I have another post on Huffington Post’s Off the Bus. It’s about Michelle Obama’s future as the presidential campaign really heats up. Check it out here.
Category: news
Finally…
No one can say that Obama didn’t fight hard for this. And maybe we can be grateful for Hillary’s stubbornness because she made Obama really fight for this. Finally, he has reached 2,158 delegates, and he is the Democratic Party candidate.
Months ago, I was at an Obama rally in Los Angeles, where Michelle Obama, Oprah and Maria Shriver spoke in support of him. I felt at that moment that I was possibly witnessing something historical. Now I know.
Citizen Journalism- The future?
Because my current project has a lot of interaction with Huffington Post’s Off the Bus, I’ve had some time to think about this idea of citizen journalism. The theory that normal citizens who don’t practice journalism as their career can report on the news because of their access to events that reports can’t reach.
While I am still apprehensive about the term, there is no denying that some great stories have been discovered this way. Take Obama’s “bittergate.” This was reportorted to HuffPo by Mayhill Fowler, who has never been a professional writer. She’s got an MA, her husband is a lawyer, she’s an open Obama supporter and she’s raised some kids. But her ability to get a story that no one else got is amazing.
Just the other day, she got a shocking interview with Bill Clinton, who goes on a verbal tirade about a Vanity Fair reporter. While Mr. Clinton is known to have foot-in-mouth syndrome, maybe he was more open with Fowler because she doesn’t have the usual reporter aura about her. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that she got a great quote that many mainstream media sources picked up on.
So, there is a place for this type of truth-sharing. Granted, I don’t want my future job to dissapear before I’ve even got it, but I think we all benefit from this knowledge sharing platform. In this changing world of journalism, flexibility is the key. Time to go do my stretches.
Did you know?
The other day at work, our tech guy showed us this video. It’s amazing that it can actually hold your attention for the entire time, based only on the fact that the facts are so interesting. We are living in a really interesting time. Things are changing so fast. I have often imagined what I’d do without the internet. I’d have a whole lot more free time, for one. But I would have a lot harder of a time trying to do what I want to do for the rest of my life. The world really is at our fingertips…
Huffington Post- Off the Bus
For my News 21 Fellowship, we have a great opportunity to pitch to Huffington Post’s Off the Bus.
Here is my first article on McCain’s efforts to court the Native American vote. Read it here.
Even if I wasn’t writing for it, The Huffington Post is a great, progressive source for good, solid reporting and opinion writing, so take a look.
Festival of Books
Today I attended Los Angeles Times’ Festival of Books, an annual event where some of the best writers in the country gather to participate in panels and book signing on the UCLA campus.
The event is free, and apparently about 140,000 people show up every year, according to their website.
So I thought it would be a relaxing event, stroll around to a few speakers, buy a few books and get some free stuff.
I was mistaken.
The attendees of this event are NOT kidding around. We discovered that you could order tickets for the panels ahead of time. We had not done this. THEY had.
There were serious lines for some of the events. Outside of the first panel I saw a line of about four people. That wasn’t so bad for an event about to start in ten minutes. But what I had yet to learn was that there were actually the stragglers. And in emergency-state-like fashion the volunteers almost let us in, then sent us back out, then told us to go in, then told us to wait because people with tickets deserved to get it. People with tickets held them up in the air, waving them around like they just don’t care. The tickets were golden. Golden tickets.
In the end, we got in. But clearly, we were way out of our league with these people.
The first panel was titled “Moments that Shaped America,” with Douglas Brinkley, Michael Eric Dyson, Edward Humes and Bruce Watson. All of these men had very interesting, thoughtful things to say. But Michael Eric Dyson just blew the crowd away. His cadence of speech is mesmerizing, and the thoughts he has to share profound. His words are a mix of part minister, part poet and part rapper. He is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard, if not the best. In one answer, he quoted both Jay-Z and Martin Luther King, Jr. I am buying his book tomorrow.
The next panel we went to was “Campaign ‘08” with David Frum, Garrett M. Graff, Hugh Hewitt and Robert Scheer. Of course, Bob Scheer got a loud round of applause when introduced. The others—not so much. David Frum is a former speechwriter for Pres. George W. Bush, and now a journalist. Graff is editor of Washingtonian Magazine, a professor at Georgetown, and founding editor of Fishbowl D.C. Hugh Hewitt is a radio talk show host, and executive editor of Townhall.com. Bob Scheer, fittingly sitting to the left of these other men, is the editor of Truthdig.
The debate brushed on several topics including Obama’s electability, McCain’s age and Hillary’s predicament. I found it very interesting to hear to opinions of Republicans on the current Democratic Party situation. Many said that Obama is a risk. But some also admitted that it will be very difficult for McCain to win this race.
One main point the more conservative speakers made was that people located in liberal urban areas are stuck in a bubble, believing only their opinions to be the beliefs of the entire country. This was met with severe booing. But when a woman in front of me, thirty years my senior, started heckling the speakers, I was severely disappointed. Here is this woman refusing to even hear the other side out. Why is she even attending this debate?
She was the perfect example of what these men were talking about: people who refuse to even entertain the thought of other viewpoints. Not whether those points of view are right or wrong, but that they do exist. This country is a mosaic of beliefs and opinions, and we’d all be better off if we could just see that for what it is.
Hugh Hewitt, David Frum, Garrett M. Graff, and Robert Scheer.
Rebecca M Ford 