoid arrangements that improperly influence health coverage. The statement said that, even if such deals are disclosed to the readers and viewers, handing over editorial decision-making to hospitals violates the principles of ethical journalism and betrays the public trust. “Content produced by hospitals does not fulfill the duty of news organizations to provide the public with independent medical reporting,” the organizations said. (Full disclosure here: I am president of the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists.)

The statement is not only a plea to news outlets to stop doing phony journalism, but also an invitation for reporters to start exploring these deals in their own backyards. Steph Gregor, a reporter at The Other Paper in Columbus, Ohio, found some unsavory deals at Ohio State University Medical Center,which was paying local TV stations $100,000 or more to air “medical breakthrough” segments that, of course, benefited the hospital. One station vice president maintained that the segments were not ads but “vignettes,” and that he did not see anything wrong with them, ethically speaking.

But aside from the ethics, there’s a lot wrong with them. They mirror the crazy health payment structure that directs gobs of money toward high tech, expensive procedures. Hospitals compete for that kind of lucrative, high end business, and an easy way to do it is to make deals with TV stations willing to discard the ethics of good journalism. For journalists, there’s plenty to look at here, as candidates talk more about the marketplace reforms in the coming months. The take-away for journalists: The next time you hear some candidate for high office push the principles of the marketplace, think about competition in the hospital business and what it really means for the public. Has any of this competition lowered hospital bills? Has it better informed patients about x or y treatments—especially when a news outlet is barred from bringing in other points of view? Who has it really served? Those should be questions enough to get some serious reporting started on this topic.

Before fighting was halted today, media coverage of the Russian-Georgian conflict had been awash with memories of the West's tepid defense of Eastern European freedom: 1938 Czechoslovakia, 1956 Hungary, the Czechs again in 1968, and even Georgia itself in 1924. Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has compared his country's plight to
that of the marginalized victims in several of the above conflicts. He has also claimed that Georgia could be the world's last hope for Balkan democracy: “If Georgia fails, it will send a message to everyone that this path doesn’t work,” Saakashvili told The New York Times's James Traub. ("Georgians are a melodramatic people, and few more so than their hyperactive president," Traub noted.)

But Western media commentators have been more than ready to invoke the memory of bygone non-interventions. “Is that ‘appeasement’ we see sidling shyly out of the closet of history? Are we doomed to recall the infamous remark by a Western leader that it was ‘fantastic’ to think Europe should involve itself in ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing?’” asked Newsweek’s John Barry.

The New York Times's Bill Kristol joined in: "Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?"

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr scolded yesterday, "Marching through Georgia, the Russian army is providing the latest example in history of the failure of great powers to support little countries when the chips are down."

"It is impossible to view the Russian onslaught against Georgia without these bloodstained memories rising to mind," wrote Newsweek's Barry. It's also an easy way to frame a conflict that Westerners know little about. But is it really accurate to assign moral equivalence to the suppression of anti-Soviet independence movements, the ruthless conquests of Adolf Hitler's armies, and Russia's aggressive intervention in a Georgian separatist struggle?

In the Guardian a few days ago, historian Mark Almond wrote: "Anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects." And, writing recently in the Christian Science Monitor, Georgetown professor Charles King argued that, in assigning Russian culpability, the media narrative has been all too predictable:

Now, the story goes, Russia has at last found a way of undermining Georgia's Western aspirations, nipping the country's budding democracy, and countering American influence across Eurasia. But this view of events is simplistic. American and European diplomats, who have rushed to the region to try to stop the conflict, would do well to consider the broader effects of this latest round of Caucasus bloodletting - and to seek perspectives on the conflict beyond the story of embattled democracy and cynical comparisons with the Prague Spring of 1968....The war began as an ill-considered move by Georgia to retake South Ossetia by force. Saakashvili's larger goal was to lead his country into war as a form of calculated self-sacrifice, hoping that Russia's predictable overreaction would convince the West of exactly the narrative that many commentators have now taken up.

While the Georgian government has been quick to present itself as another victim in the struggle between malevolent superpowers and feeble, freedom-loving countries, Western media commentators would be wise not to rush to such an easy verdict. Despite the Prague-Hungary comparisons, the Russian-Georgian conflict is not another Cold War conflict. This time, a compelling liberation narrative is coming from the opposite side of the Iron Curtain. Ossetian and Abchazian public opinion clearly favors Russia, which has left many Russian commentators asking why the West does not deem those provinces worthy of popular sovereignty.

