<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Pulse: Clever, Yet Incorrect. What's New? 

So, the Pulse is out with a piece called the Annual Manual. It's certainly a clever thing, and the addendum to the Confederate general's letter at the start made me laugh so much I nearly feel out of my chair. That said, the Pulse dropped the ball twice in the politics round-up:

Exhibit A:
City and county offices are putitively non-partisan, but nearly every local candidate declares a party affiliation anyway, just for the hell of it.
Actually, gang, county elections are partisan. And you'll also find that city officials, while they may vote in a party primary, rarely make any kind of public declaration of their party.

Exhibit B:
The Democrats have an equally disconcerting tendency to be wildly corrupt. The FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting has left three local officials – Cotton, Charles Love and longtime Democratic heavyweight Ward Crutchfield – facing court dates for bribery charges.
This is not to say there aren't a ton of corrupt Democrats around here, but let's not forget Chris Newton is a Republican.

Anyway, it's clever, so good for them. But you know, the facts can also be a boon to the news business on occasion.

Comments:
Oy. As the poor sap who just got Fisked, I'll immediately grant you the "officially partisan county" point. (We'll run a correction.) But I haven't met a city official who isn't eager to declare his or her unofficial party affiliation.

As for the second point: Chris Newton doesn't represent Chattanooga. Ward, Charles and William do (or did). All three are Democrats; two are arguably the most influential Hamilton Democrats of the last two decades. Unpleasant, but there it is.

I'm glad you enjoyed the snark. And I'm grateful, too, that these are the most egregious errors you've found in our work, especially since we're endeavoring to create more agressive, independent news coverage. (A li'l less breathless, a lot more substance.) Perhaps someday you'll be able to call us clever and mostly correct.

Meanwhile, we still love you.
 
There's a lot of love in the blogoshpere right now. I feel it.

Yeah, city officials will tell you what party they are in, but I think you saw with Coulter and Littlefield that "nonpartisan races" allow the parties to split more easily. Especially with Dems being cobbled together from so many constituencies, it frees people up to hate each other out in the open, instead of beind closed doors.

And yay for more substance. Snark + Substance = Journalism gold.
 
Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?