Subterranean Homepage News

By Sheila Lennon

Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!

July 31, 2004, 1:35 a.m. -- Last week's weblog

Stories I meant to blog and just plain forgot. Boston Police to Retain New Search and Surveillance Powers; attorney and convention blogger Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft foresaw this.(link fixed! arrgh)

Dan Rather: "Finally, there was a man on stage tonight who proved he is ready to be president—and his name was Willie Nelson. For my money, any man who can sing “Living In The Promised Land” like that merits serious consideration. "

GOP apologizes over voting flier; glossy mailer warns against touch-screens:

An embarrassed state Republican Party apologized Thursday for a GOP campaign brochure that urged voters to use absentee ballots, undermining efforts by Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood to inspire confidence in new touch-screen voting machines.

The blogosphere will be bubbling for weeks now with fallout, analysis and afterthoughts from the convention bloggers and we who covered them. Read at your leisure.

Bloggers, journalists and transparency: Show your biases.

In the blogging world, anyone producing an online diary or Web site that collects commentary from around the Internet is supposed to let everyone know his or her politics. The theory: Web surfers need to know bloggers' biases to understand their motivations. -- Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

There's a war of sorts between bloggers and "mainstream media," but I think bloggers are absolutely right on this point. A blog is just a form, one anybody can use. Even mainstream journalists, obviously.

Here are two examples that argue for transparency from both sides of the lines:

1. Teresa Heinz Kerry: Rod Dreher wrote this unsigned editorial for the Dallas Morning News (The Better Halves? reg.req.):

Ever called your spouse "my better half"? We're not sure that the term applies to Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards, but a pretty good case could be made that the wives of the Democratic nominees are the more interesting halves of their marriages.

While the headline from yesterday's convention was John Edwards' "hope is on the way" speech, the impressions left by Mesdames Kerry and Edwards were what many ordinary folks were buzzing about.

There's no denying that the multilingual, Mozambique-born Mrs. Kerry is a most exotic flower, a political wife who cannot conceal her disdain for the conventions of political wifedom. She's extraordinarily wealthy, full of fierce opinions and not the least bit shy about expressing them. When her first husband died, Mrs. Kerry threw herself into public-spirited philanthropy, particularly concerning women's issues and the environment.

Some find Mrs. Kerry's unconventional attitude a kick in the pants, but after her address to the convention earlier this week, we wonder how she'll play in Peoria. The political commentator Andrew Sullivan picked up on a potential problem with Mrs. Kerry, suggesting that like many extremely rich people, she may have gone so long without having to worry about the opinions of others that she may have ceased to care. She'd better watch this.

It's hard to think of a downside to Elizabeth Edwards....

Rod then posted what he really thinks both on the DMN editorial blog (sorry, no permalinks) and on The Corner, a group blog at the conservative National Review Online:

MADAME KERRY [Rod Dreher]
My first take on Teresa Evita Rodham Streisand Lady MacKerry was: I like this dame. She's an exotic flower, a loose cannon, a firecracker. She'll say anything, and I bet she smells good. Give us more of her, please. And then I realized that I can afford to think that way, because I'm not voting for her husband, and because I'm a newspaper pundit who always appreciates good copy. I stopped to think how her speech must have come off to my folks sitting at home in small-town Louisiana. They were probably making "Green Acres" jokes, and wondering if they could stand listening to that condescending rich rhymes-with-witch for four years. No sir, I don't think Madame played in Peoria.
Posted at 12:23 AM

I wrote to Rod Dreher and invited him to comment, addressing specifically constraints and restraints, different voices, etc.

Here's the germane portion of his reply. (We exchanged several branching emails, but I want to keep going in a straight line here.):

The difference is that the editorial was unsigned, and represents the opinion of the editorial board, after our discussion. I had the assignment to write it, and it did not wholly reflect my view, which is the view I expressed in that Corner post (and on the DMN blog, on which I posted this viewpoint almost simultaneously).... Besides having to reflect a consensus view, which often shaves edges off opinions, we have to be more formal when writing editorials, and speak with a more institutional voice. Editorials are less fun to read than blogs. But I think the DMN blog is a useful tool for readers because if they visit it regularly, they can clearly see the biases of the writers who contribute to the editorials we publish.

The "Madame Kerry" post tells us far more about Rod (and his mom) than about Teresa Heinz Kerry. And, on the DMN blog, readers pushed back (think "dueling moms.")

Newspaper readers, of course, just got the smoothed-out, unsigned editorial that reflected no one's actual opinion.*

I would much rather have seen Rod's short, signed blog post in the paper, accompanied by the actual signed opinions of the other members of the board for whom he was pulling punches in the name of the "editorial we."

That sort of transparency might help out sagging newspaper circulation figures as well.

*(Traditionally, the editorial page reflects the opinion of the publisher, but these days it's more of an institutional opinion. The corporate publisher may not have deep knowledge or a strong point of view on every issue the board writes about.)

The photo of the Kerrys is from AP.

2. Interview With an Anarchist recounts convention blogger Dave Johnson's encounter with a protester (I've excerpted, there's more there.):

I just interviewed a young man named Ricky, who says to use the last name "Fight Capitalism!" He's from New Jersey. He's one of two holding a banner that says, "MAKE KERRY WALK THE PLANK". He's wearing a mask....

...Ricky: "There's really no difference that matters. Both support the war. Both probably support the draft. They are both funded by the corporate elite. Both of the party campaigns are financed by the corporate elite."...

I asked about the Dean campaign, funded by lots of people giving small donations.

Ricky: "That's really cool, the whole idea."...