Unlike Georgian soldiers who have been repeatedly left stranded on the battlefield, asking "Where are our friends?" Ossetians are receiving all the military assistance they expected from their more powerful allies. By and large, Russia's invasion into Georgia has been encouraged by the heavily censored Russian press. In the West, we have the luxury of using the media to debate military and political decisions. Crude historical associations not only obscure this debate, they may also force us to come to the wrong conclusions.

Today’s Los Angeles Times gives front page play to Peter Wallsten’s story about how the slumping economy may drive residents of some traditionally Republican exurbs to vote Democratic this year:

"This is the first election I ever actually looked at someone else other than the Republican candidate," said Rodriguez, 33, who is studying to be a teacher and is a fixture at the lawn chair hobnob here on Greely Court, a quiet cul-de-sac in a Pasco County subdivision called Wrencrest.

"I've had enough with the Republican economics," she added, as her husband, Danny, who had just driven from his banking job in Tampa, piped in: "No more Bush."

It’s good reporting by Wallsten on a nonetheless tired subject. While there is certainly something to be said about the anomie of the exurbs, people have been writing this story for years. Including Wallsten: he wrote a version of this story in September of 2007, focusing on independent voters instead of Republicans:

On a recent Wednesday evening, after a prayer service devoted to a Bible verse about respecting the authority of God and government, the Waterses said they had lost their enthusiasm for the current authority figures in Washington, and said they were worried about next year's election.

"I'm still a Republican, but I'm very close to being an independent," said Phil Waters. "I'm closer to the middle than I used to be because of the way the Republicans have screwed things up."

OK, we get it: many Americans are angry, and unsure how they will vote. Give me more. How are the campaigns planning to capture these shifting demographics? How seriously are they taking this grass roots disillusionment? The LAT notes that today’s article is the first of an occasional series. Hopefully future entries will move the exurban question beyond the stale “demographic shift” framing.

John McCain is this much closer to checking off that must-have presidential photo-op: Candidate in Camo (doing something mannishly outdoorsy).

The Patriot-Ledger reports that John McCain visited the Bass Pro stores in Harrisburg, PA yesterday and:

[B]efore leaving McCain bought a fishing scale and a green, camouflaged jacket. "Now all I need to do is catch a fish," McCain joked while leaving the store.

And be caught catching a fish while wearing...camo? Who knew? (Clearly I'm not a hook and bullet swing voter).

The same Patriot-News reporter, Chris Courogen, reports on his ride on the Straight Talk Express:

Sen. John McCain calls his campaign bus the Straight Talk Express.

In a conversation Monday with four reporters who hitched a ride downtown from Harrisburg International Airport, McCain made sure the bus lived up to its name.

In the 20-minute ride to the Hilton Harrisburg, McCain touched on issues such as the criteria for picking a running mate, the economy, national security and the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

So there was Talk, at least, and twenty minutes of it. Maybe this was the "Straight" stuff?

McCain: "The vice president has two duties. One is in case of a tie vote in the U.S. Senate, the vice president comes and casts the tie-breaking vote. The other duty is to inquire daily as to the health of the president. That will be a pretty big responsibility as we all know, given my situation."

UPDATE: The Morning Call's John Micek was another of the four reporters "to snag" a ride on McCain's bus yesterday and he offers a "partial transcript." There was a question about "the large number of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen ...getting ready to go to Iraq" and "a large number serving in Iraq and Afghanistan" and whether that leaves "the state vulnerable [in case of an emergency]?" And, there was this:

Q: In your weekly radio address, you compared Sen. Obama to a summer blockbuster where you realize you'd seen all the best bits in the trailer. So does that make you the slow-burn favorite who's building Oscar buzz?

So these disembodied feet have been sporadically washing ashore in British Columbia and Washington state for a few years now, and the story hasn't gained much traction in the mainstream media—not even on cable, which exists precisely to cover weird stories like this. Cheers to MSNBC and Tamron Hall, then, for addressing the mystery in a three-minute segment a few days back. I'm not going to say that MSNBC nailed it, but they did a decent job reporting a story that, as Hall said at the top of the segment, "might be one of the strangest and perhaps one of the most disturbing things you've ever heard":

Tamron Hall: Ron, is-is this a... could I assume that-that it's a murder investigation, or... suspicion of one, and that... these are feet?

