Its A Small World After All

Forgive my late post--news from the outside world has a difficult time penetrating the Walt Disney World computer system...

With this week's focus being on internet news sources I decided to look at some of the less noticed, back-ally websites. I found a real doozy here...what the hell is this? Is there really a need for a conservative Wikapedia? And take a look at their exhaustive 2008 Presidential Election page. Now that's more like it! Finally a fair and balanced online encyclopedia.

I found these interesting takes on the debate on one of the older websites, alternet.org. Interesting but a bit long winded for my attention span. No real breaking news here.

This strange and cluttered website might be more to Colin's liking. Don't all radio personalities know each other? I was not able to find any coverage of the debates here, but I would guess that it might be possible to link off of this site and learn how aliens are controlling the federal government.

Anyway...I was not able to watch the debate last Friday night because I was in a crushing throng of economy boosters and baby strollers in the wonderfully noisy, vertigo inducing Epcot Center. I almost pulled a Paulson while waiting for my tray of Moroccan food. I tried to watch the debate on the Disney computer but it would not let me. So, when I got home, I looked here for my debate coverage. And what does my going to the Huffington Post to get my news say about me? It says I'm changing. It says that the more I use websites as a source of news the more I find them convenient and comprehensive.

searching for interest

After reading the Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid" about how we get information from the Internet I was prompted to consider my own thought patterns and information absorption ability. I have, over the past three weeks, used the Internet exclusively when gathering information for my posts. Before this course I looked only occasionally for news and other political information on the web. The reason? I hate reading from a computer screen and do so only when searching for information. Reading for pleasure, in my mind, involves paper.

But what does this say about the way that I think? I don't usually enjoy using Google as a search utility because I feel that I may be guided to sites that someone else wants me to go to. Google, as I understand it, decides what website to send the seeker to based partly on what websites others have sought. I want the less used websites. I want to go to the sites that have the information that most of the other web browsers have not considered satisfactory. I want the slow, weird websites that have little focus and a questionable purpose. Do these websites exist?

I read The Onion online because I can do so for free. I like The Onion, but I read it only for a quick laugh. Nothing I read on The Onion website lasts for more that a minute or so in my brain. The Onion is set up that way whether you read it from the web or actually read it in paper form. The punchline is the quick hit of the humorous headline accompanied by a photograph. The joke is in the parody of the newspaper format. The Onion translated to the Internet more perfectly than any other newspaper because there is no need for the article when the headline is the bulk of the joke--read the five word joke and then move on to the next.


So I am not sure that I can empathize with Mr. Carr because I don't think I have fallen victim to the machine-like purpose info seek think that the author has. Not yet. I still read the same way that I always have. My mind only wanders away from what I am reading when what I am reading does not interest me. I only seek information from the Internet for practical purposes. I would never, for instance, read fiction from a computer screen. If I find something on the Internet that I think I would enjoy reading I will print it and then read it. That hasn't happened yet.

A Pirates Life For Me!

I've been having a tough time over the past few weeks attempting to gather campaign information from the Internet. I sometimes get the feeling that I've been reading the same thing over and over and none of it sinks in.

So...I now find myself at Disney World in Orlando. There is no worse place to go when one is suffering from information overload. Yesterday, for instance, my brain, in need of normal and acceptable information, began to see the pirates on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as real. I laughed at their jokes and wanted to join them on their tour of carnage. Yes, I thought, I do want to race through this town you have pillaged and drink a huge amount of rum! I struggled against the lap restraint.

I have recently taken to attempting to focus my campaign watching to a few choice sources. I find that Fox yields a more user friendly Republican perspective than Townhall.com. I still check Townhall to make sure that they haven't scooped any of the other websites with a story that will blow Obama right out of the election. They have not yet broken the story that will insure Obama loses the election. They'll keep trying.

I also look to the websites of CBS, The Washington Post and the Huffington Report for non-bias network and newspaper news and clearly bias web news. Huffington is a good source of campaign information, but it is also a biased source of information. I don't think anyone could dispute that. CBS and the Washington Post represent, to me anyway, relatively non-biased news sources.