...It happens that I KNOW some of the major funders of the Democrats, both from a past life as a Silicon Valley person, and from my day job, which is trying to help start organizations that will be a "Progressive infrastructure" to counter the massive communications/propaganda machine that the Right has in place, that is much of the reason they have become so successful in elections. (For more info on this, please read this transcript of my recent talk at the national Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) convention. Get past the parts that are specifically about trial lawyers -- this is happening to ALL of us!)

I am sure that Ricky would be very surprised to learn that when I talk to people who are major funders of the party, (I was talking to one ten minutes before I met Ricky), they pretty much agree with him that the corporate influence is a danger to people and to our democracy. They are all VERY concerned about what is happening! This is WHY they are funding Kerry and the Democrats! Think about this, if they wanted corporate rule in America, wouldn't they just put their money into Bush at this point? What would be the POINT of giving money to the Democrats NOW if you want more, not less, corporate influence over our government?

So the question is, how do the Democrats get the word out to people like Ricky?

I also understand how Ricky feels. I used to be a Green. I realized it was a mistake.

Others looking for a story probably ran into Ricky, and maybe photographed him. But the "value added" Dave brings to this post from his own experience elevates it beyond, "Look at this guy."

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Bloggers Come to the Zoo - And Discover They're the Ones on Display: This savvy first-day post by Brian Montopoli at Campaign Desk has two thoughts that stand alone:

But the real story was the bloggers themselves, who were treated like a cross between contest winners, celebrities, and caged animals.

and this, from the "Bloggers Breakfast" -- whose featured speakers were Howard Dean, Barack Obama and legendary Associated Press reporter Walter Mears, enticed out of retirement at age 69 to blog. It's a sadder commentary on the nature of the new old-boy network:

At one point, Mears, who started a blog yesterday for the AP, said that by the end of the week he hoped he'd be accepted as a blogger himself. At the table in front of me, a blogger laughed, shook his head, and mouthed to the man next to him, "No, you won't."

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Kerry's speech: Emotional response: There's a lot of lip-flapping out there today. I'm not going to add to the analysis. Now it all plays out till we take that snapshot on Nov. 2.

I was happy for the swiftboat veterans who could tell their grandchildren they stood behind Kerry at that moment in history. (Shoot, their grandchildren might even have watched.)

I was happy for Max Cleland, photographed with them by AP at right, who seemed happy himself to be giving that barnburner of a speech.

I liked it that some folks gathered in their hometowns got their moment on TV, too. I can imagine them excitedly calling all the cousins and telling the folks at work to watch them.

My 20-something daughter, watching with me, giggled at one point in Kerry's speech, "Nuclear. He said, "Nu-cle-ar," she said.

And we both laughed.

I can see the signs now: "No More Nucular!"
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How to start blogging: Does all this make you want to blog? The easy, free way to dip your toe in is Blogger, bought recently by Google.

Blogcritics: Free CDs for bloggers: There are a few perks to being a blogger, and the possibility of joining Blogcritics.org is one that offers more than just a way to get your blog noticed.

I'm running up against the 8 p.m. deadline when this blog gets sent out, so I'm going to pass on the url and an email from Eric Olsen, who founded Blogcritics. (When he was getting started, some of us liked the idea and cross-posted some of our reviews there, so Eric and I go back.):

Perhaps you remember the original concept of Blogcritics.org: "free CDs for bloggers."

Blogcritics (515 members, 17,000 entries, 70,000 comments) celebrates its 2nd anniversary in August, and as it turned out, we were way ahead of our time: the concept that record companies, DVD distributors, book publishers, etc would provide review material for bloggers was met with slack jaws from the companies, who barely knew what blogs were, let alone saw them as valuable marketing outlets.

Now things have changed - blogs are hot, people are aware of them. We have a system in place whereby review material from dozens of labels, publicists, publishers, concert promoters, DVD distributors, movie studios, etc are now available to our members, free of charge. We only ask that they be reviewed. Our review material database has almost 500 items listed and only about half of them have been claimed by our members. New material is added daily.

We truly now do provide "free stuff for bloggers." We are actively looking to increase our membership. We would love for you to join Blogcritics and/or tell your readers about our new review material program. Free stuff is good - everyone wins. More info on the program and joining Blogcritics here.

We have also added a special Election 2004 section, where we will collect our ongoing, omni-partisan election coverage.

If you haven't checked out Blogcritics in a while, now would be a great time.

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Have a great summer weekend, all.

July 29, 2004, 7:03 p.m. -- Last week's weblog

Providence Journal/Richard Michael Pruitt

Willie Nelson runs through the song he will be singing tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

 

Did you miss a convention speech others are talking about? The videos are all here, organized by day, ready to watch whenever you are.

A convention chat: Ted Koppel and Jon Stewart: This was a conversation, partly humorous, and the point is one that needs making: Showing both sides is not enough if you just let them lie there unchallenged.

Cory Bergman at LostRemote wrote,

While eating breakfast with reporters in Boston on Monday, Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) accused the media of being "stage managed." Now Nightline's Ted Koppel asks Stewart some tough questions about his role on The Daily Show. What follows is a partial transcript of an incredible (and oddly serious) interview:

... STEWART: (Suppose) I'm a news anchor. Remember this is bizarro world. And I say, the issue is health care and insurance, and why 40 million American kids don't have insurance -- 40 million Americans are uninsured. Is this health insurance program being debated in Congress good for the country? Let's debate it. I have with me Donna Brazile and Bay Buchanan. Let's go. Donna. "I think the Democrats really have it right here. I think that this is a pain for the insurance companies and the drug companies and this is wrong for America." Bay. "Oh no, what it is..." And then she throws out her figures from the Heritage Foundation, and she throws out her figures from the Brookings Institute, and the anchor -- who should be the arbiter of the truth -- says, "Thank you both very much, that was very interesting." No it wasn't! That was Coke and Pepsi talking about beverage truth. And that game has, I think, caused people to think, "I'm not watching this."