Undersheriff Ron Peregrin: Well, that's an interesting question. We're not looking... you always, of course, investigate for the worst case scenario.... They appear, at least, to have separated naturally from the body. So it's very possible that these are remains of fishermen who have died, their vessels sank; we have at least one float plane in Canada that went down, all hands lost, no one recovered.

Tamron Hall: [anguished exhalation of breath]

I agree with Tamron Hall, insofar as it's surprising that authorities are trying to pass this off as natural decomposition instead of the work of some hideous foot-severing monster. There's a story here; let's hope that MSNBC and other outlets keep kicking it around.

The Associated Press sent two different reporters to examine from two different angles the presidential candidates' offices and tell us To What Conclusions We Might Jump Based On Their Work Spaces.

The AP's Nancy Benac would have us believe that "by their offices ye shall know them," reporting that McCain's work place has "an abundance of tchotchkes and bric-a-brac" while Obama's has "precisely placed objects, sparsely adorned surfaces" (which, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that one has been in his office for a lot longer than the other and everything to do with Obama's "discipline" and McCain's...."haphazard abundance?")

We've heard from graphologists on the candidates' cursive. Their body language has been read. It's August: bring on the Feng Shui expert!

The AP's Julie Pace reports:

With a few simple changes in their Senate offices, both presidential candidates could improve their health, relationships and maybe even get a few more votes, says Taylor Vance, a Feng Shui consultant.

Specifically, McCain should "unbarricade" a set of double-doors in his office, as "doors are where energy enters and opportunities flow in." Obama "could enhance his office leadership by moving his desk so it doesn't have a door behind it."

I can think of a way the AP "could enhance" its campaign coverage...

Dart to the television news industry, for a shameful nonresponse to serious questions about their vetting of analysts hired to comment on the invasion of Iraq and other military matters.

On April 20, The New York Times published David Barstow’s eye-opening investigation into a Defense Department program designed to influence the influencers. In 2002-2003, as the Bush administration made its case against Iraq, the Pentagon rounded up more than seventy-five retired military officials who were already on retainer with various broadcast media outlets to provide military commentary and analysis. Internally, Pentagon staff officials referred to the analysts as “surrogates” and “message-force multipliers,” and provided them with briefings, talking points, and gratis tours of Iraq and Guantánamo. The analysts got special access to senior officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

That access seems key: Barstow reported that a majority of analysts participating in the program had ties to defense contractors, who could presumably benefit from rubbing shoulders up top. One general admitted to Barstow that, desperate to preserve his Pentagon perks, he had trimmed his public criticism. Others said they worried the Pentagon would show them the door if they strayed too far from the administration line; indeed, Barstow describes one case where an analyst was booted from the group after being too harsh on air.

The piece was built on the back of a laudable two-year, Freedom of Information Act battle. The Times and its counsel dragged out thousands of pages of Pentagon transcripts, e-mails, and memos describing the program, but only after months of delays and circular excuses. As public editor Clark Hoyt wrote in a column describing the struggle, full cooperation came only after the paper persisted and a judge threatened to bring Pentagon officials into his court to explain “why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.”

Barstow’s eight-thousand-word investigation suggests that some news operations did not (or did not care to) adequately vet their analysts, disclose links to defense contractors, or ask tough questions about the secret briefing program. While his case against the networks was somewhat circumstantial, as The Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar pointed out, it still presented, at the very least, significant questions about the appearance of conflicts of interest. And it called for a serious, open response, and, where appropriate, explanations and apologies to viewers.

Yet not one of the nightly commercial newscasts mentioned the story or offered an on-air explanation to its viewers. Reliable Sources, CNN’s Sunday morning media show, hosted a late-breaking panel the morning Barstow’s article appeared. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann briefly mentioned it. Elsewhere, the silence has been conspicuous.

Given the lack of cooperation some of the news operations gave Barstow in reporting his piece, the weak-kneed response is hardly surprising. Fox News, whose analysts made up the biggest chunk of the Pentagon program, tersely refused to participate in the Times story, and failed to return CJR’s calls seeking comment. CBS also turned down Barstow’s request to comment on its vetting procedures, and failed to respond to CJR’s oral and written requests for comment. NBCand MSNBC jointly rebuffed an interview request, providing instead a statement attacking the Times piece and insisting that they had full confidence in their analysts despite any “personal commitments—past and present.”

