Covering US presidential campaign

If you want to know what is going on in the US presidential campaing's media coverage, you must have this blog bookmark in your web browser: CJR Campaing Desk. And frequently visit that Desk from now until the Day election. The NYT hails and welcomes this initiative (maybe with a bit of envy in his glimpse at the weblog), saying that the CJR Campaing Desk "is a venture of The Columbia Journalism Review and its publisher, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Journalists are the Web site's primary audience, but it is also for readers, viewers and listeners of the coverage." There are reasons to pay attention to Jeff Zeleny's opinion, a national political correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. He said to the NYT, in a telephone interview from Des Moines that with all the information being released by the campaigns, "it might be nice to have someone watching over that from 30,000 feet." But Mr. Zeleny cautioned that feedback, however well intended, could distract reporters. "Some reporters," he said, "may already be spending too much time on their BlackBerries or on their e-mails and not enough time talking to voters and the candidates." Anyway, those are the final paragraphs of Nicholas B. Lemann, the Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, in the Opening Shot of this weblog:

"The Desk will be politically nonpartisan. While it will call attention to journalistic sins, both of omission and commission, it will by no means be exclusively a finger-wagging operation. It will have a lively, engaged tone, not a grim, censorious one. One of the Desk's important functions will be to praise work of high quality, and one of its most useful aspects will be its ability to bring distinguished work in the local press to national attention, instantly and (through links) in full.

"The Desk aims to decrease, not enhance, the self-referential and self-enclosed tendencies of the campaign press. It is quite difficult for reporters traveling with a presidential campaign to get information independently; the Desk intends to make this easier, by making available links to briefing materials, accurate information, and other documents from the outside world that will help reporters evaluate what the candidates are saying.

"Because we are starting up on very short notice, CampaignDesk.org will become increasingly full and detailed through its early weeks. Please don't resist the temptation to become addicted to the site, as it grows and the presidential campaign gathers force. We think CampaignDesk.org has the potential to add a dimension not just to press criticism, but to campaign coverage and even to American politics. And please don't hesitate to let us know what you think of CampaignDesk.org, and how you think it might be improved."

-- 'Watchblogs' Put the Political Press Under the Microscope. By Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review (2004-02-10):"Bloggers mount an "adopt a journalist" campaign to track election coverage. Along with CJR's nonpartisan Campaign Desk, the effort puts some of the nation's top political reporters under intense public scrutiny."

Comments

[Publicado por: vahila]

please add our website