KOPPEL: Alright, so you have found an answer through humor...

STEWART: No. It's not an answer.

KOPPEL: Well, an answer that...

STEWART: I found an outlet. I found a catharsis. A sneeze, if you will.

KOPPEL: It's not just a catharsis for you, it's a catharsis for your viewers. Those who watch say, at least when I'm watching Jon, he can use humor to say BS, that's a crock.

STEWART: But that's always been the case. Satire has always been...

KOPPEL: Ok, but I can't do that.

STEWART: No, but you CAN say that's BS. You don't need humor to do that because you have what I wish I had which is credibility and gravitas. This is interesting stuff, and it's all part of the discussion and I think it's a good discussion to have, but I think it's important to take a more critical look....

I've seen this so often -- My side vs. Your side, okay we've presented both side but we still haven't learned anything. The anchor, moderator, host doesn't challenge the BS so we're left with real possiblities.

Women in the Political Media: Convention blogger Jenny Greenleaf posts at The American Street,

Yesterday we attended an event called Revolutionary Women. Sponsored by Barbara Lee, it featured a dozen or so panels/workshops followed by a star-studded rally. Revolutionary Women works to get women to vote and to elect women to office....

We dropped into a packed house for a panel discussion on women in the political media. The panel featured Eleanor Clift from Newsweek, Renee Loth from the Boston Globe, and my favorite, Hearst Newspapers' Helen Thomas. Liz Walker did an excellent job as moderator....

Helent Thomas is a trip:

HT: Gentleman's agreement existed during Pres. Kennedy's term. Nobody wrote about Sen. Long being inebriated on the Senate floor. Now, even if the mainstream press decides that something shouldn't be covered, the tabloids would cover it anyway.

"If you want to go into politics, you have to decide at the age of 5 and live accordingly."

Poor kid.

Some good stuff in there, worth clicking the link.
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Just in time: Bill Maher returns to HBO for 13 more weeks starting Friday on HBO at 11 here in the East. First guest: Michael Moore.
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Dean, Dems sound off on e-voting security: At InfoWorld, IDG reports,

Former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean joined prominent Democrats on Wednesday to call attention to the need for election machines that are accurate, secure and can be audited to ensure the accuracy of vote tallies.

Dean joined U.S. Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey at a press conference with the Campaign for America's Future and Rock the Vote to call attention to a plank in the Democratic Party's 2004 platform that calls for voting systems to be "accessible, independently auditable, accurate, and secure," and to excoriate Republicans in Congress and the states who have blocked legislation mandating a paper trail for votes cast using electronic voting machines.

"We can spend millions on security, surely we can do just as much to safeguard the central piece of representative government -- the voting process," Holt said. He spoke in a Cambridge, Mass., hotel, just across the Charles River from the FleetCenter, where Democratic Party delegates and luminaries from across the country are meeting to nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Holt was joined briefly by Dean, who said that he initially heard of the now-notorious security problems of prominent electronic voting machines while running for the Democratic nomination and dismissed the complaints as coming from "conspiracy whackos." A closer look convinced Dean of the seriousness of the issues, which he said threatened to undermine democracy in the U.S. if left unaddressed. ...

This is truly a bipartisan issue: GOP flier questions new voting equipment: This is all over, here's the St. Petersburg (Fla. Times)

While Gov. Jeb Bush reassures Floridians that touch screen voting machines are reliable, the Republican Party is sending the opposite message to some voters.

The GOP urged some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touch screens lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."...

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Rentapeasant - Living History With Livestock: Their mission is

...to provide an insight into everyday aspects of rural life in the past. Farming is fundamental to our presentations, hence our sub title Living History with Livestock. ...

... Farming produces both food and the raw materials for clothing so Rent a Peasant can follow the processes, for example, from the live sheep to the meal on the table and the clothes on our backs.

Rent a Peasant offer a variety of options to suit outdoor and indoor events at historic monuments, school visits and adult education. Both the Peasants and the livestock have been used for television work. The Peasants are suitably humble and will gladly consider slightly unusual requests, such as Witches for Hallowe'en.

But before you whip out your checkbook, they're in County Durham in northeast England and, "the logistics of looking after the livestock mean that events along the south coast, for instance, are not feasible for us."
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Transportation Futuristics: How we once thought we'd travel. Visionary Designs in Transportation Engineering is part of an exhibit at UCal Berkeley.

Lots of interesting "artist's conceptions," from flying saucers to escape pods with parachutes for airline passengers.
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A reader reacts to Teresa Heinz Kerry: A reader named Richard from somewhere in the South writes about yesterday's lead post, "are you kidding? if ms. heinz gets her way we will all be speaking french instead of english. she is an elitist snob."

I replied,

What are you afraid of? Most of us took French in high school and still don't know what's on the menu.

This sort of prejudice sounds like you're afraid of interesting women, whether it's true or not. That's why it backfires.

That suspicion is certainly more true than the possibility of anybody getting us all speaking the same language, whatever it is.

Richard replied,

I guess you also think the french are our friends. indeed, they have always been there when they needed us. By the way, at the age of 54 this will be the very first election I will vote in. Guess who I will be voting for? Give you a hint, won't be someone who votes for something before he votes against it. Good luck to you up there in liberal america.

Me:

I hope you're thinking rather than guessing about more important issues.

I don't think about the French much, actually. You can't force people to be your friends, you have to earn that friendship.

