Some members of the DNC Primary Calendar Commission plan to circulate a formal proposal guarding IA and NH's first-in-the-nation stati and add two-to-four caucuses eight days after Iowa, according to commission members...One draft of the plan calls for IA to hold its precinct caucuses on Jan. 14 and for NH to hold its primary on Jan. 29. On Jan. 22, eight days after Iowa, several states would hold caucuses. The plan would also keep the seven days after NH free of events.Likely candidates for the added caucuses are South Carolina, Arkansas, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Delaware.
(via Hotline)
Also, there is now a New Hampshire Primary Blog. The blog is, so far, pretty moronic and juvenile ("The purple theme in the borders of this blog design is my way of saying that New Hampshire can't ever be colored all red or all blue. And you might also notice that I use purplie text to set off anything that is clearly my opinion, not fact"), but it'll probably collect some decent sources.
However, I am a little worried--the author says s/he'll be using The D as their primary source for candidates' Hanover stops. Umm, that's probably not a good idea.
Juvenile? I'll take that as the complement that was no doubt intended. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs for using the D as a source for news reporting early-stage political events in Hanover, what alternative do you suggest? I'll happily use any source that makes itself easy to follow. Like most New Hampshire newspapers, The Valley News doesn't have RSS feeds. (The exceptions that I know of are the D and the Nashua Telegraph.) And from the looks of the Valley News web site, it doesn't look like they're doing much political coverage -- at least at this early stage in the cycle. Is there another daily that provides good coverage of political events in the Upper Valley/Hanover area and does have RSS feeds? I guess it doesn't have to be newspaper, strictly speaking -- and I know there are quite a few bloggers up there but I'm not going to have time to filter through them all. Any particular feeds you recommend? Whatever you recommend, I'm pretty confident in my ability to filter out the reported fact from the spin -- which I assure you I will do with anything I take from the D, the Union Leader, Nashua Telegraph, etc.
Final points... Comments are turned on, so if my own filters occasionally fall short of sorting out the reporting from the sping, you're welcome to point it out. You're also welcome to point out any other flaws, juvenile tendencies, etc. I can take it.
You go for it, dude. I'm sure you'll do a good job. I just hate the color purple. Vehemently.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not that the D spins stories, it's that their coverage is woefully incomplete and often insipid. If the candidate lays out a major policy position, they'll talk about the tone of the speech and what the candidate's tie looked like or something.
But the Valley News isn't much better. I guess I recommend supplementing it with lots of Technorati searches, see if any bloggers caught it and posted on it. Also, try to get in touch with whatever student groups are helping to host the event or with the Rockefeller Center or whoever is hosting it. Rocky may just give you whatever press packages they get.
Purple's not my favorite color either, to tell the truth; but green isn't halfway between red and blue. If you happened to click the link on my previous comment, which goes to my "Power of The Schwartz" blog, you'll see lots of green there.
ReplyDeletePoint taken about the probable lack of depth in the D's coverage. I will watch out for shallowness, and yes... I've got feeds coming in from several blog and news search engines: Ice Rocket, Findory, Feedster, BlogDigger, and a few more. I'm not using Technorati, however, because I don't see an RSS icon on their search results page and Firefox isn't auto-detecting anything either, so it's not clear to me that one actually can subscribe to a search result on Technorati the way one can on many of the other sites. What I really want to point out with respect to the coverage in the D, however, is that while I'd love to live in a world where only the substance of candidates' policy positions matter, that's not the world we live in. I've voted in five New Hampshire primaries, been in the state with the oportunity to attend campaign events and shake hands with a few candidates in six, and picked up commentary from family members living in New Hampshire during a couple of others. I recall my grandmother going on repeatedly about this nice young man from Georgia who kissed her and told her he was running for President back in 1976 -- the salient points for her being that he was nice and that he kissed her. Even the color of a candidate's tie matters. If a candidate were savvy enough, for example, to wear a green tie during a visit to Hanover, I'd give a few points to the D for mentioning it, and I might even give the candidate a few bonus points for having an advance team that knows how to pander to the audience ;-)
P.S. I am supremely embarassed about having misspelled "compliment" right at the beginning fo my previous comment. That one's one of my pet peeves and I can't believe I screwed it up. If blogger lets you, could you clean it up?
good point about the ties. It's easy to approach things as a policy wonk and forget that other people vote too.
ReplyDeleteand sorry, I can't edit other people's comments, i don't think.
please see the following and add your thoughts
ReplyDeletehttp://bly243001.blogspot.com/
that's hilarious. i hope the author posts some more about it--it has a lot of promise.
ReplyDelete