January 21, 2004

• a communications prof and author of a book on presidential primaries is blogging (and slogging) her way through new hampshire. her observations are here.
• From my Alma Mater! Thanks SideDish.
• these guys seem pretty solid. But in all, the whole thing seems like that crappy office party where there are one or two super lame-o's yelling out "woohoo! Let's get this party jumping!" while everyone else is thumbing through their mental rolodex of excuses to bolt like sheep after a thunderclap.
• *clicks link* Cole Campbell? "Clueless" Cole Campbell??? The guy who personally ruined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? Good lord have mercy. What Cole Campbell doesn't understand about objective, accurate journalism could just about squeeze into Yankee Stadium. Sorry, I'm an St. Louis area ex-journo. This guy was personally and almost solely responsible for the degradation of the quality of daily newspapering in this town. It has as yet not recovered from his tenure as E in C of the Post-Dispatch, Pulitzer's flagship. imo, if this is the guy checking up on the ethics and of the press and quality of coverage, we're pretty much fucked.
• Did you disagree with the article, then?
• *shrug* The article itself is relatively content-free (or rather, revelation-free). The press gets stuff wrong, exhibits biases, falls into easy-to-predict coverage patterns. It's mostly due to laziness rather than malevolence. This in itself is not news. The priviledges enjoyed by the fourth estate have been disporportionate to its continuing abrogation of its responsibilities for decades. Cole Campbell has, in my opinion, contributed to that continuing gulf with his advocacy and educational style of journalism. For him to point and say "they blew it!" is specious, since he actively sought to create the environment which allows them, every news cycle, to continue blowing it. In his defense, there simply is *no* press oversight. Beside being a critical consumer of information, and seeking information from a wide variety of sources, and seeking out the most trustworthy information sources as opposed to those that cater to one's beliefs and prejudices, there is not much one can do.
• I find it somewhat more difficult to be blase about the whole thing considering it's not the discriminating, information-seekers that make up the majority of the electorate.
• I can understand that. But other than add to the cacophany of self-designated decriers-sans-answers, what can one person do? The best each of us can do is think critically, seek good information and eschew the obviously bad purveyors, lead others by example and, when sought out, give good advice, and vote for the best people we can, based on the best information we can find.
• Which is what this post was about. It was a "Hey you! Pay attention!" kind of thing. Speaking of which, thanks for the FactCheck.org link.
• Please accept my apologies for crapping in it, then. My antipathy for Campbell got the better of me.
• What crap? Nothing better than insider knowledge. OK, you have biases, but you laid them out up-front.
• :X
• OK, I simply can't NOT point out that this is Monkeyfilter link number 666. Carry on.
• This is link 666 - kitfisto's number, for he be the spawn of satan's botty-hole! Ha-ha!
• Actually, 666 is Koko's number. Eat Satan's brown botty-spawn, q-kid.
• Aw, poop. *muches down on beelzebum*
• When I worked at one local cable station, we aired a number of religious shows. One Lutheran show arrived from Chicago every week like clockwork, scrupulously labelled, including the episode number. When they hit episode 665, we wondered if they'd have a numerical omission next week, but no, episode #666 arrived with nary a hint of any moral trepidation of using the number of the beast. Those Lutherans were going to be precise dagnabit!