I'm glad you've finally decided to vote. Try not to vote with touch screen machines. There are no ballots to recount, and on election day the results can be overwritten as easily as any other computer file..

> Good luck to you up there in liberal america.

There's just one America, Richard, "...one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Beware those who would divide us for their own gain. We are a melting pot, not the Borg.

Maybe we're not so far apart after all, once you get past the buzzwords.
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July 28, 2004, 7:48 p.m. -- Last week's weblog

Here's a message from your future: Count the votes. Recount the votes. Don't let your polling place use voting software that can't be recounted. And Fear... Fraud

Teresa Heinz Kerry: Not your father's (potential) first lady?I watched CSPAN last night for the unfiltered view, but after Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech, I flipped to MSNBC where Chris Matthews had gathered former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and "Scarborough Country" host Joe Scarborough as well as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

Willie Brown thought this would appeal to many women:

"My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called 'opinionated' is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish. And my only hope is that one day soon women who have all earned the right to their opinions, instead of being called opinionated will be called smart and well-informed -- just like men."

Joe Scarborough didn't think Teresa Heinz Kerry would play well in Peoria. Mitchell disagreed. I heard "gender gap" float up.

Online, MSNBC heard from Peoria (here's the link; I'm not sure it's permanent):

Hey, I'm from Peoria. You were asking how Teresa Heinz came across here. She hit a homerun. I found the video that the democrats provided [before she spoke] to be an eye opener into her past. She seems like she will be able to connect with people all over the world. So does she play in Peoria? You bet. -Jeff Nau, Peoria, IL

And from Kansas:

Hey Joe Scarborough, I can't imagine that you think you are qualified to critique Teresa Heinz Kerry from the viewpoint of women in "Peoria". I live in a small town in Kansas, and I admire Teresa for speaking her mind, having brains and using them. She's great! A wonderful role model for our young women. - Diane Jones, Pleasanton, Kansas

And she seemed to play well in St. Louis today, where the Post Dispatch buttonholed folks on the street to ask, " Which of Tuesday's speeches did you like most?" (Missouri's a swing state.)

Teresa reminds me a bit of Jacqueline Kennedy in 1960. She's twice as old as Jackie was then, of course, but she's also exotic, wealthy and sophisticated -- unlike me. And that's not bad. The nation admired and was fiercely proud of Jackie's grace and taste -- we were proud to put her forward.

Teresa seems warmer than Jackie, interesting and fresh, and a woman of our extraordinary times. I would not be surprised if she made the rather pedestrian Scarborough uncomfortable.

Convention delegates seemed thrilled with her, according to the Brockton (Mass.) Enterprise (Prospective first lady lauded for outspoken style, substance):

BOSTON — Teresa Heinz Kerry would be a first lady similar to Eleanor Roosevelt, says John Walsh of Abington.

"She is uniquely warm and she is insightful in a way that is calm," Walsh said Tuesday night after Heinz Kerry's speech to the Democratic National Convention at the Fleet Center.

Walsh, a delegate from Abington, was sitting in the row behind Jim Roosevelt, the grandson of the nation's only four-term president, as he watched Heinz Kerry's speech. "I think she'll be a first lady that will be direct," he said.

Here's a transcript of her speech, and video at CSpan, which has clean video of anything you may have missed. (Bless them, it just open RealPlayer and streams it.)
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Barack Obama, running unopposed for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, wowed 'em. Speech, video, homepage are all here.
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What Trippi said about Kerry: From convention blogger Dave Johnson of Seeing The Forest:

Joe Trippi (former manager of Howard Dean's campaign) also talked about Kerry. He said what Kerry shoud to tomorrow night is "opt out" of public financing for the campaign. He should look out at the public and say (something like) I have available to me $70 million [or whatever it is] in public financing, but I think it is time to make a change in the way we do things in America. I am going to refuse this money and ask the people of the United States to step up and say that they want to participate. So today I am starting with zero dollars. I am asking every American to send something to contribute to my campaign ... What I [Trippi] am afraid of is that if he doesn't then Bush is going to do this in September, and opt out, and be able to spend any amount, and be the candidate of reform.

Steve Soto was taping this, and might be able to post something later that is closer to what he said. It was more profound than I am using here -- I couldn't take notes fast enough...

One thing I love about bloggers is this transparency -- Dave is passing on the information without bluster, saying it's close but not verbatim, and somebody else might have the exact words.

As for Trippi, I think he's right. Some Americans would like to invest in their future with such donations, whichever candidate they choose to entrust their future to. Others, of course, don't intend to give money to millionaire candidates. Great country, your choice.

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Into the fire: Live deadline journalism is harder than it looks.

Mathew Gross:

...I imagine by now most of the bloggers are exhausted with the media coverage. Between making our way daily down to the Westin Hotel in Copley Square to pick up our press passes-- a long jaunt for us bloggers-on-the-cheap, many of whom are staying on the periphery of the city-- and messing with the Wifi access in the FleetCenter, we have little time to spend in our element-- we're rarely online.

Which explains the rather spotty coverage so far. Having bloggers at the convention is a bit like inviting a movie critic onto a film set. It's interesting and informative, and good to see how the mechanics of the spectacle are put together. But ultimately our role is from afar, as critics of the final product-- of the interplay between the candidates and the media.

But we do make for some fine filler on the cable networks.

David Weinberger:

If so little is happening, why am I so tired?

I'm not going in to the Convention until 11am these days. I don't go out drinking afterwards, which means I'm asleep by 1am. So why am I so beat? Ok, aside from being old, fat and out of shape, why am I so beat?

