Showing posts with label Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2008

re Journalism, Reporters as heroes in film, Blogs about Media Buyouts and Layoffs

1940 film classic His Girl Friday with dream team of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, a film which I've seen, conservatively, about four dozen times.
Info at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032599/
Trailer at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=102055&titleId=206


So, given that a story that I'm referencing below involves newspaper layoffs, guess I hardly need tell you there's a Medill angle to the story. http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/
I think there's a federal law to that effect now because of a provision inserted secretly into the financial bailout bill last week, requiring a Medill p.o.v. on any media story about newspaper layoffs.
(Local South Florida Medill grads include Evan Benn and Breanne Gilpatrick of the Herald, and Jordana Mishory of the Daily Business Review.)

Sorta like the one that requires all Florida media organizations to quote Susan McManus of USF ad nauseum. Or, in WIOD's case, twice an hour all day -as they did Tuesday.

Did you miss these recent McManus pearls of wisdom:

Undecideds could decide presidential race Florida Today, FL - Oct 5, 2008
"Obviously, they're the swing voters," University of South Florida political science professor Susan McManus said. "You've got two hurdles to jump with them ...

HIGHER SENIORITY: Older voters have clout Anderson Herald Bulletin, IN - Sep 27, 2008
“Despite the media’s focus on the youth vote, the most influential voters in the McCain-Obama
matchup are likely to have some gray hair,” said Susan McManus
So, am I wrong in saying that she has had every single demographic you can think of as the election game-changer?

McManus is the Bob Shrum of Pol. Sci profs turned analysts.
She's no Larry Sabato! !!!
See http://people.virginia.edu/~ljs/ and be sure to check out Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, which features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races: http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/
There's only one prescient political crystal ball in working order these days and Prof. Sabato has it.
Honestly, is everyone at WIOD a dopey Miami college student getting credit for those jokes they call regular newscasts? It sure seems that way. They run the same audio over and over and over...
They're positively unbearable, worse than ever.

Before you scroll down any farther, read this great blast-from-the-past from a TIME magazine cover story and guess when it was written:
"What's interesting about the current explosion of news is that it has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the amount of news gathering.
Over the past few years, in fact, cost cutting at the networks and many major newspapers has reduced the number of correspondents digging up stories around the country and the world."


The answer is at the bottom of this post.

Speaking of Medill, http://www.northwestern.edu/features/snapshots/ a place that I came to know and truly appreciate when I was living, learning and loving in Evanston, hard by Lake Michigan http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/pan/ and becoming friends with so many of their students, faculty and administrators, here's a site full of great media blogs that you might want to consider bookmarking for future use: http://blognetwork.poynter.org/media/

(To repeat what I wrote Tuesday: I watched the Dolphins' 1985 MNF win over the undefeated Bears wearing my Dolphins cap and the Bears mauling of the Patriots in the Super Bowl at the Norris Student Union at Northwestern with my friends at Medill and Kellogg, the same place I watched the Shuttle Challenger disaster live from the very beginning on ABC-TV.)

It's worse than sad, it's tragic really that none of the South Florida-based foundations has ever thought to have the good sense to fund anything approaching either the necessity, scope or quality of Medill Reports in order to keep the myriad bureaucrats on their toes: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/govt/.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/govt/aboutus.aspx

About Us
For the People…around Chicago is a project launched in the spring of 2008 by the Medill News Service to merge in depth reporting with social networking. For years, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism has reported on news and affairs through affiliations between Medill’s graduate journalism program and news organizations throughout the world. We still do that with a flourish through Medill Reports Chicago and Medill Reports Washington.
This project attempts to expand our universe, or more importantly, to create linkages beyond news organizations to groups that have a particular interest in an issue. That enables our stories to continue to be a part of the ongoing conversation about that issue. We cover stories that examine what’s working and what’s not around Chicago. We are well aware that news organizations, including Medill, tend to move on to the next issue, and then another one. Our work gets buried in the flow of continuing events, and those groups and individuals who stay with an issue can feel abandoned.

What we hope to do with this project is to become more connected with you; the network of groups and people who invest in particular issues. Any stories we cover are available to you to redistribute over the web, to republish in your newsletters or other material, to link to from your website, or to embed directly onto your site. Only one proviso; that you credit us with the stories so people know we’re involved. If you are an organization or individual or blog that cares about the issues we cover, let us know so we can link back to you to enhance the network.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/

It would be great to have Larry Lebowitz of the Herald as a field general and Gabriel at Transit Miami as his trusted aide-de-camp ready to unleash their smart, savvy eager beaver reporters at FDOT like a kamikaze squad, forcing the ever-elusive FDOT Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos to finally make a public appearance in South Florida where she's made to answer questions from actual taxpayers, not the industry/trade types, per her usual MO.

