Exciting news- the Houston Chronicle just changed their "Politics" page to " Politics and 2012 election news coverage" page! While this may not seem like a big deal to some, it most certainly has to be for any avid election junkies who are unlucky enough to subscribe to the Chron. That all changed though as the paper finally saddled up their horse and entered the race here. They have seemingly gone out- borrowing every AP article out there (you can't expect them to dedicate their own reporters to covering the election- let's not get crazy here) and having a really fun (yet rudimentary) graphic about possible Vice Presidential candidates. In the list, they include New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and others. The Chron's site does this neat thing where they list all these possibilities, and then gives little blurbs as to why they may be applicable candidates for Romney in November. It is also important to note that the paper has almost completely written off all other candidates but Romney. They have begun to focus their coverage on the upcoming race between President Obama and Governor Romney. With the Municipal Elections and then the Texas Primary coming up both in early and late May respectively, it should be interesting to keep following the paper and watch the continued shift towards more election coverage. I'm most excited for the day that something election-coverage based makes the front page of the website.
Last Thursday, during my normal class time, Allison, Sara (two of my classmates) and I visited WISN-TV, which is Milwaukee's local ABC affiliate station. We were tasked with retrieving public documents detailing how much each candidate spent on campaign commercial spots in Milwaukee. Upon entering, we were greeted in a large lobby by the nice young lady at the front desk. They were very helpful, and more than willing to give us access to their records. Looking around the lobby, it was pretty neat seeing all the history, and awards ( emmy's!) that the station had won. A helpful women escorted us to the area where we could find the public records and walked us through the process of finding the information we needed.
We were tasked with finding dollars spent by SuperPACs at WISN-TV, of which we found two: Restore our Future who backs Mitt Romney, and the Red, White and Blue fund who backed Santorum. The amounts shown spent by each detailed how much more money Romney was able to put into the election, spending nearly $200,000 at WISN-TV alone while Santorum spent just under $60,000.
The experience all in all was very beneficial and it was very neat being able to look through these public records and contracts on campaign dollars spent. We were able to also see the studios in which the news and other
The Chron once again showed it was very good at borrowing stories from the AP. Almost the entirety of the Trayvon Martin murder coverage was AP articles posted on the Houston Chronicle's site. However, I did find a few articles by Chron reporters linking the coverage back to Texas. Apparently the University of Texas student newspaper, the Daily Texan, posted an editorial cartoon depicting the Trayvon Martin case. In the cartoon, the Daily Texan referred to Trayvon Martin as a "colored boy" sparking outrage and protest among many in Texas. The cartoon depicted "a woman in a chair labeled "the media," telling an open-mouthed child, "And then..... the big, bad white man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent colored boy!!" The Chron reporter, Peggy Fikac, was pretty unbiased in her reporting, noting apologies from the cartoonist, the school and gave coverage to the outrage is caused among many. While the cartoon was made to criticize the media's coverage of the event, which the comic clearly thought was biased an unjust, there was a considerable backlash at the University of Texas. Although I do believe the comic is racist, should we be up in arms over it? The first amendment allows for freedom of speech, which is clearly what this cartoonist was using. While I don't agree with her views, I do think it is important that we listen to everybody in this situation, and we do consider both sides of the story. It was a terrible thing what happened to Trayvon Martin, but that should not get in the way of good journalism. A more proper response would be an article focusing on the over-zealous shooter, and perhaps the racism that still exists in America.
Tuesday, our class had the pleasure of hosting Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin. Franklin has been recently brought on by the law school to conduct a political election poll for the upcoming state and federal elections, and to gauge voter identification within the state. While he did not get into his poll at Marquette specifically, Franklin spoke a lot towards his extensive history in polling and the benefits of polling to understand a variety of issues (most notably the upcoming election). Franklin began teaching at Washington University-St. Louis and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having an extensive history in polling, Franklin and a partner started the polling website pollster.com which has since became an entity of the Huffington Post, once they bought it from him. He had some very important and interesting insights unto polling: For one, Franklin stated that polling sponsored and paid for by political candidates, contrary to public opinion, are relatively accurate. Given a 5% margin of error (2.5% each way, Dem-Rep.) the polls were extremely accurate on their trend lines. Polling may differ from the questions asked and the way they are presented however. If a pollster is looking for a specific result, he demonstrated how easy it was to manipulate a poll in order to make it more favorable to that outcome. Franklin noted that the most accurate polls however gauge voter opinion from the most unbiased questions possible. This includes presenting an issue equally and in the most straightforward way. While I was extremely interested in the political polling conducted by Franklin, I did not want to admit to him that at the moment, I'm not all too concerned about his political polls. The most important poll to me at the moment is an Espn.com poll which shows us that 66% of the country thinks Marquette Men's Basketball team will beat the University of Florida's team in the Sweet 16 round of the March Madness tournament. Let's hope these polls are just as accurate as Franklin claims!
I realize that I'm supposed to report about The Houston Chronicle, yet, it seems that all their coverage comes right from the AP. However, I must say, the AP has really stepped up their game for Super Tuesday. The aforementioned interactive graphic on the Chron's website has updated with not only every Super Tuesday election result, but the current standings of each candidate and their delegate count.
