How Sarah Palin Was Unmasked / CBS News

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/31/business/marketwatch/main4559732.shtml

Three observations:

1. Nathan Thornburgh was "working the edges of the story," as I like to call it. Instead of going to the McCain-Palin rally in Ohio, the center of where the action was, he booked a flight to Anchorage.

2. They're measuring readership by clicks or unique page views instead of circulation -- "For instance, a recent story on Palin ... drew 508,980 page views, according to Time spokesman Daniel Kile." Before the Internet, there was no good way to measure how many people read a given story.

3. His resume sort of works the edges of the profession, to coin a phrase. Instead of majoring in print journalism at something like the Medill School, he taught English, played saxaphone and started writing music reviews in an alternative weekly. My kind of guy? Maybe, for someone who got a Ph.D. in Shakespeare and went next to covering the Anderson County (Tenn.) sheriff's police next.

COMM 337: Assignment for last analytical paper

You have two choices:

• Analyze the story in terms of its structure, as Donald Murray discusses structure in terms of "story line," conflict, tension and surprise ... i.e. an organic structure determined in part by the content of the story.
  
• Analyze it as a piece of creative nonfiction ... according to Wikipedia (at least today), "[f]or a text to be considered creative nonfiction, it must be factually accurate, and written with attention to literary style and technique."

COMM 386: Media bias? Yep. But not what you think it is ...

Howard Kurtz' analysis of media bias in today's "Media Notes" column hits a nail on the head. Rather, one of the stories that Kurtz quotes hits the nail on the head.


It's an article by John Harris and Jim VandeHei of Politico.com, who acknowledge McCain and Palin are "getting hosed i the press, and at Politico":

"Responsible editors would be foolish not to ask themselves the bias question, especially in the closing days of an election. But, having asked it, our sincere answer is that of the factors driving coverage of this election -- and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama -- ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil ...

"Reporters obsess about personalities and process, about whose staff are jerks or whether they seem like decent folks, about who has a great stump speech or is funnier in person than they come off in public, about whether Michigan is in play or off the table. This is the flip side of the fact of how much we care about the horse race -- we don't care that much about our own opinions of which candidate would do more for world peace or tax cuts."

Harris' and VandeHei's column is worth reading, too. It's the only time I've seen a lede quoting the journalists' mothers in an article on bias. I'm not sure they pull it off, but the idea of quoting someone who's supposed to be biased in that context is kind of cute.

COMM 337: Surprise!

I've been thinking about Donald Murray, author of the little green book that won't go away, lately. This time it's for a faculty newsletter I edit (don't ask), and I'll probably send out a link when we get some technical difficulties worked out and we get it up on the Internet.

More surprises. I like Murray, and I thought I'd already seen everything written about him. Till I did a Google keyword search, looking for an article I'd used before but misplaced somewhere. Turned out I never found it, but ...

When I searched keywords on "Donald Murray" and "surprise," this quote popped out of the directory. It was in Murray's obituary in The Boston Globe, which noted "with characteristic frankness," he described his childhood as unhappy:

"My parents and teachers got together and decided I was stupid," he wrote last year. "My response was to develop a private mantra: 'I'm stupid but I can come in early and stay late.' Surprise. It worked. Good work habits will beat talent every time."

Words to live by. Surprise the SOBs.

a blog post titled "Donald Murray was / is my hero!" by Deb Renner Smith, a Michigan literacy consultant. She says, "Don Murray is incredible. He says that he wrote, 'I write and I find myself saying what I do not expect, in a way I haven't quite said it before. I am energized by surprise.' Over and over he says that 'surprise' is the key to his writing."

And Smith linked to the text of a Murray's Keynote Address to the National Writers' Workshop in 1995 at Hartford, Conn.

I'd never seen it before.

Some nuggets (I've been thinking about nuggets, too, lately) follow:

If you are confident of your craft and are writing without terror and failure, I hope you will learn how to escape your craft and write so badly you will surprise yourself with what you say and how you are saying it.

* * *After I leave my writing desk, I lead a double life. I am a mole, living an ordinary life of errands, chores, conversations friends, reading, watching TV, eating and - at the same time - I am a spy to my life, maintaining an alertness to the commonplace, the ordinary, the routine where the really important stories appear.

I am never bored. I overhear what is said and not said, delight in irony and contradiction, relish answers without questions and questions without answers, take note of what is and what should be, what was and what may be. I imagine, speculate, make believe, remember, reflect. I am always traitor to the predictable, always welcoming to the unexpected.

This paying attention is not always comfortable. Reporting on the self can bring terror as well as celebration, pain as well as pleasure.

* * *I write easily, and that is no accident. I remind myself that John Jerome said "Perfect is the enemy of good" and follow William Stafford's advice that "one should lower his standards." I write fast to outrace the censor and cause the instructive failures that are essential to effective writing.

I write for surprise. I start a column with a line or an image, an island at the edge of the horizon that has not been mapped. And I do not finish the columns unless I write what I do not expect to write forty to sixty percent of the way through. My drafts tell me what I have to say.
* * *I was stupid stubborn. In one prize fight I was knocked down 13 times and won.

I believed - and still believe - it is my job to educate editors - by example. I propose new ways of writing old stories by showing them a draft or at least a lede. When they didn't listen I wrote it their way - and when possible wrote it my way and submitted it somewhere else.

I was and am, a cross-writer, exploring the possibilities of fiction and poetry, books and articles, columns and textbooks. Each genre illuminates the other.

I realize I had energy - and still do. My energy comes from the writing. I write and I find myself saying what I do not expect, in a way I haven't quite said it before. I am energized by surprise.

Along the way, Murray spoke of grief, of the death of his 20-year-old-daughter and his elderly father (whom he imagined being buried with a telephone in his coffin and later wrote a poem about it), of his days as a cub reporter at The Boston Herald, of aging, of his wife, of combat in World War II, of writing poetry, freelance stories for top commercial markets, scribbled notes on 3-by-5 cards and columns for The Boston Globe.

By now you're probably sick of hearing me go on and on about Don Murray. But if you read his talk to the National Writers' Conference, I think you'll be surprised. Pleasantly surprised.

Murray is also cited regularly by academic writing teachers. In fact, that's where I first came across him, when I was trying to make sense of freshman English composition as a new adjunct instructor at SCI after 15 years of newspapering. Most recently in January, Bruce Ballenger, an English prof at Boise State, wrote "Reconsiderations: Donald Murray and the Pedagogy of Surprise" by in College English (Volume 70, No. 3). Ballinger's abstract says, "Toward the end of his life, Donald Murray felt that his approach to writing instruction was no longer appreciated by journals in his field. Nevertheless, his emphasis on encouraging students to surprise themselves through informal writing still has considerable value." An earlier article in English Journal (the first page of which is avaliable on the JSTOR website) notes that "Murray valued surprise" where traditionalists value form.

http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/ce/articles/128778.htm
http://www.jstor.org/pss/822100
Tom Romano "The Living Legacy of Donald Murray." The English Journal, 89.3 (Jan., 2000): 74-79. Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

COMM 337, 386: Satire on a blog (content advisory for those who are burned out on election stories: the satire is political)

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
-- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (5.1.7-12).

