http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2008 Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:37:25 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Megan Garber 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 superficially straightforward question: how many homes do you 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... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/a_homegrown_gate.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/a_homegrown_gate.php The Kicker Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:37:25 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/high_in_the_mile_high_city.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/high_in_the_mile_high_city.php The Kicker Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:40:36 -0500 Trudy Lieberman 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. Part I is archived here, and Part II is here. Annette Murph Annette Murph, age 54, finds herself in a classic bind: medical problems prevent her from... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/health_care_on_the_mississippi_2.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/health_care_on_the_mississippi_2.php Campaign Desk Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:30:18 -0500 Megan Garber 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,... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/sixty_degrees_of_separation_1.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/sixty_degrees_of_separation_1.php Campaign Desk Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:38:13 -0500 Katia Bachko Factcheck.org and other outlets point out today that Barack Obama’s recent ad, “Fix the Economy,” uses outdated sound bites out of context to characterize John McCain as out of touch with the state of the nation’s fiscal health.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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/facts_are_fungible_but_charact.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/facts_are_fungible_but_charact.php Campaign Desk Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:18:54 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/another_two_against_the_one.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/another_two_against_the_one.php Campaign Desk Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:03:50 -0500 The Editors 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... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/cjr_podcast_shankar_vedantam_o_1.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/cjr_podcast_shankar_vedantam_o_1.php The Kicker Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:22:28 -0500 Jane Kim 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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tiptoeing_around_that_big_hype.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/tiptoeing_around_that_big_hype.php Campaign Desk Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:23:02 -0500 Megan Garber 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:... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/post_134.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/post_134.php The Kicker Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:32:48 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/a_candy_buffet_you_say.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/a_candy_buffet_you_say.php Campaign Desk Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:36:36 -0500 Lester Feder "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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/debunking_obamas_hillary_probl.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/debunking_obamas_hillary_probl.php Campaign Desk Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:15:57 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/the_fun_will_come_outtomorrow.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/the_fun_will_come_outtomorrow.php The Kicker Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:44:41 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/fiftyfour.php http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/fiftyfour.php The Kicker Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:17:26 -0500 Lester Feder 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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/social_democrats.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/social_democrats.php Campaign Desk Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:38:39 -0500 Megan Garber 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... http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/on_their_merits.php http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/on_their_merits.php Campaign Desk Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:37:00 -0500