The thing that surprised me is, that even articles talking about the South, the Chron didn't even send a reporter to Atlanta, rather opting to use an AP article. The extent to which they used AP articles was obnoxious. I would really appreciate at some point if the Chron political reporters would offer up their own articles on the GOP race, especially
If you are a reader of the Houston Chronicle, I'm hard-pressed to believe you even know there is a primary election afoot. The Chron has once again surpassed my expectations on how poorly they can report on an election. For starters, their homepage has absolutely nothing about elections, or for that matter- politics. You have to go under the "news" tab to navigate to the " politics" page. Here, you will find a pretty cool graphic that the site borrowed from the AP detailing the race and candidates. However, they must have paid through the nose with this one, because it has been a center-piece (and really their only) coverage of the election since my last post. They have updated the races, detailing how each candidate did in Arizona and Michigan, but aside from that it remains much the same. As far as looking towards " Super Tuesday" the Chron is a little mixed up between the election and "Fat Tuesday". Below is one of the many pictures that pops up when you type in "Super Tuesday" in the seach box on their website. Well, at least we know what the priorities are for the people of Houston. Congrats Houston Chronicle, you've done it.
I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Social Media Editor Sharif Durhams the other day. Sharif was a wild guy, with many interesting facets to his work. Just a brief checklist of his duties: 1. News blog 2. Main twitter account: Newshub3. Direct use of twitter account above 4. Direct use of facebook page5. Developing Google+ account Sharif also expressed an interest in looking into various ways the newspaper could use pinterest to tell stories. Sharif had some interesting insight unto the evolution of journalism (spoiler alert: it involves social media!) and how news consumers could interact with the stories. He explained that people have different expectations from their news outlets now. No longer are the days where journalists would write a story, send it out print it and walk away. Media is now a two-way street, and consumers and journalists alike should expect to interact on a daily basis. As news travels faster, people need to be able to interact with it and each other in an open and meaningful way, in order to create a conversation. Social media is now ushering in a new era of citizen journalism and democratization and conversation on a huge level, which is pretty awesome. Social media allows for the ultimate Republic in that citizenry is always connected. I believe this is shown furthermore in the " Arab spring" we are seeing in the middle-east and Africa, and the revolution of young people who are finally able to converse and interact in an open forum. As journalists, Sharif explained, it is our duty to figure out how people are continuing to take in this information and stay ahead of it so we can cultivate that forum for discussion. Furthermore, this explosion of social media is interesting in the constructs of political election. Sharif brought about the example of Gov. Scott Walker, and how he used his twitter ( @ScottKWalker) so effectively during the campaign. He mentioned how it was clear that he was the one twittering and that it really drove home and allowed people to feel connected to the guy. On the other hand, my guy Tom Barrett may have not even known he had a twitter ( @Barrett4WI) when it was pretty evident he did none of his own twittering, like this tweet which tells how he's just "wrapping up my speech" while he had a picture of him doing an interview.
It's funny how fast political elections change: time to catch up there Tommy.
Thanks,
Keivn
Side-note: I'd like to apologize to Dr. Lowe, I really tried to embed that tweet into this post, but it's a lot harder to do than I thought. I may need a quick seminar in that again.
Looking through my recent blog posts (see below), I have come to one undeniable conclusion; I'm not a great blogger. This is not to say I think I'm a bad writer, I don't have much to say via my blog, or that I cannot become a good blogger; I just haven't hit my stride yet. But for you, my Kevin Hogan faithful out there, I'm going to make a few promises going forward for this blog: 1. I'm going to blog for you.No more are the days of blogging for my JOUR 4953 class (although my posts may be an assignment from that class). I will blog so that my multitude of fans out there can read, understand and know where I'm coming from on my coverage of the current election. 2. My voice will dominate the blog. Going hand-in-hand with blogging towards my audience, I think it's important to include my personal writing style and let you get a feel for me. My writing will no longer be stiff, it will no longer be like reading a history report, rather it will be like having a conversation with me. A grammatically correct conversation with me. 3. I'm going to care what I'm writing about, and not be afraid to be controversial. I'm going to ensure that The Houston Chronicle is the most doggone interesting paper in the world, for better or for worse. I'm not going to be easy on it, but rather I want to and I want you to understand what this paper is all about. The more I care about the writing, the better writing it will be and the more I hope you will care about reading my blog. Usually I'd include some sort of picture or more links here, but this is the "Kevin Hogan manifesto for a better blog" so I didn't feel it was appropriate. But in the future, expect links and pictures galore. Sincerely, Kevin Hogan
The Houston Chronicle was all over the primary races in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado Tuesday night and Wednesday reporting a big win for Rick Santorum in every race. While much of their coverage was from the AP, The Chron covered the race very in-depth, focusing anywhere from Santorum's huge day, to the implications of the race for Romney and Gingrich. The paper also had an article entitled "Paul says results help him rack up delegates" giving Paul's reaction to the big decision for him in the Minnesota primary race. The best feature to date on the race is an interactive timeline borrowed from the AP that the paper has on its site. The timeline breaks down each of the big three candidate's polictical history, and their momentum up until this point. It also highlights the results of the Feb. 7th contests, as well as gives the figures for their individual POLs and PACs. The timeline pins all of these as well as where each candidate stands on the issues, and shows how well each have performed in various debates up until this point. It is an extremely helpful interactive guide allowing any reader to be up-to-date on the current GOP field and the race as it stands.
Once again the Houston Chronicle is lacking in their coverage of the GOP Florida debate. The most compelling interactive features in a news segment was from a borrowed AP report. These features were little more than video clips from the debate that one could jump from various parts of the debate. On each of these videos, commentating was provided by an AP reporter.
Since much of the subject matter of the debate was about immigration, the Chron published a number of articles in Spanish, including one which headline read, " Romney, a la ofensiva en último debate en Florida." These sections of the debate seemed to hold enormous importance in the reporting done by the Chron as I have yet to see so many Spanish-language articles published prior
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