SLIGHT SIGNS OF CHANGE

The sad state of election coverage in this country and the U.S. has long been decried by the public and the media, although journalists have never done much but whine about it.

Everyone knows the weaknesses: treating campaigns as horse races, replacing the coverage of issues with poll coverage (it's cheap and easy), and using "objectivity" as a cover to continue with meaningless he said-she said coverage.

In his latest essay, Jay Rosen (he doesn't blog, he writes) points to some faint rumblings of change.

Rosen reports that NY Times reporter Adam Nagourney will cover tomorrow's U.S. Presidential debate by watching it and writing about what happens during the debate. What he won't be doing is joining the rest of the media, post debate, in the spin rooms. That's where Democratic and Republican operatives attempt to convince the media (and will, if experience is a teacher, have some effect) in telling the press what really happened.

Rosen makes a great point:

Spin Alley's most remarkable feature over all years of development has never been the spin itself, which keeps getting more extreme, but the voluntary nature of the space and proceedings. You [journalists] elected to be spun by going there in the first place. The press crowd co-produced its own degradation.

It would be great if this really did mark the start of a change in election coverage. I'm skeptical, though. We seem to hear the complaints, and see faint rays of hope that there will be changed, during every election campaign. Two, three, four years later, elections roll around again and it's journalism as usual.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly, helps explain why change is needed:

In 2000, for example, most viewers thought Al Gore did fine, but over the following week, as more and more journalists jumped on board the spin bandwagon, opinion finally morphed and Gore's performance was officially declared dismal. Expect more of the same this year as reporters start talking to each other after the show and adopting each others' views out of fear that they've missed the crucial storyline that everyone else picked up on.

10:34:40 PM    

TWO MORE CLICHÉS...

...to mercilessly hunt down. Banned for Life, Tom Mangan's occasional blog on phrases that need to be voted off the planet, passes on two from Liz Evans, a York Dispatch crime reporter.

She nominates just turning his/her life around, which seems to pop up regularly in articles about bad guys who are gunned down, and went awry.

Both are great candidates to be added the list of Words That Should Never Appear in My Copy.

10:12:03 PM    

CONTROL ROOM REMINDER

Just saw a commercial that reminded me that CBC Newsworld is rebroadcasting the excellent document The Control Room this Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern, which I presume translates at 7 p.m. Pacific (check program schedule to be sure).

It's worth setting aside the time for the film, which looks at Al-Jazeera during the opening of the attack on Iraq.

9:57:26 PM    

HIP-HOP POLITICS

Let's scare them with our votes. Let's use that tactic. When you start seeing the bling-bling and the 24s pull up at the precinct...you see home boys comin' out and baby mamas and all that stuff comin' out...let's scare them with our vote.

That sounds better than it reads, which is the point of this post, which is to point you to a piece of a solid piece of journalism at The Washington Post, Hip-hop Dreams.

The report is straight video: three, two-minute-and-change chapters, delving into a hip-hop voter registration drive in Florida. It's a great documentary, far better, in fact, than most of the "special reports" you see on the nightly news.

SOURCE: Interactive Narratives.

9:51:05 PM    

SHOOTING HURRICANES

Melissa Lyttle is a name you've read here a time or two, as a contributor of items to A Photo A Day. Her "day job" is staff photographer with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and it's in that capacity that Lyttle is featured in an interview at American Photojournalist.

The interview, which ends with a great selection of Lyttle's photographs, is about what it's like to shoot the hurricane's that have rampaged across Florida over the last month or so. Sample quote:

In all situations, it's important for us to remember that we're human beings first and photojournalists second. Empathy and humility go along way. I always approach people and introduce myself, shake their hand, look into their eyes and then ask if it's OK for me to be there. And I usually know right away whether or not someone is OK with my presence, mainly through body language and other non verbal clues. But at no time during the hurricane coverage was I ever told "No." People are incredible sometimes, opening their lives up to you in times of need. I was even told by some of the people I photographed during Charley, Frances and Ivan was that my presence was important for them -- it was their way to be able to validate what it their feeling and experiencing. I think that's an incredible thing to be able to share with someone and do for someone.

A nice interview, and a good look at some of what takes to work as a photojournalist in trying times.

NOTE: I hadn't come across American Photojournalist before. Worthwhile site for shooters: it's bookmark worthy.

SOURCE: A Photo a Day.

9:15:27 AM