ABC and CNN participated in Barstow’s story, and also agreed to speak with CJR. “I’m sure there will be some instance where I might feel differently, but I work at a news organization. We ask questions for a living. I feel it is incumbent upon us to answer questions when they are asked,” said ABC spokesman Jeff Schneider, the only network employee to be quoted in Barstow’s piece. (However, he declined to say whether ABC had done a comprehensive review of its past consultants in the wake of Barstow’s piece.) CNN’s Christa Robinson told CJR that in the wake of the story, the network reviewed the financial disclosures required of its current consultants.

Laurel to National Public Radio, whose actions in the wake of the Times report demonstrate a model of accountability. “I remember seeing that story and saying, ‘I’d better read deep into the jump on this one,’ ” says Brian Duffy, managing editor of NPR News. Shortly after Barstow’s article ran, NPR managers met to review the operation’s vetting, consultant, and disclosure policies, and within two days, issued new guidelines that encourage bookers and reporters to make use of in-house library staff when researching guests, and that require tighter financial disclosure contracts from paid consultants. Alicia Shepard, NPR’s ombudsman, investigated and wrote about the analysts and the new policies on her blog. She suggested, among other things, that NPR attach a disclosure to archived appearances by a defense contractor who took part in the Pentagon program while serving as a paid NPR analyst—a suggestion NPR says it plans to enact. The issue was covered on no fewer than three NPR programs, including a full hour on Talk of the Nation, where Duffy himself took questions from the show’s host.

That was quite a different tack from the hunker-down-until-the-storm-blows-over strategy deployed elsewhere, an approach that seems breathtakingly cynical and short-sighted in light of all we now know about how the Iraq war was sold.

Obama Vacation News from the (Honolulu) Star Bulletin:

Unlike previous days when [Barack Obama] spent a lot of time outdoors, he spent almost all of his time indoors yesterday.

The newspaper is also asking readers "lucky enough to get a photo or video of Sen. Barack Obama while he is out and about during his vacation" to "share it with our newspaper and online readers."

UPDATE: The Honolulu Advertiser runs a column urging Obama while in Hawaii to:

[T]ake a ride out to the Leeward side. Talk to folks living five families and four generations in one house because that's the only way to make sure no one ends up homeless. Look at the camps on the beach, children being raised under tarps...

[P]lease go beyond the tourist stuff. Please see what has changed in your hometown. You are running on a message of change, but there are people here who are hurting for all the change that has happened just since you've been gone.

On Sunday, New York Times columnist and centrist Democrat luminary Tom Friedman waxed poetic about all the wonderful energy-related things they do in Europe. Why ever can't we do that stuff here? He wrote about motion-sensitive lights that turn on and off by themselves and toilets that have two different flush powers! Scandinavia is so energy efficient, isn't it grand?

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

I'm sure the light bulbs are all very nice, but this sort of praise is along the lines of a report by a third grader about energy consumption. Saving energy is good. So sad we aren't doing more of it. Gold star, Tommy.

But Tom Friedman is an adult and should look at this issue more critically. Friedman's article addressed few substantive differences between Scandinavia and the U.S. His "Denmark-did-it, why-can't-we?" take on energy policy is asinine. As if energy independence is just a matter of style and willpower.

There are, in fact, a number of significant structural differences at work between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States of America. One of these differences has to do with land development, about which one might expect Tom Friedman to know a little more.

Friedman, after all, is married to Ann Bucksbaum, the heiress to the $2.7 billion General Growth Properties fortune. Founded by Friedman's father-in-law in 1954, GGP is America's second largest real estate investment trust and owns, develops, and operates regional shopping malls in forty-one states.

That's right, malls. Fat, energy-hogging, climate controlled, sprawl-inducing—many of the most palpable examples of American waste and ecological irresponsibility are owned and managed by Tom Friedman's family.

This makes all this gee-why-don't-you-write-your-congressman naiveté a little hard to take. Friedman actually has direct access to a company with some control over the level of waste the United States perpetuates on the world.

But I guess for some people the world really is flat; and the Starbucks is just next to the Nordstrom.

Bill Schneider, a CNN political analyst, confessed just now during a report previewing the Democratic National Convention:

There will be more than 10,000 reporters at the convention and very little real news.

But plenty of news of the contrived or press release-generated variety! How many reporters is CNN sending? (We're sending two --hoping, of course, to find "news" among those 10,000 reporters with nothing "real" to report).

A (non-comprehensive) look at what a few news outlets said about the Edwards affair, before and after Friday’s confession:

The Drudge Report’s straightforward headline on July 22 linking to the National Enquirer read: "NATIONAL ENQUIRER CATCHES JOHN EDWARDS AT BEVERLY HILTON… DEVELOPING.”