And when I think about what such a squad of eager reporters could've done to the Miami-Dade School Board years ago to ferret out the real facts on the $100K crowd that Rudy Crew sought to inoculate himself with, as well as hammer the sclerotic legion of bad teachers and cranky administrators, it literally my heart skips a beat.

By the way, after having missed it many times on Turner Classic Movies over the past 20 years, I finally caught 1952's The Captive City on TCM.

See http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=17060 and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044476/
It was great to once again see the under-appreciated John Forsythe, always so good in almost everything he was in, and a former baseball broadcaster, to boot, cast here as a small-town newspaper editor trying to battle organized crime getting its tentacles into everything he holds dear about his town, and later testifying at the Kefauver Hearings.
(Always wanted to say 'get their tentacles' in a sentence.)

Afterwards, with some time left on my videotape, as I was leaving for an errand, if you can believe this, per a recent conversation of many months ago with a reporter friend, I was almost able to tape Ace in the Hole for her right afterwards.
That's the great 1951 Kirk Douglas film, him as the world-weary once-promising reporter needing a fresh start, and lucking into a great story in a New Mexico cave-in and positively milking it dry -by hook or by crook. The first time I saw it was part of a double feature with Sweet Smell of Success at an art house, probably in Chicago.

Trailer at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=154055&titleId=613826 Warning: It's loud at the beginning!

http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=186689&titleId=613826

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=613826

When I got back home, the videotape had ended ten minutes before the film was over!
Ugh!
I hate when that happens.

It replays on TCM at Tuesday 10/28/2008 10:00 PM , Friday 11/07/2008 2:30 PM , and Tuesday 12/09/2008 9:30 AM
Catch it if at all possible!

I still have it on another videotape somewhere, but that blew my idea of giving her a tape that had something like 3-4 really great newspaper/crime movies on them that she probably never saw in college, where she began her rise as a tough-talking, wise-cracking, crime-fighting/reporter with a nose for news at a school noted for turning out real journalists, not stenographers.
A real-life Hildy Johnson.

Finally, to reprise a story as old as crime and statistics, witness the logical result of fudging crime statistics, Baltimore-style -a murdered former councilman.
Shades of HOMICIDE: Life in The Street!
I found it while looking for results on Girls High School Field Hockey to see how my niece's excellent team, had done.
Baltimore City Paper
October 8, 2008
Media Circus
Taking Things Personally Focusing On Personalities--and Their Bodies--in the Sun's New Look
by Martin L. Johnson

On Sept. 1, Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer published a column on Sarah Palin, the mercurial Republican candidate for vice president.

Published at the crescendo of the first wave of Palinmania, the column (tellingly titled "A Woman--But Why This Woman?") was highly critical of the Palin selection, which Reimer suggested was made to kowtow to special-interest groups on the right.

"I thought it was a natural topic for me," Reimer says in a phone interview. "She billed herself as a hockey mom, and I have billed myself as a soccer mom all these years. As the column clearly shows, I was very animated on the topic, personally and professionally."

But Reimer, who has been writing columns for the Sun for 16 years, wasn't ready for what happened next. The day after her column appeared, the Drudge Report, which gets close to 30 million site visits daily, linked to it as an example of media criticism of the Palin pick. Then the deluge started.

To see the rest of this story, which includes lots of info on http://www.tellzell.com/ , go to: http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=16827
--------------------------
Baltimore City Paper
September 2, 2008
Media Circus
Media Bias Blogs Tell the Story Behind Sun Buyouts and Changes
By Martin L. Johnson

The redesigned Baltimore Sun is more than just a pretty face. Even casual readers of the paper can't help but notice that sections have been cut and some of the paper's familiar bylines no longer appear.

But behind the scenes, journalists at the Sun and other papers owned by the Tribune Co. have launched an angry (if only online) revolt against staff layoffs, management decisions, and what they see as a wholesale dismantling of the Chicago-based company's newspapers.

To see the rest of the story, see: http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=16235

To see other great media stories like the above , go to the Media Circus archives at
-------------------------------------------------------
So my earlier question was to guess, more or less, when the following saw the light of day:

"What's interesting about the current explosion of news is that it has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in the amount of news gathering. Over the past few years, in fact, cost cutting at the networks and many major newspapers has reduced the number of correspondents digging up stories around the country and the world."

The title featured the headline:
The News Wars
Print! Cable! The Internet!
We're being bombarded by information, gossip and commentary as never before. Is more news good news.

