COMM 209: Here's what Statehouse reporting ought to be like ...

Stories that I post to this blog carrying a course number -- in this case COMM 209 -- are assigned reading for that class. I realize our class doesn't begin for another two weeks, but for some reason the world doesn't always bother to follow the Springfield College-Benedictine University academic calendar. So I'll post stories that illustrate things I think are important. But I'll try not to post too many. Keep scrolling down, BTW, there's also one of these on Jan. 5 about an Israeli reporter who covers the Palestinian side from a sympathetic perspective, and one on Jan. 2 on the difference between newspapers and blogs.

One silver lining from the scandal that unfolded after Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9, on a criminal complaint alleging corruption in his office, is that a lot more people know of one of the best Statehouse reporters in the business as they discover Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog. In this week's Illinois Times, staff writer Dusty Rhodes profiles Miller and his take on the scandal as well as his passing, and sadly accurate, comments on the national media.

Rhodes' column isn't half bad, either. Here are the basics, as she lays them out:

Miller started his career in 1989 here, at Illinois Times, making $50 a week and living in a basement coal bin; he now makes a very comfortable living writing a syndicated column for about 150 papers (including IT), a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times and churning out a thrice-weekly hot sheet called Capitol Fax, a subscription-based enterprise he launched in 1993. He also produces a juicy up-to-the-minute blog (thecapitolfaxblog.com). Did I say he covers Illinois politics? He’s all over it.

Once she interviewed Miller over lunch (a good way of doing interviews when you have the time), and she describes the experience like this:

Not surprisingly, lunch with Miller isn’t for the faint of heart. He’s a big, loud, hairy dude with a wardrobe of tie-dyed shirts and a vocabulary that could give Gov. Rod Blagojevich a run for his money on the bleepometer. “Do you mind if I smoke?” Miller asked me. “Because, if you do, you can just go sit way the [bleep] over there.”

Brackets, and bleeps, are in the original, by the way. I'll let you follow the link and read the rest of Rhodes' profile, but I do want to quote what they say about the national media, because this is a media writing class and because it's something you often hear local reporters say about the nationals:

I’d say that Miller has a love/hate relationship with this unfolding circus, but that would be putting it too mildly, on both sides. His exasperation with cable TV reporters who try to sponge off his expertise was born during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign; the Blago fiasco has turned it into a blood oath. He refuses to watch them, much less talk to them.

“First, they don’t seem to know what they’re doing, and second, I don’t like this [bleep] about ‘We’re the national media so you need to help us.’ Well, no, I don’t,” he says.

I'll let you read the rest of Dusty Rhodes' story. Better yet, read it and take a look at Miller's blog at http://thecapitolfaxblog.com.

Questions to ask yourself as you read: How does Miller report on this fast-moving story? What technology does he use to report the news? With print newspapers in "dead tree format" (i.e. paper) in deep financial trouble, is something like what he does the wave of the future?

A lot of Capitol Fax is inside baseball -- you have to know the players to get it all -- but since Blagojevich's arrest Miller has consistently kept up with the extremely fast, complex action unfolding in the state Legislature, the federal courts and Congress> For a good example, here's how he live-blogged the inauguration of the new state House and Senate. His part reads blog-style, BTW, from bottom to top. Scroll down to the last item, which reads:

* You can watch or listen to the Senate swearing-in here. [link omitted] The House feed is available here. [link omitted] WUIS radio will broadcast the Senate’s festivities, which will be presided over by the governor.

Have fun.

- posted by Rich Miller

Then scroll back up as you read his post. It conveys the immediacy of the event, and some sense of how very unusual, and solemn, it was as the House and Senate prepared to impeach and try a sitting governor who actually presided over the opening of the Senate.

Then scroll back down and look at the Comments. There are 183 of them, posted to an open thread during the inauguration. Looks like they were watching on the Legislature's video feed -- or trying to -- and unlike a lot of reader forums, they have intelligent things to say.

Miller's blog costs $350 a year, and most of his subscribers are government officials, lobbyists and others who have to follow the state Legislature closely. So he is able to write more than most Statehouse reporters, who usually only get enough space for one or two stories a day in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Trib, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or Springfield's State Journal-Register.

Fair warning: We're going to be following state government coverage pretty closely this semester. It's a major story. So we'll be seeing more of Capitol Fax. By the way, for those of you who are taking Communications 150, the name dates back to the '90s when facsimile transmission was the cutting edge communications technology and Rich used to fax the newsletter to subscribers. An early example of new media and cross-platform convergence, which you'll be learning about in COMM 150.