Here, courtesy of the blog Mudflats: Tiptoeing Through the Muck of Alaskan Politics, is a "Palin Talking Point Generator" that gives Gov. Sarah Palin's talking points as a Republican vice presidential candidate the local habitation and name of moose nuggets.

If you're not sure what a moose nugget is, I think you'll figure it out by looking at the picture of the Palin Talking Point Generator. In her discussion of several of Palin's "nuggets," the Mudflats blogger drops metaphors like, uh, tasty little M&Ms.

Irreverence

Jack Shafer is the media critic for Slate.com. Here's what he had to say, in a recent article headlined "Countdown to the Obama Rapture," about some of the recent coverage of the Nov. 4 election:

Reporters do their least self-conscious work when they're startled by a story they hadn't prepared to write. Think of the astonishing coverage of the 9/11 attack, natural disasters, and the 2000 election-that-would-not-end. But giving a reporter (or a pundit) too much time to think about a historic event such as VE Day, the moon landing, the fall of Communism, or the release of Nelson Mandela is like entering him into a grandiosity competition to see who can squeeze the most poetry out of his keyboard. Suddenly, everybody with a notepad and a word processor thinks he's Norman Mailer.

Shafer adds,

Every new president gets a honeymoon, of course, but not like the one we're likely to witness. As the countdown to the Obama rapture accelerates this week, say a prayer for the press corps skeptics, naysayers, cynics, pragmatists, faultfinders, and scoffers who'd rather not dance at Obama's magisterial ball. And if they write something noteworthy, send it my way.

And he provides a link.

Here's what another media critic, Mark Twain, said about newspapers:

Our papers have one peculiarity--it is American--their irreverence . . . They are irreverent toward pretty much everything, but where they laugh one good king to death, they laugh a thousand cruel and infamous shams and superstitions into the grave, and the account is squared. Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. -- Mark Twain's Notebook

COMM 337: Assignment for Wed. Pls post to your blogs

Please post your reaction to this opinion piece in Judith Warner's blog for The New York Times on your own blog. Consider:

· Where, for you, is the 'line' (in Don Murray's sense of the word) in this story?

· What sources of conflict, or tension, do you find in it?

· Any surprises? (In Murray's sense of the word. In yours?) Anything unexpected? Anything that goes against the grain?

· How do Warner's values compare to the values of the 90s? … that she finds on Wall Street? What lesson(s) does she take from the financial meltdown? Is is (are they) what you expected as you started reading the column?

COMM 337: OK, let's forget about the election and the economic crisis for a minute or two and look at a tried-and-true feature story

How can you not like this? A dog rescues a litter of kittens from a fire in Australia, and the news goes 'round the world. I just searched on "dog," "kittens" and "Australia," and I got 270 hits.

I first saw the raw video when I was tracking the latest meltdown in world financial markets on BBC News ... and a fuller report in The Herald Sun, a tabloid newspaper in Melbourne owned by Rupert Murdoch. The story is local, and the Herald Sun milks it for all it's worth. The head:

Lion-hearted Leo has courage licked

We'll look at the Reuters video that's linked to the page, so you can see where the pun comes from.

And the lede, which lays on the 'literation:

A TENACIOUS terrier dubbed Leo the Lion-hearted is being lauded for staying loyally by the side of four helpless kittens trapped in a burning house.

The gutsy bitzer had to be resuscitated by firefighters after refusing to abandon the kittens even as thick smoke and flames filled a Seddon weatherboard home on Saturday night.

Don't know what a bitzer is? Google it -- uh, perform a keyword search in the Google search engine -- and keep trying. Hint: If you don't find it at first, why don't you guess it's Australian slang and add that to your keyword search?

COMM 337, 386: Let's go off on a tangent (but it may not be a tangent when we get there if you like surprises)

While I was looking for stories to discuss for our class in advanced journalistic writing, I came across a piece of political reporting by Judith Warner, a freelancer who lives in Washington, D.C., and writes a blog for The New York Times. Last month, soon after Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, Warner went to GOP rally in suburban Virgina to scope out Palin's appeal to the party faithful. Her report went against the grain, and the people who posted comments didn't know what to make of it. I'd be tempted to say they misunderstood it, if I thought I understood it myself.

For COMM 337, it's worth reading just for Warner's voice. She's reporting, she's doing commentary ... and she's doing it with a voice that isn't quite like anything else I've been reading lately. And she has some insights into class resentments and GOP attacks on the "liberal media" that are worth looking in COMM 386. She also links to a piece by Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, on the politics of class resentment and moral values across cultures.

So let's read it.

COMM 337: Judith Warner, combining the personal and political / READ MONDAY

Since the first generation of women's lib, feminist writers have made a point of combining the personal and the political. It operates on several levels. One has to do with airing women's issues in the political arena. Another is a reaction to the perceived tendency of male writers to dwell on subcommittees, caucuses and public policy issues while women write more easily about people and values. It's a stereotype, but like most stereotypes, it has just enough truth to it to be worth considering.

One writer who combines the personal and the political today is Judith Warner, a freelancer who writes the blog "Domestic Disturbances" for The New York Times along with pieces for other markets on cultural and political issues. It's ostensibly about parenting, but she's been writing lately about subjects ranging from the Nov. 4 election to migranes, R.E.O. Speedwagon and the stock market crash. But with an eye for detail and a sensibility that sets her apart from most financial and political writers. She gets kind of East Coast-y and New York City-ish sometimes, but then she writes for a paper in New York.

Today's column takes off on Sarah Palin, of whom Warner says,

She speaks no better — and no worse — than many of her crowd-pleasing male peers, dropping her g’s, banishing “who” in favor of “that,” issuing verbal blunders that linger just long enough to make their mark in the public mind before they’re winked away in staged apologies.

Music to my ears, because my generation preserves the distinction that you use "who" for people and "that" for inanimate objects, even if I am getting to the point I've heard quite enough about Palin to last me for a while.

Another column, one I think shows Warner at the top of her form, is headlined "Waiting for Schadenfreude" and gives her take on the financial crisis. She begins:

A couple of years ago, at the height of the boom, a friend in New York publishing described to me the indignities of being a five-figure employee commuting daily from suburban New Jersey on trains packed with traders, stock brokers and hedge-fund types.

“These were the guys who, in college, I used to step over on Sunday mornings when they were lying in a pool of their own vomit,” he said. “And now they’re earning millions and millions – in bonuses alone.”

The image, as you might imagine, stuck in my mind. For it summed up so well a certain kind of resentment and sense of injustice that a particular class of non-monied professionals in the New York area came to feel sometime in the late 1990s.

The feeling of injustice wasn’t just about money, though it was partly about being more than solidly middle class and still struggling to pay the bills, as New York writer Vince Passaro captured so well in his “Reflections on the Art of Going Broke” (“Who’ll Stop the Drain?”) in Harper’s in 1998.

It was, rather, about a sense that the wrong people had inherited the earth.

They had taken over everything. Their salaries (and bonuses in particular) had pushed real estate costs and living expenses sky-high. Their values had permeated every aspect of life. And their choices seemed to have become the only acceptable — even viable — ones possible.