Happier now, I would have to say that I believe that I am getting a better grip on the abundance of information on the web. I shop for more specific information and worry less about missing something important coming unanticipated from some smaller website. This is good. And if I can resist jumping off the boat and joining the make believe pirates, I may yet stay out of the notorious underground Disney gulag. "Yo ho ho..."

Palin goes to the U.N.

The McCain campaign seems to think Sarah Palin is unfit or unprepared to talk to the media. The Huffington Post reported on the reports that Gov. Palin was denied the opportunity to showcase her vast foreign policy experience while meeting with various heads of state at the U.N. today. For some reason, the majority of the media did not sympathize with Go. Palin and insist that the campaign managers allow the vice presidential candidate to speak with (or at least be heard speaking by) the media. There is another Fox treatment of the story here.

But beyond the guarding of Sarah Palin what I found interesting was how the Huffington Report reported on the Fox story. It seems as though the writers at the Huffington Report will gather their material for a story even from those media outlets that they are often at odds with. Maybe that's the point of the story: Sarah Palin is so inept and the McCain campaign so aware of their mistake in choosing her for vice president that even Fox is starting to see the cover-up. With this particular story I would have to say that the Huffington Report is reporting on the shielding of Sarah Palin and the Fox News response to the story at the same time.

60 Minutes Interviews

The dual interviews of Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain tonight on 60 Minutes was a welcome break. I came away from the interviews with the impression that both of these men are intelligent, sincere and likable candidates for president. 60 Minutes, again, justified their place as the most popular network news magazine. The interviews were equally timed, fairly constructed and informative. The candidates were made to feel at ease with the interviewer but were still pressed to answer timely and pertinent questions concerning their ability to govern and their plans concerning the multiple challenges facing the next president. I would be very surprised to hear either campaign complain about the way their candidate was treated.

The New Yorker

According to stateofthenewsmedia.org I, as a subscriber to The New Yorker, should be earning about $78,815 per year and should be about 50.4 years old:

The New Yorker and The Atlantic sit above the big three newsweeklies in both median age and income. The median income of the New Yorker’s readership is $78,815 and the Atlantic’s is $80,012. The Atlantic has the oldest readership of all the news magazines we look at, with a median age of 51.4 years. The New Yorker’s median age is 50.4 years.

That statistic doesn't make me feel very successful; it does, however, make me feel relatively young and sprightly at a mere 46.5 years old. And I have had the suspicion, based on the advertisements in The New Yorker, that I was not in the income bracket that they had hoped I was in. Sorry to disappoint them, but I'm currently not in the market for a Rolex watch or an Infiniti SUV.
Another interesting fact from the above referenced web site concerns the number of people who buy and read The New Yorker. I was surprised to learn that a mere 1.062 million people find The New Yorker as enlightening and informative as I. In a country of more than 300 million people that is not an encouraging number. Surely, based on the popularity of television, the cable news outlets enjoy a far larger audience than one of the least read news weeklies.
Of course I must pick Bill O'Reilly to compare to the meager circulation numbers of The New Yorker. One would think, based on the bragging that O'Reilly does, that his audience would number in the tens of millions. According to stateofthenewsmedia.org referencing Nielsen Media Research, O'Reilly averages 2.3 million viewers per show. That is more than twice the circulation of The New Yorker, but it does not represent the size audience one would expect the more popular news medium to have in relation to a weekly news magazine.
So now I am left to wonder where among the multiple sources of news the majority of non-commited voters will look in order to make their decision for president this November. Though I get my news from many sources, I read The New Yorker every week and monitor The O'Reilly Factor from time to time. I already know how I am going to vote. I read The New Yorker partly to buttress my long ago established political preferences and I watch O'Reilly simply to see what the "other side" is up to. I suspect that most of the voters who are "up for grabs" in this or any election are like me in that they already prefer one candidate over the other; unlike me, however, they may not have a strong party loyalty and must therefore rely on a multitude of media sources to help them decide. I think they should just read The New Yorker.