TalkLeft, also on July 22, speculated on whether or not “the story becomes national news” and wrote:

According to the National Enquirer, last night he was in Los Angeles where he ran into some sleazoid reporters. I hope the story isn't true, but it's beginning to make the rounds. Curious that the reporters included no photos or video footage. What are they saving it for? Or doesn't it exist?

The same day, LAist linked to the Enquirer article, reminding readers of “last year’s ‘love child’ scandal (aided by Huffington Post) that eventually died down.” Gawker, meanwhile, glowed with pride at the Enquirer’s efforts:

This is a brilliant piece of old-fashioned scandal-mongering from The Enquirer, as it apparently involved months of reporting work and it ended in a perfect, inescapable gotcha moment. It's actually surreal!

It also waxed ruminative in a different post the same day: “But there's no reason the paper should have had the scandal all to itself. Isn't this the sort of thing traditional newspaper tabs like the Post used to cover?”

The telling headline of a Los Angeles Times blog posting on July 23 read: “National Enquirer alleges John Edwards affair; blogosphere readies salt shaker.” Though the LAT’s blog chief had put a moratorium on writing about the Enquirer article until further notice, the post went up anyway:

The National Enquirer yesterday published a story claiming it had caught John Edwards meeting with an alleged mistress and illegitimate child. Then again, the Enquirer hasn't been able to produce quotes, photos or even eyewitness accounts. And the mainstream media seems to be ignoring it, for the most part.

Gawker took a dig at the MSM on Aug. 6, guessing that it would only start to cover the affair because Denver was looming nearer:

But now it's about how a speaker at a meaningless convention might distract the media from covering the media event in the way media handlers prefer. In other words, a REAL story.

Slate’s Mickey Kaus commented on Aug. 7: “Does it matter if the NY Times, Time and NBC News don't report it if mid-level metropolitan papers and bloggers do?” And the same day, the New York Daily News wrote: “The Enquirer story, though uncorroborated by others, has been seen by millions on political blogs and is joke fodder for Jay Leno.”

The National Review’s Byron York talked to reporters at various major news organizations (off the record), and before the Edwards confession on Friday afternoon, he wrote, somewhat contrary to public opinion:

Instead, some big-time journalists seem to believe the Enquirer has nailed the story, and they are waiting for the tabloid to release the full results of its reporting. In the meantime, they are staying away from the story because it appeared in the Enquirer. In other words, they’re waiting for the Enquirer to fully report a story that they wouldn’t otherwise report… because it’s in the Enquirer.

Once Edwards confessed, here’s TalkLeft, the same afternoon:

Kind of gutsy for him to launch a presidential bid knowing this was in his background. Was he thinking if Rudy Giuliani could get away with it, so could he? He had to know it would be discovered. And when it was reported in the media in 2007, why did he deny it?

Here’s the Daily News after the confession:

John Edwards, a onetime Democratic golden boy, confessed Friday he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife, then lied to cover up his infidelity while running for President.

His bombshell declaration put his political future into cardiac arrest. Even former admirers lined up to throw him under the bus.

Politico stayed quiet until Edwards came forward. Its post on Aug. 10 (with attention-drawing m-dashes), called his formal statement “remarkable”:

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who cast himself as the most electable of Democratic presidential hopefuls, admitted Friday that he held — and lied about — a secret that could have destroyed his campaign and his party’s hopes for the White House.

The Huffington Post, which was partially responsible for the Enquirer story last year that first reported the affair, stayed mum until the confession, at which point it cited the ABC interview and quickly found its own stone to throw:

Asked by correspondent Bob Woodruff to detail the beginnings of his romantic relationship, [Edwards] said that it started after Hunter was hired to direct a series of documentary films for his One America Committee…A review of political action committee payments, contemporaneous reporting, and emails obtained by the Huffington Post reveal this statement to be false…In the context of admitting to an affair, it may seem innocent for Edwards to have misled ABC about the starting point. But the precise date is important.

Among the other news outlets taking issue with the details of the confession is Slate, where Kaus writes today: “If Edwards is really certain he isn't the father of the kid, wouldn't he have demanded a paternity test to clear his name?” USA Today takes a slice of the same pie with an editorial that tosses some advice at Edwards: “The decent option is to tell the public the whole truth, without lawyerly equivocations.”

A lot of people seem to be loosing their minds lately, or at least their grips on their dictionaries.