Crowds are exhausting. Trying to be alert is exhausting. Sitting in one place is exhausting. Being spoken at is exhausting. Being snarky is exhausting. Being exhausted is exhausting.

I'm thinking of covering the speeches tonight by coming home and watching them on C-SPAN. I can't hear what the speakers are saying when I'm in the Fleet Center and there's nothing else going on when the speeches are happening, at least as far as I can tell. So, why should I be there?

Dave Winer:

Dave Johnson: "I think that next week is going to be the week to really read bloggers."

Dave is right, I think. It's not just that time for writing is scarce (it is), it's also that the mood is pretty edgy because of the security. Last night I cut out early to have dinner with a friend who is not part of the convention. Took a cab down Commonwealth Ave. Downtown Boston is a military encampment. The uniforms were very strange, lots of weird colors, helmets, bullet-proof vests, handcuffs. A motorcade held up traffic, but I couldn't figure out who would be in such a large motorcade, and the special security was unbelievable. Heavy armored vehicles. Snipers on the roofs, armed guards at every public building, and this was several blocks from Fleet. As I left the convention area I felt a real sense of relief. If there's going to be an attack tonight I'm going to watch it on TV, I thought. I don't know how many other people feel like they're at Ground Zero when they're inside Fleet, but I feel it, even though it's not stopping me from having fun and doing new things, not knowing how it's going to come out is preventing me from drawing conclusions.

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A convention tech's blog: Adam Fuller -- aka newyork.ninja.stu -- is exhausted, too, but he can't leave. Q Daily News notes,

Apparently, the webloggers at the Democratic National Convention stink (in the odiferous way, not in the suck way). Or so says Adam Fuller, the guy who’s been running around for the past two days trying to get the wireless network up and running.

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Ed Cone on the unmasking of Atrios: "Is Atrios going to be more credible, or more popular, now that we know who lives in the mansion above the Batcave?"

I don't know, but he's stopped blogging about the convention today, except to point to the AP story about the speech John Edwards hasn't delivered yet.
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Fun with the WaPo: "To return the compliment, I now am officially covering Sheila Lennon covering me covering her covering bloggers covering the convention," writes editor Robert MacMillan, sitting in for vacationing Filter columnist Cynthia Webb, today.

Eric Olsen, founder of Blogcritics.org, emailed with the perfect definition of that exchange: "A reductive spiral." He adds,

And I am covering Filter covering Sheila covering Filter covering Sheila covering bloggers covering the convention. See what I mean? The meta-media stuff is the coolest. Who gives a rat's ass about Ben Affleck wandering around? Or some little "Annie" lookalike chirping at the delegates?

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Link dump:

Castro responds to Bush’s prostitution charges
Google's IPO Pitch at Waldorf Astoria Draws Mixed Reviews

My apology to convention blogger Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, whose name I misspelled yesterday. Fixed now.

July 27, 2004, 7:07 p.m. -- Last week's weblog

Convention coverage TV schedule.

The Washington Post covers me covering bloggers covering the convention. (Got that?) I found this by following a link from Dave Barry complaining that the Washington Post blog critic was calling his blog "threadbare." That's way down. This blog is the lead. (No the Washington Post blog critic doesn't call me anything. He likes the name of the blog, and quotes me quoting bloggers.)

Enough. With 15,000 journalists and 30-some bloggers in Boston, and the rest of the press and the blogosphere covering them, there's too much information now.

Watch TV tonight: Primary sources. Watch, listen, let your feelers wave and make up your own mind.
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Fresh: Credit to David Sifry (founder and CEO of blog index technorati.com) who's blogging a daily roundup at CNN:

Cameraphone coverage: Leave it to six smart USC students and their professor to take a technology to a new level. They're walking the convention floor with cameraphones, taking instant snapshots along with commentary and posting the information as it happens. The Wireless Election Connection Moblog looks to be one of the surprise hits of the weblog coverage here at the convention.

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Grownups acting stupid #1: Newspaper culture doesn't bat an eyelash when the executive editor says, "Our policy is that everyone must submit to editing."

So should it be a surprise that acidic Ann Coulter makes up a "Spawn of Satan convention in Boston" screed and USA Today spikes it? According to the New York Observer, "The paper’s 36-year-old Op-Ed page editor, John Siniff"... (apparently unaware that Coulter's column had been held, and before she was replaced by Jonah Goldberg as the opposition columnist)... "said, 'I’ve had this job two months and this was my first big idea.' "

Did Siniff realize that the conservative publication National Review Online had fired Coulter in 2001?

The other half of the idea -- Michael Moore at the GOP convention -- gets its chance to walk the plank at the end of August.
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Grownups acting stupid #2: Dueling AP photos. GOP heehaws (muttering "Dukakis") widely email photos of Kerry (and Sen. Bill Nelson D-Fla.) in funny suits (as they toured a sterile facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,) vs. Dem heehaws (muttering "Mission Accomplished costume") widely emailing a photo of Bush in a kimono with the Australian prime minister and, just to raise the ante, another in which he's picking his nose. Use your imagination on that one, I'm not publishing it.

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Teacher no more: Blogger "Pusillanimous" writes with more information on Atrios (see below):

"Duncan B. Black holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He has held teaching and research positions at the London School of Economics; the Université catholique de Louvain; the University of California, Irvine; and, recently, Bryn Mawr College. He also has been involved with grassroots political activism. Black is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America."

He adds,

Also, if you scroll to the bottom of Eschaton, you now see "Eschaton -- a weblog by d u n c a n b l a c k". I think he got his new job with Media Matters and can safely "out" himself now (who wants their boss to know they spend their work hours blogging to 80,000 people daily?) He had to know that by going to the convention he would be found out anyway.

