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Another goofy blog story * UPDATED x3 *

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Illinois

* As always, any “mainstream” media article about the Internet is filled with misinformation, and this one is no exception. Here’s a sample…

The state [Republican] party’s Web site is getting 100,000 hits per month, and the state is working with local county parties to develop their sites, Trover said.

A “hit” means that viewers have accessed a single file. I get more hits than that in a single day. Lots more. Like six or even seven times more. If the IL GOP’s website was really getting 100,000 hits a month, that would be pathetic.

* And how many times does this canard have to be beaten back?

“Even though there’s a lot of good information on the Internet, there’s also a lot of inaccurate information on the internet. Blogs and mass e-mails, especially, are dangerous if they contain bad information because it’s very easy to spread the misinformation, and it’s very difficult to respond it,” said Mike Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

Lawrence, who also is the former press secretary to Jim Edgar in the offices of secretary of state and governor, said journalists properly question candidates and “present a more balance presentation of issues” and “hold candidates accountable.”

The Chicago Tribune’s website is viewed by more people in Illinois than any political blog, yet it routinely has errors, like the egregrious one in its lead editorial last Friday that I debunked later that morning.

Also, national political reporters, as a class, are just downright awful. Blogs have often done a lot more to hold candidates accountable than beat reporters. Several reporters were present during George Allen’s “Macaca Moment” and never bothered to report it, for example. Also, ask the governor’s office and the other four leaders whether they’re monitoring this blog to see what we’re doing to them on a daily basis. That would be holding them “accountable.”

One thing my blog does is provide visibility to several Statehouse reporters who might never get read by the majority of legislators and administration tpes. I also try to put things in perspective to give you some of the “real” story that is so often missing from more “mainstream” sources.

* And, as is way too often the case in stories like this, no bloggers were interviewed to counter the attacks from the old guard. How’s that for a more balanced presentation of issues?

* One last item of note. Steve Brown of the House Democrats and the Democratic Party of Illinois, tries to explain why the state party’s website is so awful…

“Democrats do more face to face interaction and real people meeting with real people. That’s what provides energy to efforts like campaigns,” Brown said.

* I’m sure Billy Dennis and others will have more to say about this Peoria Journal Star piece later today. Come back and I’ll update you.

Discuss.

*** UPDATE 1 *** An official at the IL GOP says the “hits” number referenced in the PJ-Star story above was, of course, incorrect. The state party gets 100,000 “page views” a month and about a million “hits” per month. Makes more sense.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Just for snicks, I checked to see if the Tribune had corrected its horrific error from Friday’s editorial. It hadn’t. So much for the accuracy of print.

*** UPDATE 3 *** Billy Dennis’ response piece is now online.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:25 am

Comments

It would be nice to see one of these “stories” start with the caveat that the paper printing it has a conflict with the story. They have a vested interest in getting people to fear online information in favor of the printed word.

For consideration, the recent multi-million dollar liable/slander award in faor of a canidate for false reproting was against printed media, not a blog

papers have the same deficiencies as Blogs, there are good ones, bad ones, and ones that just go for sentaionalism over turth.

In the I want news now age print is dead. SJ-R online releases new stories and lets people BLOG about the articles (they massively massively need somone to oversee the blog). It seems the papers hoping to survive are going the way of the Blog.

Comment by Ghost Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:40 am
Shorter Steve Brown: We don’t want nobody sent.

Comment by archpundit Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:45 am
Buzz Bissinger agrees that the blogosphere is a scary, wild-West place.

Comment by Canseco Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:47 am
That would be great if potential Democrats knew how to get into touch with real Democrats face to face. I would still say the state Democrats got some work to do on that. It’s not good for a more open party.

Comment by Levois Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:49 am
I continue to be amazed by how bad so many party and candidate web sites are. Many lack basics like core beliefs and bios and good contact info. Many candidates lack pages!

They are easy to put together, easy to update, what’s the problem?

Plus, they could have there own blog. That, I would like to see, the Gov. and four tops, each blogging away.

Comment by Pot calling kettle Monday, May 5, 08 @ 10:56 am
Pot Calling Kettle,

I regularly beef with just how absurdly bad our local sites are. Not only do they lack in information, they often lack basic design.

On topic though: This silly “but those intertubez can contain dangerous misinformation” reminds me a lot of when teachers back in the 90’s would say that spell check would harm kids ability to spell.

Funny, that when making a point about misinformation - the guy has to use misinformation and FUD.

Comment by dan l Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:01 am
I’m looking forward to the day when crappy papers are put out of business due to their inability to adapt to a new(er) medium.

Most of this story is crap, anyway. “The Internet, you say? Much like one of those crazy flying machines” Is it actually news that the Internet has drastically changed the way we live? It changes business? Oh man, I’m glad we have such hard-hitting “news” to tell us about these things. And they’re only 10 years late!