“Loosing teeth, but keeping faith” read one headline. It’s possible the editor meant “loosening.” But what about all the articles that talk about people who are “loosing weight” or “loosing faith”? In the past year, Nexis shows more than 400 loose usages from news sources alone. If you add in all the hits from blogs, language is suffering a loss.

Of course the verb for “suffering a loss” is “losing,” pronounced with a double “o” sound and a hard “s,” and rhyming with “oozing.” “Loosing” is also pronounced with a double “o” sound, but with a soft “s,” and rhymes with “goosing.” It’s a transitive verb meaning “to make loose.”

Is this just a typo, or is language evolving around us? You can argue either way, but a typo is an obvious error, and would be recognized as such when pointed out. The frequent misappearance of “loosing” in otherwise literate writing is an indication that people don’t know it could be wrong. What’s happening to “losing” is similar to what’s happening with “it’s” when “its” is meant. People have forgotten, or never knew, some subtle distinctions of spelling.

English is not a fully logical language when it comes to the relationship of spelling and pronunciation—try explaining to a non-native speaker why “rouge” is pronounced “roozh” but “gouge” is pronounced “gowj.” But everyone knows that a double “o” sound is spelled with, well, a double “o.” Except when it’s not, as in the case of “losing.”

At least people are consistently unlearning the spelling of the root word: “Loose” is showing up a lot in place of “lose.” (In fact, when I dictate the word “lose” to my computer, it usually spells it “loose.”) Try this memory device: You want to “lose” ten pounds so that your pants will be “loose.”

Time's TV blogger James Poniewozik spends "more time to come to fewer conclusions than any blog post I have ever done" in order to outline "bad reasons to cover the [Edwards] story" and "bad reasons not to cover the [Edwards] story," which he describes as his sort of (inconclusive) personal decision tree on how to handle the Edwards story.

We'll be wading more into some of this (hopefully) later today on Campaign Desk.

Gene Marcial, the longtime writer of BusinessWeek’s “Inside Wall Street” column, is a business-press institution.

For more than two decades, week after week, Marcial has provided readers with a weekly diet of stock tips, invariably “buy” recommendations, delivered in a chatty, pun-filled style (Tootsie Roll Industries, he wrote last month, was a “takeover temptation”).

Gene Marcial

The stories almost always quote at least one Wall Street analyst, along with a peculiar disclaimer:

Unless otherwise noted, neither the sources in Inside Wall Street nor their firms hold positions in the stocks under discussion. Similarly, they have no investment banking relationship or other financial relationship with them.

BusinessWeek’s disclaimer is unusual in U.S. business journalism. Trouble is, in many cases, it's also untrue.

Marcial’s sources do have “investment banking or other financial relationships”—all sorts of them—with the “stocks under discussion” or, if they don’t now, they are pursuing one, according to reports issued by the analyst firms themselves and Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures by the companies under discussion.

In March, for instance, Marcial wrote about comScor, a Reston, Va., technology company—”Tech Biggies Rely on comScore," the headline says— writing:

Scott Wieler, CEO of Signal Hill Capital Group, says ComScore's core market is still underpenetrated, and he adds that ComScore is the way to play the Internet and its growth.

And:

Jeetil Patel of Deutsche Bank also rates comScore, now trading at 10.45, a buy, with a stock price target of 35.

But both Signal Hill and Deutsche Bank served as underwriters for comScore, according to a comScore prospectus, filed with the SEC on November 11.

Wieler didn’t return a telephone call. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman noted that the bank made the required disclosure in the report that Marcial cited.

Marcial says he made a mistake.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, “I missed that one.”

That one, and others, too.

In a piece last Nov. 12, headlined “Cheerful at Clinical Data,” Marcial says the Newton, Massachusetts, drugmaker is a takeover candidate, notes that its founder, Randal Kirk, has profitably sold previous companies he started, and quotes an analyst:

"Some expect Kirk will end up selling Clinical," says Chystyna Bedrij of Griffin Securities, who rates it a buy, with a target of forty.

Clinical Data had paid Griffin Securities, a New York based brokerage and investment bank, for “financial consulting and strategic advisory services,” according to a Griffin research report on the company dated December 21, 2007, which added that it was going for more:

“Griffin Securities has received compensation from Clinical Data in the past 12 months for such services. Griffin Securities expects to receive, or intends to seek, compensation for investment banking services from the Company in the next three months.”