I haven't read the article she mentioned, and I don't take a train to work. But I know what it feels like to opt for a low-paying career. Warner continues:

Many of us who’d proudly decided, in our twenties, to pursue edifying or creative, or “helping” professions, woke up to realize, once we had families, that we’d perhaps been irresponsible. We couldn’t save for college. We could barely save for retirement. If we set up a “family-friendly” lifestyle, we threw our financial futures down the drain.

So, like just about everyone, we worked hard and treaded water, but felt we were entitled to do better than that. And if we lived in the New York area, or another similarly wealthy area where the spoils of the new Gilded Age were constantly thrust in our faces, we felt, like my friend on the train, a little something more: we knew that we were losers.

Then, hardly even a month ago, came the crash. Warner said she was surprised she didn't feel vindicated.

... those of us who felt, well, like losers, are feeling like even bigger losers, as we shove our unopened 401K or (if we’re double-loser freelancers) SEP-IRA statements into bottom desk drawers and wait for a cathartic burst of schadenfreude that simply refuses to come.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

In the end, she gets back to her friend who commuted into the city with all the stockbrokers from Jersey:

I called my friend in publishing yesterday to ask him how things were going on the train.

“There’s a lot of rueful chuckling. There’s a lot of talk about riding this out, about maintaining,” is all he had to say.

It was 23 years ago that Tom Wolfe introduced us to the Masters of the Universe. They were curiosities then — remote, very rich, and decidedly not like you and me. But now, the world of Wall Street has become our world; there is no outside to it, there is no other option than to pay and play. Our fortunes rise and fall together to a degree like never before, and our values are enmeshed like never before. The language of Wall Street — of cost-cutting and efficiency, self-interest, using each situation to maximize profit, is the language of everyday life and social interaction.

We’re all losers now. There’s no pleasure to it.

Let's read some more of Warner (click on her standing head "Domestic Disturbances" to get a directory). But when you get to the bottom of "Waiting for Schadenfreude," read some of the comments. They're civil, they're literate. At least one of them (from a blogger in San Francisco) may be kind of self-promotional, but it's civil and literate, too.

COMM 386: Two links from today's Washington Post

Howard Kurtz gives his take on Barack Obama in today's "Media Notes" column. It's based on personal observation -- unusually so for Kurtz, who prefers to hide out in the woodwork -- and therefore very interesting.

Also a Washington Post blog called "Behind the Numbers" has a wealth of information about the latest tracking polls and what they tell us about: (1) the media; and (2) government. Sounds like us, doesn't it?

Description of the blog at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2007/04/about_behind_the_numbers_1.html.

COMM 337: Today's class discussion links

Three things today --

In Howard Kurtz' column today, there's a nice little take on the difference between reporters and opinion writers. It's actually by Joe Klein, who's been sympathetic to Democrats since he covered Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 ... perhaps even before that when he wrote a biography of folk singer (and admitted communist) Woody Guthrie before that. Klein isn't allowed on the McCain-Palin press plane these days, and Kurtz writes up the political charge-and-countercharge that ensued. All that stuff doesn't matter, but I think something Klein said about it does. Kurtz introduces it:

Here's the Joe Klein response to bloggers' suggestions that Time should pull all its correspondents [from the plane] in solidarity:

"My job is different from [Time reporter] Jay Carney's, Michael Scherer's and Mark Halperin's. They are paid to report and, to a certain extent, analyze. They operate under real, and valuable, journalistic restrictions. Their jobs are especially tough when covering a campaign as despicable as McCain's has been: an important part of their brief is to try to see the race through the eyes of the McCain campaign and explain to the rest of us what that looks like ... I'm paid to have opinions."

One of those opinions, surely, is that McCain's campaign is despicable. Carney, Scherer and Halperin might think that (or they might not), but they aren't paid to write it. Klein is. That's the difference.

That's the first. We don't have to read all of Kurtz. (Those who are following the election will see more of it in COMM 386, anyway.) The second follows up on the Peggy Noonan columns we looked at Monday.

Noonan has written a book titled "Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now." It was published Sept. 30, and it has a rushed-into-print feel, but Noonan writes well. According to the blurb on Amazon.com, Noonan argues, "the national mood is for a change in our politics and it is well past time for politicians to catch up. Americans are tired of the old partisan divisions and the campaign tricks that seek to widen and exploit them." In a promotional podcast linked to the Amazon page, Noonan talks about the book and how she came to write it. We'll listen to the first part of it in class (at least till she says "writers have no right to be boring" at 6:30 and changes the subject). We'll also read an excerpt from the book that she discusses in the podcast.

My take on Noonan (for what it's worth): She's a journalist, and her work is uneven, unpolished in the same way that Mark Twain's or Walt Whitman's was. But she tackles the basic kinds of questions that Twain, Henry Adams and Whitman did ... how well she handles them is a matter of opinion, but I give her credit at least for trying. Tunku Varadarajan, business professor at NYU and opinion writer for Forbes.com, praises Noonan's work and says "she makes her point(s) in a way that captures the humanity of its context. This isn't punditry, de haut en bas, but engagement with the reader, with the reader's milieu- -with America."

Besides, Noonan is a Republican writing about politics in a year when it's hard to do that. So we're reading her partly just in the interest of equal time.

The third is a nice little feature in today's New York Times. It's about four Republican neighbors in Brooklyn who are displaying McCain-Palin yard signs in the windows of their brownstone row houses in an overwhelmingly Democratic borough.

I guess that's also giving equal time.

COMM 337, 386: More on Peggy Noonan / ASSIGNED RREADING

Peggy Noonan, opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal, keeps hitting home runs. Her latest is an assessment of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that concludes:

In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand. This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

This from a conservative pundit and loyal Republican who started out as a speechwriter for President Reagan.

But there's more to Noonan than that. Her writing is a little over-the-top sometimes for an old police-beat-and-criminal-courts reporter like me, but she touches on something important in the American spirit ... the kind of insights I'm more accustomed to seeing in writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Walt Whitman ... that most political columnists don't ever try for. Tunku Varadarajan, business school professor at New York University and opinion editor at Forbes.com, captures it in today's column, a basically an endorsement of Noonan's. He says:

Now ... she is writing with such transparent conscience that I believe that she captures, in her column, the American condition and the American voice.

By "condition" I mean all sorts of things: the spiritual essence, the political bent, the sources of America's passion and ideology and imagination, as well as of its aspirations and apprehensions. And by "voice" I mean the pitch, the inflections and the language by which discourse of the American condition is best conducted.

This is a very large order, especially on a newspaper deadline.

We will be looking at several of Noonan's columns, in COMM 337 for her style ... which is idiosyncratic but worth analyzing ... and in COMM 386 for her insights into American politics and the political process. She also has a book out, called "Patriotic Grace." It's on her sense that America needs to transcend its current blue-state, red-state divisions to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Linked to its blurb on Amazon.com is a 20-minute interview on how, and why, she came to write the book. One quote I like: "I think writers don't have a right to be boring." Noonan isn't.