Comment by the final countdown Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:12 am
This Island Lake blog–What’s Happening in Island Lake? (http://villageofislandlake.blogspot.com/ )
broke the story of Marine veteran Gerg Kachka’s being arrested for disorderly conduct at a village board meeting. He was wearing a tee shirt which ended up being featured on the Chicago Tribune web site as the story of the day on Friday after being on Fox TV News Wednesday night after being on the front page of the Daily Herald on Wednesday.

I posted a story about it on Illnoize on Thursday.

Comment by Cal Skinner Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:24 am
Brown is good at his job, but honesty requires all of his friends to get him to admit that the IL Dem site is pathetic and that they just don’t want to spend the money it takes to make it good.

Comment by Napoleon has left the building Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:25 am
Rich,

You are so right about this one. The mainstream media is still so arrogant no matter how many times it has been shown up on a major story.

The best one that comes to mind is the whole U.S. Attorney firing scandal. That story was pooh-pooh’d for months by so called “real journalists.” But it was an enterprising blogger named Josh Marshall that broke that whole scandal. Without Marshall, Alberto “Fredo” Gonzalez would still be U.S. Attorney and we would have no clue about the lengths the Bush Administration has gone to subvert justice.

Everytime I read Zay Smith’s snark in his QT column about the differences between Blog and Newspaper headlines I just want to smack him upside the head so he’ll wake up to the new reality.

MSM still has an important place, but thank God the blogs are there to do the job frequently neglected by the MSM.

Comment by Chicago Cynic Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:36 am
Content is content; good research, writing, editing and reporting is not dependent on the medium.

As far as the spread of bad or inaccurate information…

We all know the legendary Chicago Machine stole the 1960 election for JFK, right? That without fraudulent votes that delivered Illinois, JFK would have lost to Nixon. I’ve read that in books and mainstream media all my life. I’ve seen it treated as gospel on Sunday morning Washington talk shows and PBS documentaries. In recent months, I read it in the Washington Post, New York Times and Times of London.

It’s just not true.

The final Electoral College was:

Kennedy: 303
Nixon: 219

Give Illinois’ then 27 votes to Nixon and the final would have been:

Kennedy: 276
Nixon: 246

Comment by wordslinger Monday, May 5, 08 @ 11:42 am
Nah, nah!
You’ve been sleeping!
The story is if Nixon won the corrupted states of Illinois and Texas, he would have won.

Lyndon Johnson was a proven vote manipulator and the 1960 Texas results are probably tampered. Remember Johnson lost his first Senate race via corruption, then played the game and won the Senate race by 70 votes, ‘Landslide Lyndon’.

As for Illinois, Daley probably did what he could to get Kennedy elected. And he was King of the Hill in those days. It is quite possible that Daley delivered Illinois to Kennedy in 1960.

But be that it may, what we saw in 2000 shows that although a presidential race can be won via the Electoral College, the losing party screams bloody murder until that president is out of office. As Nixon knew and wrote in his pre-presidential autobiography, he didn’t want to win that way.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, May 5, 08 @ 12:36 pm
=== It is quite possible that Daley delivered Illinois to Kennedy in 1960.===

Daley famously suggested that the suburbs did some hinky things as well and offered to, as I recall, split the cost of a recount with the Repubs. They declined.

As for Texas, LBJ was from Texas, so I find it difficult to believe that JFK/LBJ actually lost Texas.

…Adding… The margin may have been padded, but, again, it’s pretty tough to claim that they actually lost.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, May 5, 08 @ 12:42 pm
Ever since Watergate, journalism students have been filing into colleges to become activists. The professors they have been listening to play the same game.

But, as always, the game changed with time. As we easily see on most campuses, times have not caught up with those professors. So these colleges still churn out activist pretending to be reporters. No news is bad news, so it is their job to find news. Tabloid freak shows have replaced light news days.

What they forgot is how to report the news when it occurs. Hurricane Katrina becomes a feeding frenzy of stupid emotional reporting. Every election becomes a fight to the death. Every government policy becomes an ‘either/or’ debate.

‘Traditional’ reporting is dying. Thank God. The crap that passes for reporting - isn’t.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, May 5, 08 @ 12:48 pm
Daley could have stolen the 1960 election for Kennedy, but there is no proof he did. That is what I was trying to say.

I think the right outcome occurred in 1960, just as it did in 2000. These virtual tie elections happen. When they do this generates ‘what-if’ scenarios which generate conspiracies for those who feel slighted by the election results. Spoils to the victors, conspiracies to the losers.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, May 5, 08 @ 12:52 pm
VMAN, my original point stands

I know the history of the 1960 election, my comment was regarding how I’ve seen it inaccurately reported in mainstream media to this day.

The sources I mentioned, some within a few months, have stated as gospel that Daley stole the election for JFK by delivering Illinois through fraud, although the math shows that is not possible. No mention of other states.