It's from TIME magazine of October 21, 1996

Saturday, August 23, 2008

2 Hillary Visits in South Florida, 3 Different Media Views; Biden anecdotes

Saturday August 23rd, 2008 2 a.m.

When I saw the three news headlines below, I thought back to those little nuggets I used to love seeing in The New Republic in the early '90's -back when they were riding the waves of so many interesting stories before anyone else in Washington- showing wildly varying headlines for the same story.

That was back when I used to read TNR cover-to-cover and would run into Ruth Shalit all the time as she made her way up TNR's masthead, yet still used her Princeton ID card to write checks at the Borders Books on 18th and L Street, N.W., where I worked in the evenings during the week after my day job.

In retrospect, as I've written here before, I think I had a bit of a crush on her, because she could turn on the wit and charm in a nano-second, and could draw you out almost against your will.

See my previous post on Ruth Shalit from South Beach Hoosier on February 17th, NBC's David Gregory's Super Tuesday brain fart; Michelle Cottle the bore; Ruth Shalit is a charmer!http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/02/david-gregorys-super-tuesday-brain-fart.html

Having lived in Chicago and Evanston for a few years not too long before I met Shalit, whom I'd constantly run into all over D.C., esp. between K Street and Dupont Circle, I found her 1993 TNR cover story on one-and-done Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun devastatingly accurate!

Other reporters I knew in Washington, esp. those assigned to Capitol Hill, told me at the time that they marveled at the column's power, sweeping away all the senator's alibis and excuses so deliciously and completely.

Many of them were pre-disposed to like her, but they found her so un-prepared for office that it shook them up that someone like her could become a senator for a big state like Chicago.

See Shalit's interesting essay on pp. 38-43 of POLITICIANS AND ETHICS
http://www.apubb.ro/Documents/Ringsmuth/Cozic_Politicians_and_Ethics.pdf

(Since I mentioned the bookstore, I should say here publicly that by far THE friendliest media personality who was a frequent Borders customer was the late Jack Smith of ABC News, son of the legendary Howard K. Smith. He was very un-assuming and couldn't have been nicer! I was very sad at the time to hear that he'd died of pancreatic cancer, just as NFLPA head Gene Upshaw did on Wednesday. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jpsmith.htm )

New York Times, August 21, 2008
At Rally, Finding Clinton's Aid to Obama Too Tepid
By Damien Cave
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/us/politics/22clinton.html

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, August 21, 2008
headline above newspaper masthead: Hillary Clinton fires up Democrats in South Florida
headline on story, front page of local section: Stumping for Obama, Clinton calls for unity
By Mark Hollis and Lisa Huriash
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbclinton0822xsbaug22,0,3207003.story

7th paragraph from above reads as follow: (my emphasis in red)
"Obama campaigners were looking to sway minds at Thursday's events. But in characterizing her party as steadfast for Obama, Clinton came across to some of her supporters as overly optimistic. Several said after Clinton's speeches that they know many local Democrats and independents who aren't convinced Obama has the credentials they demand in a president."

So which is it, tepid or overly optimistic?

Miami Herald, August 21, 2008 headline on page 5A: Clinton stumps for Obama in South Florida by Beth Reinhard http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/652652.html

Meanwhile, at midnight, the lead headline at the Herald's website,
http://www.miamiherald.com/ is Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html

I could prove to be wrong -though I doubt it- but I'd be willing to bet that the headline in the actual newspaper will be different in a few hours.
The Herald typically only uses the word "left" in their stories or headlines about Latin America. That's the list!

By the way, pre-Neil innock, I was a Joe Biden supporter in '87, after having written a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Robert Bork confirmation hearings and being surprised to receive a note from him.
Later I received a printed copy of the hearings, which were great to re-read Bork's brilliant points, even the ones I disagreed with.

Over the years that I lived in Washington, I eventually wound up with a complete copy of all the Judiciary Committee SCOTUS nomination hearings from Bork onwards towards 2003.
That included the questionnaire they had to answer, which were fascinating reading on morning Metro rides into downtown D.C.!

To set the scene the day I left on Super Tuesday 1988, let me quote from my January 12th, 2008 South Beach Hoosier post:

http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-heels-of-jim-leyritz-arrest-another.html
As it happens, back in the days when he was talking and acting more like a DLC Democrat than the person he's become since then, in 1988 I defied South Florida's supposed Democratic CW (conventional wisdom) about the electability of Michael Dukakis and voted for Al Gore during the FL primary on Super Tuesday, March 8th. (Gore's senior thesis at Harvard was on "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency.")

