Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

MSM gets YearlyKos basically right

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I haven’t got time today to do a Yearly Kos wrap-up; I’ll try to get to it in the next couple of days.  In the meantime, though, you can read two actually quite good articles by our mainstream media friends.  Here’s the NYT’s Jeff Zeleny, and here is the Globe’s woman-on-the-scene, Marcella Bombardieri.  The Globe article is particularly good.  And kudos to the Globe for sending a reporter out to Chicago to cover it, instead of just relying on wire services.

That said, I’d nitpick just a couple of points in Bombardieri’s article.  First, this passage

Hillary Clinton, who during the YearlyKos-sponsored debate made a surprisingly spirited defense of taking lobbyists’ money, even reversed her plan to skip part of the program in response to being booed.

is not quite accurate.  As Bob and I noted in yesterday’s posts, the confusion over whether Hillary was going to attend the breakout sessions was largely the fault of the Yearly Kos organizers, who subsequently apologized for it.  Second, this quote

“We’re really glad they’re here, but we don’t care that much about what they have to say,” said Tom Tucker, a math professor at the University of Rochester who maintains a blog called rochesterturning.com.

struck me as odd, and probably unrepresentative.  To the contrary, I think most attendees cared a great deal about what the candidates had to say.  A good number (Bob and I included) remain undecided in the presidential sweeps, and were hoping to use the convention as a big part of our decisionmaking process.  This was not about having the candidates kneel to kiss the ring of the blogosphere.  It was about trying to find out whether the candidates share the values that are important to us.

But those are small points.  In light of Bill O’Reilly’s bizarre and unrelenting campaign to depict YearlyKos as a convention of haters, and of the MSM’s frequent confusion about what political blogging is really all about, I was very happy to read both of those articles.

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Comments

  1. I’m wholly uncommitted myself. I guess I’m leaning toward Edwards. Or maybe, I guess, I’m hoping for a miracle – coming in the form of Al Gore deciding he just has to run. We’ll see.

  2. Clearly, you didn’t read WaPo’s story on it.

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    I just read some FDL write ups of this year’s Ykos; I can’t say they were inspiring. Though, I wasn’t there, so I guess I can’t pass judgement. I can’t say having NYT people moderating is the kind of actions I find tolerable, especially when they write glowing stories (as well as their sister paper, the Globe).

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    I see problems here. Let’s hope I just need a new perscription for my glasses.

  3. What I’ve seen has been really fair and respectful. And the obvious is worth pointing out: since a lot of bloggers bash the press continuously, the press has neither need nor interest in covering the event. You can make a pretty strong case that it’s news, but you can make an equally strong case (in my opinion) that it’s not news. Of course, the not news argument is tougher to make if you’re devoting a lot of space to celebrity babies and such.

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    Anyway, I was intrigued by something Michael Scherer reported in Salon. Dennis Kucinich said people think there’s no difference between the two parties — which, unfortunately, is probably true — and got booed. The dKos crowd was offended! Blogscape, there’s hope for you yet.

  4. http://www.washingto…

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    … but also an accurate one. Salon.com has written about the harassment of female bloggers. Of course male bloggers are harassed as well, but generally in less personal terms.

  5. I saw two mistakes and one difference of observation in the AP/Herald piece cited by AmberPaw:

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  6. Clinton backed down. “The Clinton campaign won no fans in the convention when word leaked that she did not plan to attend the individual breakout session following the forum. She eventually decided to participate.” As discussed, the Clinton campaign told YKos organizers they could not attend the break-out session long in advance — as the organizers subsequently admitted. The NYT  made the same error, as discussed. Moreover, the news that Clinton could not attend her break-out session was announced from the podium to about 1,000 people — some leak!

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  7. Mixed statements made in small Clinton breakout session  with her forum address to about 1,500. “[Clinton] drew laugher and applause by blaming a microphone malfunction on the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ and lightheartedly acknowledged her own critics among liberal bloggers. ‘I appreciate what you?re doing. Not everything,’ she said to laughter. ‘Enough.'” She said this in her break-out session, but it might as well have been in front of the entire audience for all the article lets you know.

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  8. Downplayed presence of Clinton staffers.” On Thursday and Friday, representatives for each candidate manned tables at the convention center. Obama had two eager aides handing out pins and shirts. Edwards surrounded his table with funky inflatable furniture, drawing weary bloggers looking for a place to sit down. Clinton?s table was often not staffed, though an aide scratched out a note telling activists how to find her campaign on the Internet.” That may have been what the reporter saw. What I saw was numerous Clinton staffers at both the main candidate forum and the Clinton break-out session wearing t-shirts and handing out placards. The Clinton campaign is well organized and had as active a presence at the event as that of Obama and Edwards, the other two candidates with, as it seemed to me, large staff presences at the conference.

    • in my capacity as a convention volunteer.

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      Not once did I see anyone there taking names or answering questions. The literature on the table, when it was there at all, was minimal. It was a glaring anomaly in an otherwise busy exhibition hall, especially compared to the Obama and Edwards campaigns, both of whom not only passed out literature but had their booths mostly staffed for the convention.

  10. her break-out session.  I thought she did an excellent job.  She has some excellent ideas on education.  I am thinking of going to Derry in the morning to watch her speech on the mortgage crisis. 

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    I just am completely unimpressed with Obama.  He’s running an increasingly negative campaign consisting of many half-truths.  I just don’t see what he offers.  I also don’t like the whole Deval Patrick campaign redux part of it.  Seems phony to me.

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    Edwards has some good ideas but the media seems to dislike him and I would worry about that in a GE. 

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