Even more insightful than the Palin column, in my opinion, is one she wrote the week before (Oct. 10), headlined "Playing Frisbee on a Precipice." She explains: "One had the sense this week that our entire political class is playing Frisbee on the edge of a precipice, that no one is being serious enough, honest enough, that it’s all too revved, too intense, and yet too shallow."

I'll post a couple of more links as I find them. I'm going through the archives on Noonan's website, which is extensive, and I've found a lot of good clean base hits but not -- yet -- her other home runs.

COMM 337: Trib makes history, endorses Obama

For the first time in its 171-year history, The Chicago Tribune has endorsed a Democrat for president. The editorial is well written, with a sense of history one doesn't ordinarily see in daily newspapers, and we'll read it in class.

In Friday's editions, the Trib's editorial board said U.S. Sen Barack Obama "is ready" to change the way we do politics and government in this country. The endorsement couldn't be stronger:

However this election turns out, it will dramatically advance America's slow progress toward equality and inclusion. It took Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary courage in the Civil War to get us here. It took an epic battle to secure women the right to vote. It took the perseverance of the civil rights movement. Now we have an election in which we will choose the first African-American president . . . or the first female vice president.

In recent weeks it has been easy to lose sight of this history in the making. Americans are focused on the greatest threat to the world economic system in 80 years. They feel a personal vulnerability the likes of which they haven't experienced since Sept. 11, 2001. It's a different kind of vulnerability. Unlike Sept. 11, the economic threat hasn't forged a common bond in this nation. It has fed anger, fear and mistrust.

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States.

This endorsement is a historic occasion, and the Trib's editorial board was aware of that history.

If you heard a low rumbling noise to the north of us Friday, it was Chicago Tribune founder Joseph Medill spinning in his grave. Medill is rightly considered one of the founders of the Illinois Republican Party. He helped Abraham Lincoln write speeches and plan strategy for the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, and till now his newspaper always endorsed Republicans. Even when it couldn't bring itself to endorse the party's nominee, it edorsed maverick Republicans.

So Friday's endorsement is a historic occasion, and the Trib's editorial board was aware of that:

The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause--the Republican Party. The Tribune's first great leader, Joseph Medill, was a founder of the GOP. The editorial page has been a proponent of conservative principles. It believes that government has to serve people honestly and efficiently.

With that in mind, in 1872 we endorsed Horace Greeley, who ran as an independent against the corrupt administration of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. (Greeley was later endorsed by the Democrats.) In 1912 we endorsed Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate against Republican President William Howard Taft.

The Tribune's decisions then were driven by outrage at inept and corrupt business and political leaders.

We see parallels today.

But the editorial said said the Trib was disappointed in Republican John McCain's choice of an unqualified vice presidential candidate and the tone of his campaign -- especially at a time of great danger and opportunity. It said Obama "would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect," and it returned to its historical theme at the end:

Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S.

He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions.

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren't a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

COMM 386: Of Brits, raccoons, stereotypes, journalists and politics in Roanoke, Va.

Gary Younge, a correspondent for The Guardian, has been reporting on the presidential election from Roanoke, Va., a city slightly smaller than Springfield but located in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains ... the foothills of Appalachia. He's black, he's British and he's -- obviously -- a good reporter. This gets at things we don't see in the national papers' coverage of the campaign.

When he first went to Roanoke last month, he did a profile on the town and its politics that some local readers thought stereotyped -- especially when his crew filmed a raccoon caught in a storm sewer. His response made some observations on the nature of journalism that are worth quoting in detail:

First things first. Journalists do have a responsibility to avoid caricature and stereotypes (although I wonder how many of these Democratic readers would have complained if I had gone to Alaska and done a piece on clueless beauty queens).

They have to balance that with the responsibility to tell the truth, be interesting and be fair.

That's not always as easy as it sounds. We are looking for the most interesting quotes, the most arresting moments and the most engaging characters.

By their nature, they are not always the most representative - but when the story is told in the whole, you'd hope to do a place, issue or person some kind of imperfect justice.

When you're dealing with places or people that receive either little or bad coverage, that responsibility should weigh particularly heavily.

Few people write about the Caribbean, where my parents are from, other than if they're writing about holidays.

When they do, they usually feel compelled to mention laidback people smoking spliffs, horny rastas and reggae. It's annoying, and speaks far more about what they are looking for than what they might see if they were slightly more curious.

Similarly, I have seen journalists report on black British attitudes to fatherhood entirely from a McDonald's in Brixton. It's lazy and, in terms of feeding popular misconceptions, quite dangerous.

But none of that means you won't find black British people in McDonald's, or that reggae, horny rastas and spliff smokers are absent from the Caribbean.

In the words of the black intellectual and civil rights activist, WEB Dubois: "Our worst side has been so shamelessly emphasised that we are denying that we ever had a worst side. In all sorts of ways, we are being hemmed in."

It's also true that no two people in the Caribbean, black Britain, or anywhere else will have the same view about a place. Instead, they will have their own sense of what makes it authentic.

Which brings us back to Roanoke and that pesky raccoon. ...

My problem with stereotypes is that while they have truth in them (otherwise they wouldn't be stereotypes, right?), they don't surprise. And and like small children and readers, I like surprises. Younge suggested the raccoon bit was good journalism because: (1) it really happened; (2) it caught the flavor of Roanoke; and (3) it was a cute bit. But it would only work once. "And the next time I see a raccoon in the street, I promise to look the other way -- it wouldn't be funny second time around, anyway."

Surprise. I said I like surprises. Here's one: Watching a local debate at a pub in Roanoke between local supporters of John McCain and Barack Obama, Younge found evidence that "Americans are far more fully engaged in their political life than most Europeans."

Footnote> The Roanoke Times covered the international coverage as reporters for The New Yorker magazine, British Broadcasting Corp. and The Toronto Star, as well as Younge, came to town. Here's a description of Younge at work:

So this British newspaper reporter walks into the Texas Tavern and eats a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. His name is Gary Younge, a fellow with a pirate's hoop earring and a friendly chuckle who has worked all over the world but has never met a Cheesy Western.

Welcome to Roanoke, capital of Southwest Virginia, the corner of a state that looks like it will cast a crucial vote for the next president.

I'm not sure what a Cheesy Western is. But I'll bet in Roanoke, they don't know what a horseshoe is either.

COMM 386: Politico story -- 'Racists for Obama?'

A story by Ben Smith of Politico.com that analyzes white voters with negative attitudes about blacks who say they'll vote for Barack Obama anyway. Its headline: "Racists for Obama?" The story doesn't quite live up to the promise in the head. I'd say it's more about a softening of racial attitudes, and I think it's important.

"At times," Smith says, "the contest has slipped into a familiar dynamic of allegations of racism and outraged denial—but it's also challenged some easy assumptions about race, racism and prejudice."

We need to read it in class.

COMM 386: Stories on race

Toward the bottom of Howard Kurtz' column in today's Washington Post, this item:

Now this is enough to give you heartburn: A minor Republican functionary in California comes up with Obama Bucks, which are food stamps, you see, with the senator's picture, and that is illustrated, get this, with a bucket of fried chicken and a slab of watermelon. The woman, Diane Fedele, says she didn't see anything racist about it. Of course not.