After voting, I promptly drove up to Washington, listening to election returns on the radio throughout the South on my drive up, which had been my game plan all along. Lots and lots of Charlotte's WBT and Nashville's flamethrower, WLAC, as well as many smaller stations reporting local races with just as much drama, intrigue and backbiting as farther up on the ballot. Lots of talk about whether Gore would be able to win in northern states!

Mostly, they were the very same radio stations I'd always listened to for American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (AT40) during its heyday, so I was a veritable walking-talking Billboard hit list by the time my drive north ended, just as I'd been on my drives down here and back from Indiana for spring break. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Top_40 and http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/index.jsp )

(jingle and lines that are always in my head on long droves by myself)

"Casey's Coast-to-Coast!"

"Hi, I'm Casey Kasem on American Top 40, coming to you on great radio stations like...

We're counting down the top hits...

Now on with the countdown!...

When Sen. Biden entered Walter Reed Hospital because of the brain aneurysms, I wrote him a letter expressing my thoughts and concerns, thanking him for his kindness months before and sent along a (new) cassette of one of my favorite and most relaxing albums, featuring lots of Gershwin, so that he could listen to it in his hospital room when nobody was around.

A while later, after he was back on the Senate floor, completely out-of-the blue, I received a wonderfully penned Thank You note from his wife, Jill, a school teacher, which was about as classy as you could possibly ever imagine, especially given the awful circumstances.
That really hit me hard.

As it will otherwise continue to occupy space in my long-term memory, I wanted to share the previously meaningless trivia that after the Biden campaign office moved out of their office over on C Street, N.E., the next tenant was the Church of Scientology.

Given the late breaking news about his selection and where Biden will be in a few hours -Springfield- where Barack Obama made his formal presidential declaration, not far from the original law office of Lincoln and Herndon, http://www.online-springfield.com/sites/lhlaw.html , it's semi-ironic to me that Biden's '88 campaign office was just 2-3 blocks north of Lincoln Park.

Over the years I was living and working in the Washington area, because of my job and my own interests, I was probably at well over one hundred Senate Judiciary or Foreign Affairs Committee hearing where Joe Biden was either the Chair or the Ranking Member, and at everyone, regardless of the topic, he was always well-prepared, voluble and funny.
The latter may prove more helpful than ever over the coming months, as I think it stands in stark contrast to Obama's self-evident thin-skin.
A sense of humor is something you have to acquire by hook or by crook if you're serious about spending any time in Washington getting tangible results for the country.

I'm still going to be for McCain in November because of the experience gap and the personality of Obama, but I have a strong feeling that David Broder's great column from 1988 on Biden's potential political future will be re-read a lot in coming days, with references to it appearing in all the usual places in Washington, print and electronic.

I have it somewhere in a folder with my small circular red, white and blue campaign button that simply says, "Joe."

I'll try to post it here in the next few days.
-----------------------------
http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/654325.html
CAMPAIGN '08
Democrats on the verge of a sharp turn to left
Two days before their party's national convention, Democrats are more liberal than at any time in a generation.
------------------------------
As a bonus, I'll leave you all to consider this excerpt from UVA (University of Virginia) prof Larry J. Sabato's typically insightful essay from his 1991 book Feeding Frenzy, titled The Media Should Not Sustain Rumors About Politicians, which was selected for inclusion in the aforementioned POLITICIANS AND ETHICS.
It seems even more timely given the news of a few hours ago.

The 1988 Presidential Campaign
• When Michael Dukakis's campaign sent out the "attack video" that torpedoed Joseph Biden's candidacy, Richard Gephardt at first received the blame.
Private speculation about the identity of the perpetrator was unavoidable, but when the conventional wisdom fingered Gephardt and this conclusion seeped into print—as it did almost everywhere—the Missouri congressman's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was dealt a body blow. Gephardt's 1988 press secretary, Don Foley, offered this assessment:

It did us a lot of damage. Up until that time Dick Gephardt was viewed by most people as someone who would not engage in dirty campaigning, and he had a Boy Scout image. But this incident painted him as somebody who was a bit overanxious for the prize;
in the eyes of a lot of people this took the shine off of the Gephardt aura.

Even when Dukakis's staff was revealed to be behind Biden's troubles, the tarnish seemed to stick to Gephardt's image.

See also Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball, http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/
which I've been subscribing to and reading -and found invaluable- for years since my days living in the Washington area.
And it's FREE.
It's conveniently on the Hallandale Beach Blog link list, too, n'est-ce que pas?
Oui!

"A comprehensive Web site run by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball features analyses of presidential elections, Senate, House and gubernatorial races."