from www.umainetoday.umaine.edu
PressThink's Jay Rosen's new NewAssignment.net has a new assignment for everyone come Election Day: Vote, point and shoot. NewAssignment and some partners today launch an "open source photo essay" to collect images from across the country documenting the voting process in a real-time, grassroots wave. It's called the "Polling Place Photo Project" ("Photograph your polling place. Document democracy.") and its meant to "add accuracy, nuance, poetry, meaning" to what the news media otherwise brings us, and also a station-by-station opportunity to capture what's really going on, instead of having to sift through anecdotes after the fact — especially if something goes wrong.
Like democracy, everyone's invited — except no one has to line up for nine hours. Rosen calls it "'political ergonomics'" The art and science of lowering barriers to wider participation." Built by AIGA, the professional association for designers, as part of their Design for Democracy initiative, the Polling Place Photo Project (aka "PPPP") is meant to provide an enhance picture of "what it looks like when Americans go to vote in 2006." Hopefully pics of long lines, rejected voters and malfunctioning Diebold voting machines will be in very short supply. For more information see here, on our very own HuffPo!
from ETP
Via TVNewser, we saw today that the Hollywood Reporter is, well, reporting that MSNBC has enjoyed double-digit gains in viewership for the month of October. "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann is up 67% (61% in the 25-54 demo) compared with October 2005; THR notes that Bill O'Reilly still clobbers with 2.1 million viewers, but that it beat out CNN's Paula Zahn in the demo and came close in viewership. "Scarborough Country"* is up 13% and "Hardball" up 27% in the demo, and Don Imus is also doing well in the AM slot. MSNBC GM Dan Abrams attributes the rise to the cabler having "found its voice" but is cautious: "We still have a ways to go. One month does not make ratings success, but this is certainly the right direction." This may have something to do with the fact that Fox News leads the pack...for the 250th straight week.
Also clearly finding a voice: THR reporter Paul Gough, whose byline rang a very recent bell, mostly because we'd just seen it re: Brit Hume leading Fox's election coverage (which we linked earlier today), as well as atop the report that CBS swept the Emmy nominations for Business & Financial Reporting, with 15 noms to nearest competitor NBC's five. Gough also wrote today's network ratings stories, about ABC's "Desperate Housewives" taking Sunday as CBS took the week; on NBC's "Heroes" and "Deal Or No Deal" taking Monday primetime for NBC; and the story on Fox's "House" and ABC's "Dancing With The Stars" leading Tuesday primetime (oops, that's dated tomorrow — the early bird gets the worm!).
Upshot: Paul Gough and Dan Abrams are very busy guys.
*Disclosure: I (ETP editor Rachel Sklar) have made numerous appearances on "Scarborough Country" and totally take credit for all gains.
This month's Rolling Stone features an interview with fake news gurus Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The twist? This one's written by Maureen Dowd. Never one to underestimate the importance of self-deprecation, she opens with a revealing paragraph:
I thought Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert might be a little nervous to meet with me. I was the real news commentator, after all, and they were the mock. They threw spitballs at presidents; I interviewed presidents before throwing spitballs at them. I had crisscrossed the globe to cover news stories, while these guys just put on dark suits and threw up imported backgrounds on a green screen. No doubt they would try to impress me with some weighty discussion about world affairs or the midterm elections. But when I walked into Colbert's office at The Colbert Report, just off Tenth Avenue in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, the two barely acknowledged me.
Interesting choice, to start a cover story about two hot-topic figures with a paragraph about...yourself. Making sure, of course, to mention all the reasons why these hot-topic figures should be impressed with and intimidated by you. Sure, her subjects may have hosted dignitaries from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to John Edwards (when he first announced his candidacy for president) and count people like John McCain as regulars; but being interviewed by a REAL journalist, that's still got to be a heart-pounder. Particularly one who has already appeared as a guest on both shows. Intimidating!
Dowd then launches into personal profile-mode, painting Stewart as an "intense Manhattan smarty-pants" with a dry wit born of Jewish angst and Colbert as the family-loving "meticulous sprite" whose status as the youngest of eleven children lets him easily play Harpo to Stewart's Groucho. Then, rather than going for, say, a few questions on how both men plan to cover the midterm results on election night, she reaches for the existential with the following:
A fake news show, "The Daily Show," spawned a fake commentator, Colbert, who makes his own fake reality defending the fake reality of a real president, and has government officials on who know the joke but are still willing to be mocked by someone fake. Your shows are like mirrors within mirrors, using a cycle of fakery to get to the truth. You've tapped into a sense in society that nothing, from reality shows to Bushworld, is real anymore. Do you guys ever get confused by your hall of mirrors?
To which Stewart fittingly responds, "I didn't know we were going to have to be high to do this interview."
— Melissa Lafsky
The WSJ's Brooks Barnes looks at the other election happening next week: Which anchor to watch on Election night? Tuesday will be the first election presided over by these anchors — the big turnover in the anchor chairs happened after 2004 — and as Barnes says, dramatically, "the stakes are high." This is a long block of prime-time, live coverage, and "advertisers and cable and broadcast rivals will be watching closely to see how each handles the hot seat." Barnes also doesn't count out the cable nets — Fox (with Brit Hume), CNN (with Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs and Paula Zahn ) and MSNBC (with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann plus other MSNBC types) — all of which will be blasting election-night graphics in your face as the crawl crawls and the very very serious election-night music thrums forebodingly in the background.
Each anchor will have trusty, high-wattage sidekicks: Williams will have Tom Brokaw; Gibson will have George Stephanopoulos; Couric will have Bob Schieffer. Edge: Williams, definitely. He also has an edge since he's covered for MSNBC in the past, but notes that the real challenge will be in making the all-important election calls that color the maps and make people either look smart or really, really stupid, depending on whether you should believe exit polling (which was oddly unreliable in the last election). Says Williams: "Getting it wrong is forever. Getting it four minutes late is forgivable." The networks are guarding against that by making no calls until polls close (or are "scheduled to close" the WSJ says non-specifically); also, each network will send two reps "to a 'quarantine room' at an undisclosed location in New York City to comb through exit-poll data."
Here's something the WSJ doesn't mention: What will happen at 11 pm when Jon Stewart is on? I'd be curious to see what kind of ratings shift occurs at that point. I predict that he'll pull huge numbers that night (and, depending on how they use that hour-block, Colbert as well though it's Stewart who is associated with coverage of elections. But either way expect some migration of viewers from the other channels to Comedy Central).
NB: Here's a fun quote, given one throwaway line: "There could be problems in some states with new electronic ballots." Crazy how that's just accepted as a fact of electoral life in the years after hanging chads and Ohio eyebrow-raising. The week before an election, you'd think there'd be a leeetle more concern on that point.
Photo from WSJ.com
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