MMfA describes itself as "a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

Pusillanimous's blog is about science, theater and nature, and he runs great pictures large. Check out the blue roses.
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Link dump:

Dan Gillmor: Why I Wouldn't Bid on Google IPO
Nickelodeon to Urge Kids to Play Outside
SPACE.com Cam: Sun Snapshot: Updated every four hours. A sunspot cluster 20 times the size of earth is clearly visible. (1bn megaton solar storm 'to hit Earth')
The Tease of Memory: Psychologists are dusting off 19th-century explanations of déjà vu. Have we been here before?
How-To Turn your iPod in to a Universal Infrared Remote Control
"My Beef With Big Media" by Ted Turner
Disk drives from World Trade Center could yield clues
Guiness Stout Ice Cream
What if Mozilla were to win in the end?

2:00 p.m.
Blogger Atrios of Eschaton: Anonymous no more. I wrote yesterday about "Atrios," whose highly partisan blog, Eschaton, reports having collected $276,741 for John Kerry as of July 21, and nearly $75,000 for other Democratic causes and candidates -- all from people who don't even know his name.

Yesterday, reporter Frank Cerebino of the Palm Beach Post casually reveals the identity of Atrios without seeming to know he has a scoop (Convention coverage reaches into 'blogosphere')

The stars of the blogging world are here, too. They are the bloggers who are so successful that they sell ads on their Web sites, and make enough money to blog for a living.

"I would like to see bloggers treated like the regular press," said Markos Moulitsas, 32, of Berkeley, Calif., whose dailykos.com gets 100,000 hits a day. "Some of us get more readers than newspapers."

Moulitsas was talking with Duncan Black, 32, an economics teacher from Philadelphia, whose atrios.blogspot.com has made him one of the nation's most well-read political commentators.

Black left the bloggers' gathering early and blogged: "Too many boring speeches, so we went off to an event sponsored by the New Democrat Network discussing the right wing money/media machine."

The photo of Black above comes from Jeralyn (spelling fixed) Merritt's TalkLeft. She identifies her fellow wall-hugger -- these bloggers are in the cheap seats -- as Atrios, as Duncan, but with no surname.

And what's Atrios blogging? He's reading other blogs, calling out AP for writing that "(Barack) Obama would be the first black Democrat to serve in the Senate" (remember Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., 1993-1999), defending his role as activist rather than reporter, and explaining how Michael Moore got in the Presidential box:

But, anyway, since drudge is excited that Michael Moore sat in a "presidential box," I'll report that story as far as I know it. The skyboxes are only accessable through a fairly well-guarded separate escalator. The corridor outside the skybox was more mobbed and more chaotic than just about anywhere else in the convention - unsurprisingly everyone's trying to scam their way into there, and it was a bit full. From what I understand, Moore's gang was wondering around trying to find a skybox they were supposed to go to and someone in the Carter box pulled them in. So, this was not a case of "Jimmy Carter invites Moore to his box." I don't think Carter knew he was there until he arrived about an hour or more after he gave his speech.

But, Moore was more than a little thrilled to meet Carter, and the reverse appeared to be true as well. One of Moore's security people teared up a bit during Carter's speech.

Word trivia: "Eschaton is defined as the moment when the World ends. This word is derived from the Greek word eskhatos which means last...." From there it gets theological.

From Atrios, we learn that blogger Steven Gilliard is complaining about the bloggers' coverage:

Why am I irritated? Because I read the National Journal and found out only bloggers have decent wi-fi access. And it took the BBC to report how veteran political reporter Walter Means was laughed out of the room when he said he was objective. Uh guys, that's something I want to read about. And not in the BBC, either.

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About those 14 Syrian musicians: They're back in the Middle East, but not before the mystery of what happened on Northwest Flight 327 deepens (Background in last week's long item: "Annie Jacobsen published an account of her flight from Detroit to Los Angeles in WomensWallStreet.Com: Terror in the Skies, Again?"):

-- Eric Leonard at KFI AM in Los Angeles: Air marshals say passenger overreacted (Link is from the Google cache)

LOS ANGELES | July 22, 2004 – Undercover federal air marshals on board a June 29 Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to LAX identified themselves after a passenger, “overreacted,” to a group of middle-eastern men on board, federal officials and sources have told KFI NEWS.

The passenger, later identified as Annie Jacobsen, was in danger of panicking other passengers and creating a larger problem on the plane, according to a source close to the secretive federal protective service.

...The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.

Air marshals’ only tactical advantage on a flight is their anonymity, the source said, and Jacobsen could have put the entire flight in danger.

-- Dallas Morning News reported (Misbehaving Syrians carried expired visas) that 13 of the 14 musicians had overstayed their visas. This would have been an infraction permitting them to be detained, but authorities cleared the musicians of suspicion.

-- Snopes.com, the net's arbiter of what is real and what is urban legend, has declared the story false:

Origins: The "Terror in the Skies, Again?" article written by Annie Jacobsen and published on WomensWallStreet.com, in which she details her experience with passengers (whom she viewed as terrorists) on a 29 June 2004 flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, caused quite a stir, to say the least. That article contained a good deal of supposition, and a follow-up article, identified as an "Opinion Piece," didn't offer much to validate author's assumptions.

As things turned out, although the events Ms. Jacobsen claims to have witnessed on her flight did occur (more or less), her interpretation of them (that they involved a group of terrrorists making a dry run for building a bomb in-flight) was erroneous. The men she observed on her flight were exactly what authorities told her they were: a group of Syrian musicians who had been hired to play at the Sycuan Casino & Resort near San Diego. Like any other group of passengers, the men in musical ensemble talked to each other, moved around, ate food, and used the restrooms while the flight was in progress.