In truth, there were many controversies. Texas was one, but JFK won by 46,000. The GOP also considered Missouri and New Jersey as stolen. If Nixon had won, you can bet that the Dems would have screamed bloody murder over the fact Kennedy led in California by 36,000 the day after the election, but lost by 37,000 when the absentees were counted a week later.

But my point was the reporting, not the history. I’m wide awake. As far as Gore vs. Bush, I was over it long before Justice Scalia talked with Leslie Stahl. And remember, torture isn’t punishment.

Comment by wordslinger Monday, May 5, 08 @ 1:17 pm
==the IL Dem site is pathetic and that they just don’t want to spend the money it takes to make it good==

It doesn’t take a lot of money to have a simple, decent web site. One of the many staffers spends a week to build it and then an hour a day to maintain it. They probably spend at least that much time reading and posting to this blog…

Comment by Pot calling kettle Monday, May 5, 08 @ 1:38 pm
I should’ve added this at the top, but here goes..

“Balance” often means reporting what a spokesperson says for proper “balance” even though that spokesperson has a history of not telling the truth. It also often means “s/he said - s/he said” crud that passes for reporting.

Comment by Rich Miller Monday, May 5, 08 @ 2:09 pm
OK - I get it now!

Not only is the 1960 election mishandled, you could say the same thing regarding many other elections.

Right now we’re seeing ’swift boating’ mishandled and along with it, a rewriting of the 2004 election. For partisan political reasons, the term is considered a negative. That makes it easier to define than to actually try to explain what happened to Kerry instead.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, May 5, 08 @ 2:38 pm
All news is reported from the bias of its observer. selecting a news source is really just finding reporters whose point of view is acceptable to the reader.

Comment by Ghost Monday, May 5, 08 @ 2:47 pm
I bet Brown was asked how could Democrats eke out any victories with a web site so much less dreamy than the GOPs.

Comment by Reddbyrd Monday, May 5, 08 @ 2:54 pm
The rest is history

Comment by Reddbyrd Monday, May 5, 08 @ 2:54 pm
===I bet Brown was asked how could Democrats eke out any victories with a web site so much less dreamy than the GOPs.

LOL. That Madigan doesn’t want a bunch of party activists mucking up his operation isn’t surprising at all, but it’s mildly amusing that in trying to avoid saying that, Steve argues that the best tool to bring people together with the collapse of neighborhood politics is bad because it doesn’t bring people together.

I know he’s searching for an excuse, but after Obama’s effort to organize over the net, it’s kinda lame.

Shorter me: Steve Brown is far more talented at spinning than he showed there.

Comment by archpundit Monday, May 5, 08 @ 3:36 pm
How about this for the dems website motto: “We don’t want anything put down in writing if we can avoid it.”

Comment by Pot calling kettle Monday, May 5, 08 @ 4:19 pm
[…] It’s a tired old canard: The Internet can’t be trusted because it gets the facts wrong, but print can be trusted because it has editors. Folks, print has been getting it wrong all along. Which isn’t surprising, since human beings are involved. But so has the Internet. The media is plural. It’s a not a monolithic entity. But print and broadcast are closer to being the monolith, with all the mergers and takeovers. It’s easier, these days, to get a fair shake from the Blogosphere as a whole than from corporate media. […]

Pingback by Media: More nonsense about the Intertubes from the PJS : Peoria Pundit Monday, May 5, 08 @ 4:39 pm
Yeah, I finally got a post up about it. Thanks for the nagging, Rich.

You know, it’s not just that the article takes digs at what I do. It’s that it takes digs and doesn’t even bother to call me or any other blogger for comment.

But this IS the Journal Star. For all we know, the reporter interviewed a half dozen bloggers and some editor decided cut it because it interfeared with the “flow.”

When is what they said when they cut MY stuff back when I was an intern. Conflicting POVs only confuse readers anyway.

Comment by Billy Dennis Monday, May 5, 08 @ 4:44 pm
Rich: I completely agree with the “dueling spokesflak” problem you mentioned. The think is there NOT just two sources to any story. Pro and con is just one way to look at it. Instead of competing biased sources, find unbiased courses. But then, good journalists tried to do that before the first blog was created.

My problem with the PJS article in question is that the Dems and GOP represent the same group: The political class. Citizen journalism is an organic reaction to the political class. It’s no wonder politicians and media mistrust it and complain about it.

Comment by Billy Dennis Monday, May 5, 08 @ 5:08 pm
[…] It’s a tired old canard: The Internet can’t be trusted because it gets the facts wrong, but print can be trusted because it has editors. Folks, print has been getting it wrong all along. Which isn’t surprising, since human beings are involved. But so has the Internet. The media is plural. It’s a not a monolithic entity. But print and broadcast are closer to being the monolith, with all the mergers and takeovers. It’s easier, these days, to get a fair shake from the Blogosphere as a whole than from corporate media. […]

Pingback by Peoria Pundit » Blog Archive » Media: More nonsense about the Intertubes from the PJS Wednesday, May 21, 08 @ 12:44 pm