Typical of Kurtz' writing. He doesn't give his opinion very much. When he does, he tosses it off in a few words. Three, in this case.

Also in today's Post, a very different piece of writing. It's by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, and it gives his take on why attacks on Barack Obama's associates should not be dismissed as racist. He concludes:

... Weeks ago, in Springfield, Mo., and elsewhere, he warned darkly that George Bush and John McCain were going to try to frighten you by saying that, among other scary things, Obama has "a funny name" and "doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills."

McCain has never said that, nor anything like that. When asked at the time to produce one instance of McCain deploying race, the Obama campaign could not. Yet here was Obama firing a preemptive charge of racism against a man who had not indulged in it. An extraordinary rhetorical feat, and a dishonorable one.

What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I once believed him.

COMM 337: Pls read, discuss in class and file under 'Doc's bromides about 'surprise,' working edges of crowd'

The little green book that wouldn't go away? Well, it hasn't gone away. Let's read a financial crisis story in Tuesday's Washington Post (Oct. 14) and discuss what Don Murray would say about elements of surprise in it, plus narrative line. The head: "At Indian Call Centers, Another View of U.S." And the second deck: "As Economy Falters, Debt Collectors Hear Sobering Stories From the Land of Plenty."

Written by Emily Wax of the Washington Post's Foreign Service, the story begins:

GURGAON, India -- With her flowing, hot-pink Indian suit, jangly silver bangles and perky voice, Bhumika Chaturvedi, 24, doesn't fit the stereotype of a thuggish, heard-it-all-before debt collector. But lately, she has had no problem making American debtors cry.

That bit of description sets a lot. Including what Murray sometimes calls the "tension" in the story. Other times he speaks of it as "surprise." (You may have noticed that.) More immediately, it sets up a narrative lede.

The nut graf, like so many, is actually two grafs:

Few places in India absorb and imitate American culture as much as call centers, where ambitious young Indians with fake American accents and American noms de phone spend hours calling people in Indiana or Maine to help navigate software glitches, plan vacations or sell products. The subculture of call centers tends to foster a cult of America, an over-the-top fantasy where hopes and dreams are easily accomplished by people who live in a brand-name wonderland of high-paying jobs, big houses and luxury getaways.

But collection agents at this call center outside New Delhi are starting to see the flip side of that vision: a country hobbled by debt and filled with people scared of losing their jobs, their houses and their cars.

Oh, let's just read it and discuss it in class.

This story, by the way, is a perfect example of what I call working the edges of a crowd ... or the "edges" of a story. What better vantage point to explore the U.S. economy from than a call center located halfway around the world?

COMM 337 and 386: Sarah Palin and special-needs children

A report on MSNBC News, with a nod to The Los Angeles Times' political blog that carried the link, on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's bond with special-needs parents on the campaign trail. The Times doesn't make a political point of it, and I don't want to either. In fact, I think it's a pretty good piece of journalism.

File under "Doc's bromides about 'surprise' and working the edges of the crowd."

COMM 207 -- midterm alert

We have a midterm in class Tuesday. Open book (at least the AP stylebook). What's going to be on it?

1. Editing. I'll give you a story to edit, using the AP Stylebook.

2. Headlines. I'll give you some headlines to write -- maybe a 2-24-2 or something like that.

3. Vocabulary. I haven't decided yet. But be ready for it just in case.

COMM 386: Anchorage Daily News ... Palin a sideshow or has she stirred up something real?

From today's Anchorage Daily News, which has been closely following Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's foray into national politics, an aggragator with links to stories about Palin in media outlets from the Mudflats blog in Anchorage to Le Monde in France (as reported on SFgate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle's website.

Here's why I'm linking to it. We talked in class today about racial issues and how they are playing out in the campaign, and the ADN collects several stories that comment on things we were talking about. A summary graf tpward top of today's (Wednesday, Oct. 15) blog:

McCain-Palin camp takes criticism from all sides over attack campaign. Dipping poll numbers and pundits on the right and left are assailing the attack strategy that Sarah Palin launched in the last days of the campaign linking Barack Obama to Bill Ayers as "palling around with terrorists." Here's a look at news reports and analysis from across the political spectrum, with special attention to whether McCain will raise what had been a Palin line at tonight's final debate.

Whether or not McCain raises the issue tonight, personal attacks on Obama with a "racially tinged subtext" are part of the discourse now.

COMM 337: in class Wednesday ..

COMM 337 in class --

1. Blog your reaction to Mark Danner's writing … your opinion of Obama may enter into it, and if it does, fine, you can mention it … but I'm interested in your reaction to the story as a story.

2. Be sure to mention you were in class today to post this to your blog, so I'll remember to give you credit for being here on a day of lackluster attendance at semester's end. Capice?

3. When we've all blogged, let's discuss this story in class. It also has implications for COMM 386 (media and government) in Danner's discussion of the difference between what the national reporters saw and what the crowd at the rally saw. But for our purposes, let's stick with writerly observations.

COMM 337, 386: Sweet Potato Pie

Here's a perfect little jewel of a story. It's by Mark Danner, longtime staff writer for New Yorker magazine and journalism prof at the University of California Berkely, and it's an on-the-scene report of a Barack Obama rally in suburban Philadelphia. It appeared in The New York Review of Books, a magazine we'll see more of before the semester's over.

If you're taking COMM 337 (journalistic writing), ask yourself:

• Is is public affairs reporting? Yes. Again my opinion: I think it's beautifully reported. Danner chose just the right details to convey what it was like to be there. That takes reporting.
  
• Is it an opinion piece. I think it is, although I couldn't boil it down to a thesis statement. You decide.
  
• Is it a feature story? You bet. Especially if you buy my definition that a feature is anything that isn't spot news like a crime brief, a cut-and-dried speech story, a fire, a wreck or a city council meeting.

More evidence of why I don't like neat little categories.

Except this: It's typical of the journalism you find in magazines like The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. Once we get the election out of the way, we'll talk some about solutions to the (preceived?) dumbing down of political discourse in America. And ...

I'm running out of time, and I've got to get up to school.

Let's read it in class.

COM 386: Race -- 'put[ting] the hay down where the goats can reach it?'

Race is one of those issues nobody likes to talk about. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has spoken on it only one, when he was called out for incindiary rhetoric by his former pastor, and Republican John McCain has refused to raise racial issues even though others in his campaign use racially and ethnically charged code words to paint Obama as out of the American mainstream. The American media, also, tend not to discuss racial issues as openly as the British papers do.

Amid signs the issue will come up in the campaign's last days, and enough lingering animosity exists to affect the outcome of the election, two publications have major stories on race today.

Politico's Mike Allen has a story on disagreement in the McCain campaign over a racial attack on Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright. Many, including Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, want McCain to go after the Obama-Wright connection. McCain doesn't want to go there. Says Allen, citing a camapgn official who spoke to him on background:

McCain felt it would be sensed as racially insensitive,” the official said. “But more important is that McCain thinks that the bringing of racial religious preaching in black churches into the campaign would potentially have grave consequences for civil society in the United States.”

