Just who the hell is Julie Bosman, anyway?

Good question.

Until a few minutes ago, I thought she was just the hack who cobbled together this vapid and venal piece in the NYT:

JUNCTION CITY, Ore. — On the day Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed by the governor of North Carolina, a supporter gave her a three-foot-long balloon replica of herself, complete with blond hair, black pantsuit and wide pink smile, which Mrs. Clinton promptly took on her plane and laughingly showed off to reporters.

On Thursday, little more than two weeks later, the doll lay on the sofa by her seat on the plane, shriveled and deflated.

Barf.

But there's more to the story. Turns out she's an Evil Troll.

Dear MSM:

Your coverage of the Presidential candidates has been erratic and irresponsible



and we wish like hell that you'd STFU about that WWTSBQ? already



but this is absolutely criminal



1% of the recent news coverage has been about the war? One percent?!

Every last one of you should be thrown into rat-infested dungeons and fed a diet of moldy bread and stagnant pond water.

Edwards for President!

Elizabeth, that is.



more from Greg Sargent

kuhm-plis-i-tee

Jay Newton-Small has been covering the horse-race aspects of the Edwards campaign for Time magazine, and in her latest article Why Edwards Never Caught On she writes this:

But even Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and Edwards is not one of them.

She left out a few words:

But even Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and we're doing our best to ensure that Edwards is not one of them.

She's written a whole string of articles [in no particular order]

• Has John Edwards' Moment Arrived?
• A Second-Place 'Victory' for Edwards?
• Edwards Fights To Stay Relevant
• South Carolina: No Haven For Edwards
• Huckabee Surges, Edwards Fades

It's not quite the hatchet job that was done on Al Gore, but with press like that, you're better off without coverage.

Some of the things that newspapers are supposed to do

Investigative reporting. Intelligent analysis. Fact-checking.

I don't agree with some of their calls -- for instance, I don't think Gravel deserves Pants on Fire for this one -- but the idea of real true fact-checking, complete with links to sources, has been missing from MSM outlets for too long. It's a start.

Kudos to the St Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly for taking a stab at it.


update 10-22-07: just a couple of small edits...

Where have all the women gone?

So, I discovered this while I was surfing late last night:

September 30, 2007, 9:54 am

To Readers: Online Politics Question

By Katharine Q. Seelye

Hi, readers.

I’m writing a small column item for Monday’s Caucus blog about why more men seemed to be involved in politics online than women. I wondered if you 1) agreed with that and 2) why or why not.

Short answers are best, by 6 p.m. today, if possible.

Just post your comments right here on the blog.

Many thanks,
Kit Seelye
Web Correspondent
The New York Times

She posts this at 10am and wants responses by 6pm. Well, the blogosphere is notable for immediacy, among other things, but honestly now, couldn't she have waited a few more hours? There really are people in this world who don't blog from work. Or am I the only dinosaur?

Several commenters posted late anyway [no, I'm not any of them] and more power to them I say.

In spite of my irritation with the short deadline and with the rampant sexism in the comments [even from some of the women!] I was looking forward to reading her article, expecting some insight or analysis, seeing as how she's a woman writing for the Politics section of the NYT.

Bah. Basically she just regurgitates the comments. If you've ever wondered if the MSM is stealing from you, fellow bloggers, the answer is Yes. At least Ms Seelye is openly letting the bloggers and commenters do the heavy lifting, and she provides some attribution.

Anyhoo, somewhere along the line, in the same vein, I ran across The Updated Pew News IQ Quiz in which I prove that I am smarter than both the men and the women. Or not. I thought the questions were ridiculously easy and the answers were ridiculously apparent. It could be that instead of being smarter than you, I just need to get a life.



Take the quiz yourself.

One thing I found interesting, the old folks got more right answers than the under-30 crowd [or even the under-50 crowd, for that matter] except for one question. You'll recognize it when you get there.

Tree blogging.

Apologies for pulling something of a bait-and-switch but this isn't really a blog post about trees.

Instead, a young woman in Darfur [El Fasher, Sudan, to be more precise] hand writes an indie newspaper and posts it on a tree, where approximately 100 people a day stop and read it, or at least peruse the headlines. All of the tools of the internet at my fingertips, and her reach is greater is mine. I love it.

For the past 10 years, Awatif Ahmed Isshag has handwritten monthly dispatches and commentary about life in El Fasher and hung them on a short, wiry tree that scatters shade along the yellow-sand lane by her house.

For the past four years, the dispatches have included items about the conflict in Darfur that appear to represent the only independent local reporting about the fighting in a region where most media hew to the official government line.

[snip]

Isshag's sister originally started the newspaper on the tree, writing articles about El Fasher but with an emphasis on women's rights. When she died in 1998, Isshag took over. She was 15.

Looks like the citizens of El Fasher have about as much trust in their MSM as I do in ours. Long live the indie media!

Update: The above link no longer works. Try this one.



Women carry water at Abushouk camp near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
Photo: Reuters

I'm annoyed again.

We are entitled to everybody's analysis of the SOTU speech, and the cherry-picked snippets of it they want us to have, both in writing and in video clips, but just try finding a full transcript or full video of it on the web. They're all behind walls where you have to pay, or at least register. So much for the watchdog media.


UPDATE and correction: CNN has a transcript, but I'm still peeved; the link to it was buried in one of their stories.

Yo! WaPo! Yoo hoo! Look over here!

I know it's just a tiny little nit-picky thingy, hardly worth worrying your busy little brains about, but Florida has TWO time zones. Our polls here in the Panhandle close at 7:00 PM Central Standard Time. That would be 8:00 PM Eastern Time, for those of you who may be historically and/or geographically challenged.

Sheesh.