Bedrij didn’t return a phone call

Says Marcial: “Oh, I see. I missed that one, too. Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, there are a lot of them. An Audit check of the past year’s Marcial articles found more than a dozen instances in which sources whom BusinessWeek says are conflict-free actually do have financial relationships or say they intend to seek them.

In a May 26 column on Bidz.com, a Culver City, Calif., online auction company, Marcial cites Elizabeth Pierce of New York’s Roth Capital Partners: "She sees the company continuing to deliver strong results.”

In an interview, Pierce notes that Roth disclosed in a report on May 7, three weeks before the article, that it makes a market (buys and sells shares for third parties) in Bidz shares and “expects to receive or intends to seek compensation” for investment-banking or other services.

“It’s in our disclosure,” she says. “Whether he picks up on it or not….”

Marcial chalks it up to “human error.” “I really appreciate your telling me that,” he says. “In most cases it probably skips my mind.”

The issue of financial journalists quoting stock analysts has always been problematic. Eliot Spitzer’s high-profile investigation and settlement in 2002 exposed that even research of large brand-name companies by the biggest Wall Street firms was riven with conflicts of interest. Analysts paid indirectly by the firms they were rating frequently put “buy” recommendations on companies they privately derided, and which often crashed. Quoting analysts is even trickier when the discussion turns to small-company stocks, an investment area that is often a magnet for touts, hustlers, and frauds.

The Spitzer settlement separated research from investment banking, undercutting Wall Street research's business model and sending the entire enterprise into decline. Meanwhile, Wall Street firms have tightened their disclosure, and reporters have cut back on quoting analysts altogether.

Marcial, though, is something of a special case because he relies heavily on analysts and is unusually influential in the small stock arena. A mention by Marcial often sends thinly traded small stocks bouncing up, only to settle back, a predictable volatility that creates an opportunity for mischief. Over the years unscrupulous traders have been caught trying to use Marcial's columns to cheat. In 1988, traders paid off a worker at the plant worker where BusinessWeek was printed to get an early look at Marcia’s column; in 1999, traders paid off an employee of newsstand operator Hudson News Co. for advance copies of the magazine. A similar thing happened again three years ago, as recounted in this Fortune article.

None of those incidents have anything to do with analysts' conflicts. Still, Marcial says the disclaimer was added even before the Spitzer settlement, mainly because his picks are so closely scrutinized because of the unrelated wrongdoing.

He says that in recent years new online chores have added to his workload, causing him to make mistakes. Besides the weekly column, which includes one longer item and two recommendations of shorter length, he also posts two online items a week.

“I’m alone in all of this,” he says.

Also the items are short, he says, leaving little space.

I got screwed up. It’s so easy to mention it but costs me a line or two. You see how small my space is. My space is so small. Of course it’s not deliberate…The problem here is that because of deadlines, I miss things; I have to admit. There are things that I miss.

“I’m sorry I missed those,” he adds. “Thanks for telling me.”

Reporting in Texas on that state's March primary, CNN's Ali Velshi was on horseback in a ten gallon hat (authentic Texas props=authentic Texas coverage).

So here, CNN, is what you'll want to wear to cover the Democrats' convention in Denver: the Rockmount Ranch Wear shirt. To put it in proper perspective for Big Name Reporters (per the AP, per the shirt company's president): "New York has Barneys and Denver has Rockmount."










AP Photo/Ed Andrieski

I suppose these types of stories can be written just as well from outside the Beltway (way, way out), writing themselves as they do. The Associated Press's Nedra Pickler phones it in from Hawaii (where she and other campaign reporters have followed the R&R-seeking Barack Obama):

"Flip-flopper" is so 2004...

But the harshest cut-down in politics these days apparently is "celebrity" and in a television ad out Monday, Democrat Barack Obama is trying to pin the label on GOP presidential rival John McCain.

Celebrities are widely known and often loved by their fans, defined as being a "celebrated person."

Okaaay...

If you like your "election insight in some sort of dingbat aphorisms," have a look at this post from The Page (as aptly described by Josh Marshall).

Speaking of talking points, The Page's "insight[s]" read like a script for any cable tv political pundit ("Obama's [VP] pick timing: sooner than you think. McCain's [VP] pick timing: later than you think...")

On Meet the Press Sunday, David Gregory told his political round table:

The big question…on the campaign trail is readiness to lead, to handle a crisis like this [Russia-Georgia]. And the readiness issue has been a huge theme of the attack ads that Senator McCain has launched against Senator Obama. It's been something you've seen in, in all of the ads. Let's show clips from each of some recent ads to drive that point home. Watch.