Asked about the issue during the firestorm over it last March, McCain told Sean Hannity on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes”: “I think that when people support you, it doesn’t mean that you support everything you say. Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with. And I don’t believe that Senator Obama would support any of those … I do know Senator Obama. He does not share those views.”

Another story, by Roger Simon, explores U.S. Rep. John Lewis' warning to McCain and Palin against racist rhetoric. Lewis, D-Ga, who took part in the lunch-counter sit-in in Nashville as a young person, said:

Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse,” Lewis said. “George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala. As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all.

And Simon, who covered Wallace in the 1970s, recalled his telling reporters, "'My strategy? ... I put down the hay where the goats can get it.' And then he laughed." Simon said Lewis was warning McCain, "Don’t go there. Don’t even think about going there. Don’t lay down the hay where the goats can get it."

Also weighing in today on racial issues was The New York Times.

Senior reporter Adam Nagourney today introduces a four-part series on race in today's Times. He says the issue is difficult, because it involves "sentiments that are whispered, internalized or masked by discussions of culture or religion." But, he adds, "the situation is confounding aides on both sides, who like everyone else are waiting to see what role race will play in the privacy of the voting booth."
In four sidebar stories, reporters found:

• Students in Cincinatti and neighboring Kentucky colleges thought race mattered, perhaps especially among black voters.
  
• White voters in the Deep South and rural Virginia had complex and troubling, but evolving attitudes toward Obama's biracial heritage.
  
• Race is not a factor in Colorado's majority-white communities in the Rocky Mountains ... perhaps because so few black people live there.
  
• Volunteers walking precincts for the Obama campaign explain how they talk about race on people's doorsteps.

Also in today's Times, a poll that specifically suggests negative campaigning is backfiring on the McCain campaign. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking," the poll found.

COMM 207: Assignment for Thursday

1. Read Chapter 9.

2. Bring in:

• One really good advertisement.
  
• One ad that really sucks.

Be ready to discuss in class.

COMM 386: READING ASSIGNMENT ALERT! This story on media, government and campaign ads has (almost) got our name on it.

Howard Kurtz, media writer for The Washington Post, has this analysis of campaign ads in tomorrow's paper. It goes back through the year, examines the two presidential campaigns' spending and the ads' effectiveness. It covers a lot of ground in relatively little space, and I think we ought to be familiar with it as we look at the last weeks of the campaign.

One unanticipated conclusion, toward the end of the story, is that positive ads work. Obama is running a lot of them in battleground states, and Kurtz suggests they're having an effect:

Strategists could think of only two commercials this year that had a significant impact on the campaign dialogue. One was Hillary Rodham Clinton's "3 a.m." ad, which questioned Obama's readiness to handle an emergency phone call, and the other was McCain's spot likening Obama to Paris Hilton, which triggered a debate over the celebrity aspects of his candidacy.

But while positive spots are often deemed less newsworthy, a sustained campaign can yield results over time. Devine said Obama's lead in battleground states where he has advertised heavily is greater than in states where he has been on the air less often. In one recent ad, Obama talks about the values instilled by his mother and grandparents.

It's worth thinking about. And talking about. And blogging about, if you get my drift.

COMM 207, 337, 386, 393: Classy correction!

We all screw up from time to time, and sooner or later we all do it in print.

So we run a correction.

Here's an especially deft correction in "The Fix," Chris Cillizza's blog on the WashingtonPost.com website for ... political junkies. A lot of the time the idea is to take your medicine and get it down quickly, a graf on page 2 saying the city budget -- or whatever -- was reported incorrectly, and giving the correct figure, followed by a tag that says "The Daily Bugtussle (or whatever) regrets the error." This one goes above and beyond the formula.

Cillizza starts by repeating the incorrect information:

Today in our "Monday Fix" column, we reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was going up with ads in the Maine Senate race -- a sign, we argued, that Sen. Susan Collins (R) might be in real trouble.

We were flat wrong.

Note the short graf. Short is effective. Normally you don't repeat the mistake, but here Cillizza does because he's going to explain why he was wrong in the next graf:

The NRSC did buy time on Friday in the Portland, Maine media market, a move that when we learned of it, led us to conclude that the committee was set to go on television in support of Collins.

What we failed to realize (dumbly) is that the Portland, Maine media market also reaches into parts of New Hampshire where Sen. John Sununu (R) is fighting for his political life against former governor Jeanne Shaheen.

The time the NRSC bought in Portland then was for the New Hampshire race NOT the Maine race. It's a rookie mistake and one that we simply should not make.

Cillizza goes on in this vein for two or three grafs more and concludes, "We truly regret the error." And as a reader, I believe him.

COMM 386: Questions for Wednesday

Read the stories on the front (home) page of Politico.com and answer the question: How does this election coverage help me exercise my rights and responsiblities as a citizen? As you think about the coverage, ask yourself what you (can) do as a citizen:

• Vote
  
• Keep up to date on issues
  
• Pay taxes
  
• Write your representative(s) and senator(s)
  
• Walk a precinct
  
• Sign up as a deputy registrar
  
• Work at the polls on election day
  
• Take part in a phone bank
  
• Attend a rally or demonstration
  
• Wear funny T-shirts
  
• Anything else that makes sense to you

As you read the coverage, ask yourself how individual stories on Politico.com factor into these roles. Post your answer(s) to your blog.

Example: Politico.com has a daily feature called "The Arena," in which politicians and others who follow public affairs answer questions of the day. Today's is "Based on what you know now, is Obama headed for a blowout victory?" One answer is by appellate lawyer Walter Dellinger of North Carolina and visiting professor at Harvard. His answer: "I can't speak to the national politics, but I have become convinced that Obama will win my home state of North Carolina ..." He adds, "I think enthusiasm and ground operation coupled with early voting will trump closet racism and Obama will exceed his poll numbers in NC."

This sounds like the kind of "horse race" coverage I like to complain of, but the issues Dellinger raises can affect my role as a citizen, because I bet my wife I would push a peanut with my nose from the Tennessee line on I-40 to Cape Hatteras if Obama carries North Carolina. (A Carolina-style boiled peanut, of course.) More importantly, he gives me reason to hope racial attitudes down South are not as harsh as I had feared they were.

Footnote
A story on the Bloomberg website about changing attitudes in the South makes the same point: "North Carolina, like Florida and Virginia, represents a New South politically, different from the deeply conservative, reliably red -- as in Republican -- one that marks most of Dixie," says Albert R. Hunt, executive Washington editor at Bloomberg News. It's a good example of political reporting as well. Worth a read. Would be a good one to analyze for next week's assignment, too, if you get my drift. So there's more going on in the horserace coverage, if it's done right, than who's going to win the election ... even if the horserace is the news hook that gets readers into the story.

COMM 337: Paul Krugman / Nobel / READ IN CLASS

Today we're definitely going off on a tangent. Paul Krugman, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, has won the Nobel Prize for economics. The award cites his work on international trade and economic geography, but his columns are pretty good, too. Today we're going to read some of them, look at some of the coverage in The Times and see why he won the prize.