More woes all around

Without getting into details about the craziness on Wall Street, lets just say that the energy of the Palin story (fun to love, fun to hate) has been replaced with a dry, complicated story of greed and unregulated financial hijinks. The poor media is stuck reporting the economy (the hangover) after having whooped it up with the happy Alaskan (the bender). CBS offered a reasonable analysis of the economy in relation to the candidates as a part of a week-long series contrasting the candidates.
Even Townhall.com hasn't been able to make the crisis into a sexy anti-Obama rant. This article seems almost nonpartisan until you realize that the author points out that Sen. Obama has received more in campaign contributions from people working at Wall Street firms than Sen. McCain has. I don't think that that is a partisan path the right wants to wander too far down.
This business with the financial institutions is far more worrisome than the slumping economy which played a role in President Bush Sr.'s loss to Bill Clinton. You know there is a problem when the Federal Reserve has to borrow money from the Treasury Department. Its enough to make a person long for the good ol' days of glammed up pig images and the dreadful daydreams of minivan limosine motorcades.

Woeful Opportunity

The recent disaster on Wall Street will almost certainly have a major impact on the presidential election. The ongoing upheaval and the federal government's response to it are currently dominating the news at all levels. The problem is seen as still developing and promises to last well past the election.
The current situation may provide Sen. Obama his best opportunity to regain the momentum in this election. There is no doubt that a souring economy has a negative effect on the current administration's party. Republicans don't generally like the idea of government coming to the rescue of privately owned institutions at the citizen's expense. And although Senator Obama isn't seen by every media outlet as having a strong, clear plan for the country's economic future, the focus will eventually turn from what is happening to why it happened. If Senator Obama can persuade the media that he has a strong economic plan the American people will grasp easily and quickly, then the majority of media outlets will be more likely to present his plan as an alternative to, or "change" from the current economic plan.
It will be interesting to see how, as the days pass, the conservative media outlets respond to the purchase of AIG by the federal government.

Hunting

I'm not a hunter. but I'm not totally against hunting either. When I think about hunting I usually think about deer or turkey hunting. I see a man (I don't think most people associate women with hunting though I'm sure there are some women hunters) in camouflage sitting perfectly still in the underbrush waiting for something edible to wander past. On comes a turkey or an adult dear and the man shoots. He has been out in the woods, freezing cold and hungry and now he has shot a wild animal. The animal has been shot clean and died instantly. The man takes the dead beast back to his truck and then to his cabin where he will eventually eat it. Its a nice, clean vision of hunting which assigns to the hunter the same reverence for and respect of the hunted we usually associate with Native American beliefs and customs. The hunter uses the animal to supplement his diet with a free source of meat. The hunter needs to hunt.
When I think of hunting I do not think of hired airplanes or inedible prey.
By now you know that I am referring to Governor Palin's approval of the practice of shooting wolves from airplanes. This is not an allegation or a rumor. Governor Palin encouraged people to shoot wolves from airplanes.
I was not aware that it was legal anywhere outside of Uganda to shoot animals from moving vehicles simply to kill them.
This story should lead every newscast and be on the front page of every newspaper.

Just what we need...

more tough talk. I think Charlie Gibson did a fair job with the questions that I have read. Asking Palin about things she has said regarding God's will and wars of the righteous is not unreasonable. If the Governor has the notion that God is on her side and will somehow direct her decisions, then I think the public should know about that.

Fact check fandango

So we tell a few white lies on the campaign trail... The McCain/ Palin campaign seems to have a difficult time differentiating between lies told by the candidates and rumors posted on the internet. So far, I have yet to see a story concerning untruths told by the Obama/Biden campaign or the candidates themselves. I think a television ad claiming that Sen. McCain may have shot a man in Reno back in 1977 would be interesting. Has Governor Palin ever clubbed a baby seal? Would you vote for her if she had? What did P.T. Barnum once say?

Welcome aboard!

Welcome to my media bias in the 2008 Presidential election blog. Let's hope it works. Anyhow, CBS seemed to finally board the jet to nowhere. Shouldn't they also be talking about the per diem bridge to e-bay? I think the memes are havin' a fight in my brain.