-- Gambling Magazine: Infamous Syrian Musicians Performed At Sycuan Casino

(Nour) Mehana’s Sycuan show was listed on booking agent James Cullen’s Web site. But Cullen, who produced the event, wouldn’t confirm the gig. "Sorry, we were told by Homeland Security not to talk to the press," Cullen said via e-mail.

I've thought about this a lot, since the pieces are bizarre. If Homeland Security imposed a gag on the musicians and their agent... perhaps this was a security test that everyone but the passengers were in on.
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Newbot at MSNBC challenges Google News. Go check it out for yourself
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More later. I have a news budget to make for our designers.

July 26, 2004, 5:25 p.m. -- Last week's weblog

I'll be updating through the day, but I'll leave this link to the on top. If you're looking for convention coverage in your area, check your local listings.

Bloggers in Boston: AP captures the scene on "Bloggers Boulevard" at the Democratic National Convention, way up in the rafters of the Fleet Center, just below the CNN booth.

We got here, now what? For Jesse Taylor of Pandagon, reality sinks in:

Okay, so as virtual nobodies, we've learned a valuable lesson. Knowing about parties does not garner you a way in to parties.

Perhaps the most important lesson of this convention, bar none. I really need to get in someone important's pants by Tuesday in order to actually meet people - at this rate, I'm going to be reduced to hoping that someone shows up at one of the events I've already been invited to. I'll even take a Utah Democrat, I swear!

Notice how I just wrote that? Notice how it has nothing to do with tomorrow, the speakers, or, in fact, anything even remotely relevant to any system of American government? That's because the first rule of conventioneering is this: tomorrow is merely spent in the afterglow, pleasant or unpleasant, of tonight.

Show it, don't tell it. Reports from the The Bloggers Breakfast this morning range from "We had breakfast and Barack Obama and Howard Dean spoke" to good, you-are-there reports. Electablog's Dave Pell has analysis and photos.

Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left notes,

(Howard Dean) doesn't think the Dean Scream killed his campaign. He thought coming in third in Iowa did. He's developed a good relationship with John Kerry and he gives him advice. He refused to say what kind of advice because if he did, he said, he wouldn't be doing it for very long.

David Weinberger of Brookline brings his brilliance down the road. (He's a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Institute for Internet & Society, and Cluetrain Manifesto author, after all). Here's his take on the breakfast:

At the bloggers breakfast, Rod O'Connor, CEO of the DNC, explained that the convention is a "live TV show," as if this were a good thing. Then they brought out Pultizer-prize-winning AP legend, Walter Mears, who started a blog for the AP yesterday. A blogger asked why the Big Media have cut back their Convention coverage. "We'd love a convention where decisions are made," he said. But conventions today are just scripted media events.

So, there we have the irony in the space of eating a single bagelt: The Convention folks think their job is to script an event for the news media, and the news media don't want to cover an event that's been scripted.

Another blogger asked Mears: So why do 15,000 media people show up? Because, Mears said, "it's a great class reunion and a hell of a party."

Meanwhile, I'm sitting on the 7th floor of the Fleet Center, watching the big stage below me as Patti Labelle belts out a hair-straightening version of the national anthem...to an empty house. Presumably, you'll get to see that performance, presented as if live, if the media decide to run it.

Having so many fresh eyes at the convention should yield some gems: Jon Garfunkel of Greater Democracy catches this:

"Many Americans are said to choosing their President based on whether they would enjoy a beer with them. If that question was ever relevant in American politics, it is not now." So said Hillary Clinton at one of the welcome parties this Sunday evening, "A Community Celebration" co-sponsored by a number of the Jewish organizations.

Convention Bloggers is attempting to index the posts from the convention. So is Technorati, In both cases, others sorts of blog posts intrude. CNN promises a daily roundup beginning sometime today.

Jonathan Dube at Cyberjournalist.net has a large list of links to bloggers, delegates and journalist-bloggers at the convention.

In some cases, the links go to the bloggers' announcements a few weeks ago that they were going rather than to today's coverage. Jon says he'll fix them tonight (after he gets home from his day job at MSNBC) but it's easy enough to "hack the url": The link for there for TalkLeft goes to an old post at http://talkleft.com/new_archives/007181.html#007181. Click on that link, then put your cursor into the field where the url displays, and cut everything after "talkleft.com" and click again. You'll be at today's blog.

WSJ profiles some of these bloggers.

Still a mystery: "Atrios" is a Philadelphia blogger whose anonymity was chalked up to his being perhaps a high school teacher -- although he may not have that job any more. Democratic circles have embraced him, he's been on Air America Radio, etc.) He's there in Boston. (His blog is Eschaton). But who is he?
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2:25 p.m
Convention on TV: Wall to wall, once in a while or anchor-free: Barbara Vancheri of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has run down the coverage. There's extra Pittsburgh coverage expected because of Teresa Heinz Kerry's ties to that city, but the national networks info should be good everywhere. Worth noting:

C-SPAN
If you want your coverage unvarnished and unfettered, this is the place. C-SPAN will provide live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the convention unedited, without commentary or commercials. An on-demand, searchable video archive of campaign and convention programming, along with other information, can be found at www.C-SPAN.org.

MSNBC
MSNBC's schedule: "Hardball with Chris Matthews," live from Boston, 6 to 8 p.m.; "Countdown With Keith Olbermann," 8 to 9 p.m.; "Hardball: Battle for the White House," live coverage anchored by Matthews, 9 p.m. to midnight; and "Convention After Hours," live late-night coverage anchored by Joe Scarborough and Ron Reagan, midnight to 2 a.m. Information also will be available at www.Politics.MSNBC.com.