(If this inspires you to go on and win the Nobel Prize, too, be sure to remember to give Benedictine a big alumni contribution when you do. If you decide to name a building after me, remember my name is spelled "-s-e-n.")

If you're interested in the background, Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser explains economic research that won the prize for Krugman.

Like many newspaper columnists, Krugman keeps a weblog. Today's headline has to be one of the most understated I've ever seen. It just says "An interesting morning." Well, yeah, I guess if I ever won the Nobel Prize, I'd find it an interesting morning, too.

His column ordinarily appears on Mondays and Fridays. Today's, which was written before the Nobel Prize was announced, was on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's leadership in the world economic crisis. He says it shows a "combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own." Friday's was a stark warning to international monetary policy makers they'd "better announce a coordinated rescue plan this weekend — or the world economy may well experience its worst slump since the Great Depression." Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration for years.

Here's a link to Krugman's index page in the Times' opinion section. It is filling up with links to articles about the Nobel Prize, and it contains links to the selection of Krugman's columns. We'll use it as our starting point for reading some of his columns.

SAVE THIS LINK

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

I'll just quote from the page ...

HOME > Today's Front Pages > Thursday, October 09, 2008: 669 front pages from 64 countries.

The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.

COMM 207: In-class discussion question

This will help us get started on our discussion of thinking about grids when we think about the design of a publication. What do this

and this

have in common with this?

and these?


Post your answers to this question as comments to this blog. if you want a hint, see if this inspires your thinking. Warning: None of this is rocket science ... it can't be, and shouldn't be, as precise as a mathematical equation ... I think creatives in the communications industry think more like artists, and aesthetics trumps mathematics when the two conflict in practice.

How to post your comment

Go to the bottom of this post, right below the next graf. On the right side of the last line, there will be a link that says "Posted by Pete at 11 AM ___ comments" (with a number filled in where I've left a blank, depending on how many comments have been posted). Click on that " ___ comments" link and fill in the comment field on the right. Sign in.

You'll probably have to do something to register for Blogger. Do it (they'll prompt you). Make a note of the username and password you choose. We'll keep on posting to the blog, and if you don't make a note you'll forget it. Please believe me on this. It is something we have learned by hard experience! When you've reviewed your comment, publish it by clicking on "Publish Your Comment." And that's how you publish your comment. Logical, isn't it?

COMM 337, 386: Fukuyama article / READING ASSIGNMENT

Here's a link to an article in this week's Newsweek by Francis Fukuyama titled "The Fall of America, Inc." I don't know exactly what we're going to do with it, but we're going to do something. It's by far the most informative single thing I've read about this month's financial crisis, and it fits in what we're doing in both classes. First, the link:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401/

As you read it, you'll see it doesn't lend itself to an easy paraphrase.

So instead of trying, I'll just say a little bit about Fukuyama. He's a political philosopher and economist, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. About the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 he wrote a book called "The End of History." In it he said "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such ... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

Fukuyama's view was very controversial, but it set the agenda for much of the economic and political culture of the 1990s. He was considered a neo-conservative and supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but soon broke with President Bush and by 2006 compared the neo-cons with Marxist-Leninists. "Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support," he said in an influential New York Times op-ed piece.

In the economic realm, Fukuyama saw globalization and free-market capitalism as triumphing over other economic systems in much the same way he saw liberal democracies ushering in an end of history.

In this week's Newsweek article, he questions that. And he offers an alternate theory of what's been happening with the global economy in recent decades.

I will hand out photocopies of the article tomorrow (Wednesday), and assign you to read it over the weekend. (This will give you something to read Friday when we don't have class.) We'll discuss it in class Monday, relating it to the developing crisis in world financial markets.

You'll notice I'm assigning it in both COMM 337 (advanced writing) and COMM 386 (media and government). A couple of things to think about as you read it.

If you're reading the article for COMM 337, evaluate it as an example of an extended opinion piece or persuasive writing. You'll notice right away he cites a lot of facts, but he doesn't pick up the phone, talk to people and quote them the way a journalist would. He's arguing a point. Be ready to discuss that point in class.

If you're reading it for COMM 386, think of it as Newsweek's attempt to run a prominent story explaining the credit crisis and giving the viewpoint of one of the nation's top economic experts on it.

If you're reading it for both classes, why not read it twice? I'm a big believer in reading stuff more than once, anyway.

In COMM 337, this reading assignment supersedes the first analytical paper I assigned to be due next week. I think that with the importance of what's happening in the markets now, we can afford to get away from the syllabus for a while. I think it's that important, and we still have plenty of time to get caught up.

Brooklyn artist takes (metaphorical) shot at Palin

Now on display in New York City, "A Photo Op with Sarah Palin" by Brooklyn artist Dawn Robyn Petrlik. Visitors to the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, according to The New York Daily News, can "don a fake-fur vest and hold a cardboard rifle to pose for a photo with Sarah Barracuda and daughter Piper." The Palins are photos backed with cardboard, the caribou is plush and visitors are delighted, according to Petrlik.

"Humor is the best way sometimes to deal with very serious issues," said Petrlik.

COMM 207 -- grids -- Thursday's assignment for class

The good news is that I've looked over Mark Boulton's five-page explanation of grid design, and you'll really, really like it. The bad news is I decided it's worth going through in class. You can get the same effect(s) by using software packages and templates, but I think it'll help you think through design problems before you even hit the power switch on your computer.

To use one of today's buzzwords, it's platform independent. Some of it, in fact, goes back to a day when a platform didn't mean Windows or Macintosh -- it was more like a flat slab of stone you erected Doric columns on top of.

Two basic links. The introduction to Grid-Based Design 101 that we looked at in class Tuesday.

The second, which we started reading for today and will finish over the weekend, is Mark Boulton's five-part series on grid design.

COMM: As Rome burns, Nero fiddles?

From Monday's news --

Jake Tapper, senior national correspondent for ABC News, had a column on GOP candidate Sarah Palin's latest attack on Democrat Barack Obama on a day the Dow-Jones stock market index fell below 10,000 points. The head:

As Dow Plummets, McCain Campaign Highlights Palin's Attacking Obama on Ayers

Analyst Joe Klein of Time magazine has an opinion piece dismissing the New York Times story Palin was riffing off of as a "nothingburger." Klein has a reliably Democratic slant on things ... one that goes back to when he covered President Bill Clinton's campaigns during the 1990s ... and nothing really new to say about Bill Ayers, the radical Palin was referring to, but "nothingburger" is a word that deserves to live. I got 4,270 hits when I did a Google search on it, and the Urban Dictionary defines it as "something lame, dead-end, a dud, insignificant; especially something with high expectations that turns out to be average, pathetic, or overhyped."

COMM 386: Partisan systemic failure? / PLS READ!

In the wake of last week's smack-down of the financial bailout bill, columnist Ronald Brownstein of The National Journal suggested the U.S. House of Representatives' "stunning initial rejection of the rescue plan" was much more than just politics-as-usual. The headline was one of those that heads that say it all:

The Other Meltdown

THE HOUSE'S FAILURE ON THE BAILOUT BILL REVEALED A SYSTEM SO POISONED BY PARTISANSHIP THAT IT CANNOT ADDRESS EVEN A GENUINE EMERGENCY.