Crowd: (In unison) Obama! Obama! Obama!

Narrator #3: (From political ad) Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family? He's the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead? Not ready to lead, that's the real Obama.

Gregory resumed:

There is a fundamental question, which is the question mark over Barack Obama's head to a lot of voters, is he really ready? Does he have enough experience to take on the issues?

David Gregory appears to have a limited supply of question marks at his disposal. He doesn’t see any over John McCain’s head. None about McCain’s top foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, who had been, until recently, a paid lobbyist for the government of Georgia. None about how Scheunemann lobbied McCain’s staff on behalf of Georgia, while at work in McCain’s presidential campaign. None about Scheunemann’s job at Worldwide Strategic Energy making deals to help Georgia develop its hydrocarbon industry. None about Scheunemann’s history as a principal backer of the Iraq war and promoter of Iraq’s putative rescuer, Ahmad Chalabi. So many question marks, so many blind spots. No, to Gregory, the Russian-Georgian war provides one of those 3 A.M. moments when you wake up, rub your eyes, and see question marks circulating over the other guy’s head.

Speaking of blind spots, Gregory went on to ask whether McCain’s efforts to “define Barack Obama”—“define” is political talk for “insult”—risk “this maverick image,” as if “the maverick image” were some sort of accepted fact, as if it hadn’t already been exploded at book length by Matt Welch in McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, as if it were more important to speculate about the fate of an image than about its accuracy.

Meanwhile, over at CBS’s Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer found nothing amusing about Karl Rove’s suggestion—yes, that Karl Rove—that “part of the reason why Senator Obama is in the shape he is in today is because he's failed to run a positive campaign. He's run a negative campaign. He's claimed to be something new and different, and yet given these - you know, it is really beyond the pale to sit there and insinuate that Senator McCain is somehow going to attack him for being black, which is what he did for over a month." Schieffer’s penetrating response was: “What do you think John McCain ought to do?”

Later, Schieffer asked Rove: “Does he need to separate himself from your old boss, George Bush? Separate himself more?” To which Rove replied: “John McCain's not George Bush. He ran against him in 2000.” Schieffer seemed not to know that McCain has voted with Bush 100 percent of the time in 2008 and 95 percent of the time in 2007. If he knew, would he care?

You know an anchor is out of his depth when he feels the need to defend himself from a withering attack by—Paris Hilton. Yes, that Paris Hilton, who taped her own funny comeback ad last week and stuck it in John McCain’s face. Schieffer, being a wrinkly white-haired guy, took major umbrage and seemed to feel it was incumbent upon him to stand up four-square for all wrinkly white-haired guys thusly:

I am compelled now to stand up for old white-haired dudes and point out we actually have several advantages over others. For example: If forced, we can drink coffee straight from a mug. We don't need to sip it through a little hole in a plastic top on a cardboard container to make it taste good. Since we grew up when telephones had cords and telephone booths had doors, we know how to keep phone conversations private. We were lucky enough to grow up when it was safe for kids to walk to school and we learned the lessons that came from having to organize our own after school games….

The maundering Schieffer reminds me of the stuffy old sod on the train in Richard Lester’s great A Hard Day’s Night who huffs to the Beatles, “I fought the war for your sort!”—to which Ringo says, “I bet you’re sorry you won.”

America, this is the man who will moderate one of your official presidential debates. Who could make this stuff up?

Politico's Michael Calderone explains "why I also didn't write on John Edwards:"

It was decided that writing on the rumors — without confirming them — simply validates the Enquirer, a tabloid that’s broken celebrity scandals wide open but still isn’t regarded by many as a credible news source. And while the Enquirer deserves credit for some great shoe-leather reporting, the magazine still plays by a different set of rules than Politico or other outlets. And that includes the willingness to pay sources for verifiable information, which Perel said today on "Reliable Sources" was a tactic employed in their Edwards investigation...

Politico reporters worked at confirming the story independently on several fronts...

The New York Times' Public Editor analyzes the Times' approach to the story as follows:

But I think The Times — like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services — was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer’s reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong.

And:

Richard Berke, an assistant managing editor, said that The Times has sometimes struggled in an increasingly tabloid news environment to figure out how to deal with such stories. “We are still feeling our way on this,” he said...“We run the risk of looking like we’re totally out of it,” Berke said, “or we’re just like the rest of them — we have no standards.”