PBS
Jim Lehrer will anchor coverage from 8 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Reporting from the floor and "NewsHour" skybox will be senior correspondents Gwen Ifill, Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner and Terry Smith. Regular editions of "NewsHour" will air during the convention and will be broadcast live from there. For more information, www.pbs.org/newshour.

CNN
Wolf Blitzer and Judy Woodruff will anchor CNN's prime-time coverage with special convention editions of virtually all of the network's signature shows, such as "American Morning," "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" (moving to 11 p.m.) and "Larry King Live" (shifting to midnight).

"American Votes 2004 Special: The Democratic National Convention" with Blitzer, Woodruff, Brown, King, Jeff Greenfield and Bill Schneider will air from 8 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday. CNN's backdrop will look different from its competitors, since it will anchor from the delegate floor rather than the traditional skybox. Guides, polls, quizzes, cartoons, a convention blog, speech transcripts, video files and columns can be found at www.CNN.com.

The race is cable's to lose. The Big Three are devoting just an hour of prime time each night -- a decision PBS anchor Jim Lehrer laid into yesterday during a seminar hosted by Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. (NYT, Network Anchors Hold Fast to Their Dwindling 15 Minutes).

"We're about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country,'' Mr. Lehrer said. "The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge.''

NBC's Tom Brokaw, ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS's Dan Rather shared the panel with Lehrer.

The three anchors of the biggest networks - whose newscasts' combined audience of nearly 30 million still dwarfs that of cable news - were hardly in a position to disagree.

"I can't believe that anybody in the news business who enjoys politics and thinks particularly this year that politics are important is not somewhat frustrated that we're not doing more on ABC, NBC and CBS,'' Mr. Jennings said in an interview on Tuesday. "This is clear to my bosses, it's clear to my colleagues; I think you'll find the same thing in every newsroom. Could we, should we be doing more than one hour a night in prime time? The answer is yes.''

But the networks have been increasingly unwilling to give their news divisions much time to cover the conventions, arguing that they produce too little real news to warrant the pre-emption of lucrative reality shows, sitcoms and dramas.

So if you want to actually see this reality show, you have to go to cable or PBS.

More from Lehrer in an email to Al Tompkins at Poynter:

Some journalists see the conventions in an old fashioned cop-shop way. If the candidates are all known and there are no floor fights, etc. then there is no story. I disagree with that. The story is different but it remains important. Here now are the nominees and their positions being offered in the best light each side can manage. The story centers around their message and the accompanying questions such as how well did they express it, how consistent is it with what they've been saying and doing, how is it going down with the electorate, etc., etc. It requires context reporting and analysis.

The political conventions are among the few "shared" national political events left. The others are the debates. Journalism organizations that say the conventions are not important are essentially saying the election of a president is not important. We are not in the business of making events, only in covering them.

It's embarrassing how many stories out there assure us that nothing will happen at the convention. Our front pages would never say, "Nothing will happen there," wherever "there" might be.
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Ricky Williams off to find the truth: By now you probably know that Miami Dolphin running back Ricky Williams -- the Dolphin who strikes fear into the heart of every Patriots fan -- is retiring after 5 years as a pro.

(That's Williams at right, without the dreadlocks fans recall from last season. AP photographed him March 5, just after he'd shaved his head)

He called coach Dave Wannstedt Friday night from Hawaii, and said he was dropping out, . His heart wasn't in it.

That's Wannstedt at right, photographed by AP during a press conference yesterday about Williams' departure at the Dolphins' training facility in Davie, Fla.

The headlines span the emotional repertoires of fans and sports desks -- betrayal, envy: bewilderment

Ricky Williams Deserts His Teammates
Ricky Williams Retires at 27
Williams walks away from game

Miami Herald columnist Dan LeBatard spoke with Williams late Sunday night by cellphone from (somewhere in) Asia: (Williams checks in from Asia, says he's prepared for fallout, reg.req.)

MIAMI - Ricky Williams doesn't know anything at all about the frenzy he has created in South Florida. What his wounded coach said Sunday? How his stunned teammates feel? The arguments all over this football-crazed city about whether his sudden retirement at 27 was extraordinary nobility or selfish stupidity? He hasn't so much as checked his answering machine.

``Why should I?'' he said late Sunday night by cellphone from Asia. ``Does it matter? I don't care. It doesn't have anything to do with me anymore. No one can reach me, and that's how I want it. For what? For people to put more of their excrement on me? I'm OK without it, thanks. Why do people have to be so judgmental about this? I'm going in search of the truth. Everything I'm doing in my life now is about finding the truth. Football isn't part of the truth for me anymore.''...

...Leaving all that money on the table?

``I've been poor before,'' he says....

Phil Taylor at Sports Illustrated (not espn.com as I originally mistyped) is in Williams' corner: Ricky's right to choose: Williams shouldn't be faulted for living life on his own terms.

The one thing that is nearly certain is that at this very moment, as you read this, Ricky Williams is exactly where he wants to be and doing exactly what he wants to do.

Are you?

Are any of us? "You can't understand how free I feel," he told the Miami Herald before he boarded a flight bound for life after football. He's probably right about that. There aren't many people who know how liberating it is the have all the money they need and virtually no demands on their time. NFL people have tried to explain his abrupt decision by saying that Williams was always a little "different." Instead of living by someone else's schedule and running full speed into drooling, snorting behemoths over and over again for the next several years, Williams will be going wherever his curiosity takes him, living the life he chooses. Tell me again, what's crazy about that?

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Next: Blogging the convention bloggers.

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