Brownstein, who made his name covering presidential politics for The Los Angeles Times, is one of the most astute political analysts in the business. And he isn't writing for mass-market media anymore. According to its About Us page, The National Journal and its sister publications are targeted for a readership consisting of of "Members of Congress and their senior staffs, the Executive branch, federal agency executives, government affairs professionals, corporate and association leaders, and the political news media."

So what you get when you read Brownstein is a guy who knows the business writing for readers who also know the business because they're in the business.

(So is Brownstein, but that's another story for another day.)

Brownstein's take on the votes in Congress is nuanced (and he wrote before the second bailout bill passed the Senate and House). He sums up a lot of it when he says:

After Monday's defeat, [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain struck suitably constructive notes in urging the parties to reach agreement. Yet each nominee arguably helped to seed the initial failure by relentlessly portraying Washington as a corrupt casino where lobbyists stack the deck against average families. That indictment wildly overstates lobbyists' impact on the country's biggest challenges -- health care or energy or the economy. On those fronts, the greater impediment to progress is ideological rigidity and partisan polarization. But when voters are constantly told by both parties' presidential nominees that Washington is endemically corrupt, is it any wonder that they doubt the plans it produces? This week should show each candidate that he is playing with fire by denigrating so indiscriminately the government he hopes to lead.

But there's more to it than that, and it's important. So I am very specifically assigning you to read Brownstein's article. We'll discuss it in class, and I will find ways to ensure you have an opportunity to write about it. Last month, Brownstein wrote about the "culture wars" that have marked the last 15 to 20 years of politicking.

You'll have similar opportunities to write about culture wars, So read Brownstein's culture wars column column too. Writing just after the two nominating conventions, he called it a "One-Sided Culture War," but he made it clear it's a game both parties can play:

Each party made clear at its convention how it wants to divide the electorate. Democrats sought to segment the voters by class. They presented Obama (the "son of a single mom") and running mate Joe Biden (the "scrappy kid from Scranton") as working-class heroes who would defend the middle-class because they are products of it. The Democrats portrayed McCain as an out-of-touch economic elitist who doesn't understand the interests of average families.

Republicans sought to segment the voters along cultural lines. They presented McCain as the personification of timeless values--honor and duty. Far more importantly (and effectively), they introduced vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as an embodiment of small-town America who champions conservative social values not only in public life but also in her private life. They completed the picture with tough national security messages that usually resonate loudest with the same traditionalist voters most attracted to conservative social positions. Meanwhile, the Republicans portrayed Obama as an out-of-touch cultural elitist who belittles small towns like Palin's Wasilla as not "cosmopolitan enough."

There was some cognitive dissonance in the fact that those particular words were delivered by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose most intimate contact with small-town America probably comes when he makes a wrong turn driving to the Hamptons [New York's high-rent suburbs on Long Island]. But that didn't diminish the effectiveness of the overall assault. The first post-convention polls suggested that the Republicans succeeded more than the Democrats in dividing the electorate along the lines they prefer.

This is important, too. For one thing, Palin and GOP presidential candidate John McCain are doing all they can to change the subject back to cultural and racial attacks on Democrat Barack Obama. For another, the cultural issues -- including the economic-slash-cultural issues that Democrats prefer to raise -- are inextricably bound up with the way we do politics and government in this country. The attacks on lobbyists, for example, that did so much to derail the first Wall Street bailout are at least partly cultural in origin.

COMM 386: Debate reaction ...

Some important things happened in last night's presidential campaign debate in St. Louis. Let's unpack one or two of them.

If Aristotle came back (after 2,400 years) to referee last night's debate between vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin (in alphabetical order, you'll notice), Aristotle might say it centered on what he called "ethos" -- i.e. the demeanor and credibilty of the two speakers. Let's start processing the debate by reviewing a tip sheet from Durham Technical Community College on "ethos, pathos and logos" in Aristotle's Rhetoric.

There's a lot of reaction out there, far too much for us to get through in a 50-minute class period ... so let's concentrate on The Washington Post. After all, Washington is a company town.

In the Opinion section of the Post's website (whjich is like an electronic op-ed page), there's a standing feature called "PostPartisan: Quick takes from The Post's opinion writers." Today's quick takes, naturally, are about the debates.

My favorite is by Kathleen Parker, a conservative who agrees with Palin on social issues but questions her readiness to be vice president, if for no other reason than the quality of Parker's writing:

Well, darnit all, if that dadgum girl (wink, wink) didn't beat the tarnation out of Joe Biden. Maverick Sarah Palin fersure surpassed expectations and said everything under the sun, also. And Biden smiled and smiled.

Parker added: "I'll have to go to the transcript to figure out what Palin actually said and try to figure out whose facts were right. But there's no question: She won the debate on popularity."

Let's look at all of these reactions, and consider them in light of Aristotlean rhetoric. Sound like fun? Sure, you betcha.

Candid (British) assessment of Obama

Leaked to The Telegraph, a center-right broadsheet newspaper in London, a seven-page assessment of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, British ambassador to the United States. It was in a letter to Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, marked "This letter contains sensitive judgements. Please limit copying, and protect the contents carefully." Sir Nigel was mostly complimentary, but very, very measured in his praise. Closest thing to a nut graf comes in his assessment of Obama's policies:

Obama’s politics and policies are still evolving. His Illinois and US Senate careers give us only a few clues as to his likely priorities in office. In the Senate he took a low profile in 2005-6, but was a diligent member of the Foreign Relations Committee, respectful and friendly to the veteran Republican Senator Lugar, with whom he travelled to London in 2005. His voting record was decidedly liberal. But the main impression is of someone who was finding his feet, and then got diverted by his Presidential ambitions. Obama’s positions and policies emerging from the campaign are a better guide to a future Presidency, but “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) does of course set out the broad themes. If elected, Obama would have less of a track record than any recent President. Carter would be the nearest, but even he had four years as a Governor.

Also in The Telegraph, a story saying the Republican campaign acknowledged vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hadn't met Sir Nigel after all. Apparently he was scheduled to attend a meeting of the National Governors Association but canceled at the last minute. Strikes me as more a comment on the quality of campaign staff work than Palin's foreign affairs experience, although neither is shown to good advantage.

Bluegrass legend cuts radio ad for Obama

This is not an endorsement (at least not on my part) ... but Ralph Stanley has cut a 60-second radio spot for Barack Obama that has begun airing in southwest Virginia. Stanley, who along with the late Bill Monroe is considered a founder of bluegrass music, has fronted the Clinch Montain Boys since the 1940s and is still going strong at the age of 81.

COMM 337: Online freelance writing resource

Our assignment for today was to surf the Magazine Guidelines Database at FreelanceWriting.com and locate two potential markets for: (1) the story you're going to write for this class; or (2) a story you could write over the holidays or sometime in the future. We'll talk about what you found in class.

But I also want us to look around FreelanceWriting.com ... while I haven't been able to find an "About us" page, it looks to me like a valuable resource. In class we'll look at the directory of articles and read a couple of the stories about query letters/ linked to the articles directory.