Sunday, February 15, 2004

Matt Gross, the man behind the Dean blog, gives an exit interview to the American Prospect as he leaves the campaign. The apogee of network television lasted barely more than a generation, and in ten years the distinction between television and the Internet is likely to be an academic one...people are going to have more options to get involved in national politics...campaigns are going to have to become their own media channels...campaigns will have to decentralize as the electorate becomes more decentralized. I hope we'll get a chance to visit a bit while he's here in NC. 9:43:16 AM    comment []

Margaret Moffett Banks has a great article in this morning's N&R -- after years of covering the incredible story of the American Hebrew Academy, founder Chico Sabbah, and the drama of his billion-dollar lawsuit loss, she delivers a detailed tour of the school itself. We learn about its curriculum, its physical plant, and student life...well, those of us who get the paper in our driveways learn all this...but the News & Record, possessed of a story of national interest, reported by one of its own, did not post the article online. When Sabbah and his partner lost a $1.1 billion judgement, they didn't post that story, either. What are they afraid of -- that somebody might read it? That papers in NY, LA, and elsewhere might actually follow them in covering the nation's only non-orthodox Jewish boarding school, its secretive founder, and the battle for his fortune? Update: The story was posted at 10 this morning. So maybe I'm too demanding...by some standards...But the paper's posting policy, as noted by David Hoggard in the comments below, remains unclear and inconsistent. And the links rot quickly, and then don't take you to an easy-to-find archive page -- the whole thing could use a rethink. 9:26:31 AM    comment []

"The establishment press sees that money is being raised – they understand that – and they get bits and pieces of the larger story, patting themselves on the back for knowing what a weblog is, maybe even attending a Meetup. But they have been slow to grasp what Trippi, Boyd, Heiferman, and others have accomplished – and what they will accomplish. The real story, the connection of people with politics, facilitated by the Internet, is still not part of the accepted narrative." Today's newspaper column catches Greensboro up on what we learned in San Diego. 9:04:46 AM    comment []