WRITING CULTURE 2012: Film, Food & Beyond

Bill Clinton is a Superhero. Barack Obama Invented Healthcare

Disclaimer: I think The New York Times’ coverage of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, specifically the Caucus Blog, was comprehensive and all inclusive. For all of last week it captured events as they unfolded and provided brief analysis of both Democratic and Republican rhetoric.

Though I did vote for President Obama in the 2008 election, plan on doing so in November, and have openly mocked Mitt Romney while in the company of registered Republicans,  I did have a few issues with the New York Times’ coverage of the convention. Especially if we consider it to be an esteemed member of traditional news,  the Times’ bias towards the Democratic camp is a bit distracting.

Everyone knows President Obama is the coolest guy to occupy the oval office, ever. We also know Mitt Romney is kind of a prick and that he is  representative of a small percentage of rather prickly Americans than perhaps any other presidential candidate. Ever.

We all know this like the back of our hands because we’ve been entrenched in what appears to be the longest campaign in United States history. You could say that the 2012 campaign began on Wednesday November 5, 2008 and rhetoric of the Caucus Blog reflects that.  It would have been nice to see the New York Times use their tarnish-proof image to add some legitimacy to blogging and try to appear neutral.

That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the thorough reporting, it’s just so blatantly obvious who the writers are rooting for. In short,  I expected more from the New York Times.

Multimedia Roundup 

Where the Caucus Blog may not have been my cup of tea, the multimedia coverage was pretty impressive. Maybe this is the geek in me talking, but I think the New York Times is really using multimedia effectively to analyze the news, make it digestible, and link to sources. That is, afterall, the point of technology; to make our lives easier through efficiency. [/nerd]

Pieces like the breakdown of Bill Clinton’s speech is great for news junkies, politcos, and aspiring speech writers alike.   The additional commentary is short but allows the reader (or listener) just enough time to take in what is going on, and what the speaker (Clinton) is attempting to convey. I like it for no other reason than I think it really shows how great of an orator Bill Clinton is.

I tried listening to Bill Clinton’s speech uninterrupted late last week following the convention, but the cult of personality was a bit too much and I switched it off after ten minutes. The interactive feature allowed me, as a news consumer, to view his speech in context and appreciate it as a excellent example of public speaking rather than a sales pitch.

I thought this was awesome: Words Used at the Convention

There was a video that showed the various factions of the Democratic party as donkeys in different getups, but I can’t find it because I’ve exceeded my article limit. Boooo.

Photo credit: David Handschuh/New York Daily News

(PIC: latest news link)

The Live From Studio H team decided to look at the photo slide shows from the DNC. The Times separates the shows by day, so 3 days of the convention, equals 3 stunning sets of shots which depict an energetic convention, bathed in blue light and brimming with character.

An effective photo story , requires a whole host of complex things to come together in order for it to be a useful tool in telling the story of an event. It has to give you just enough context, some feeling of atmosphere, a view of what really was going on, both in front of and behind the scenes, and best of all, who are the characters involved. The Times coverage does all of these things and more.

Let me say this. It’s hard to take any type of picture at a political convention that doesn’t appear like an advertisement for the Democratic party. The room is designed that way. The lighting is blue, there are numerous banners and posters at every strategic angle, and all the speakers wear patriotic colors that don’t clash with the screens behind them. But The Times images still manage to throw up a few surprises, (and by surprises, I mean not just the same old typical shots that a myriad of other news sources are currently running with on their websites) the ‘Yes We Can’ sneakers and Obama 08 Yamaka spring to mind.

The day 1 shots of the entrance and outside areas add greatly in setting the scene in a way that TV crews can’t capture, and the images of the staff preparing the flooring and wiping down the podium intensifies the feeling that we are getting a fully rounded view of what it really takes to stage such a momentous event.

I wonder though, is there a missed opportunity for Obama here? Perhaps he should have drafted in Nicole Ritchie to stage an ‘America’s next top Obama wear designer’ competition. It’s clear from the photos that people continue to rock a plethora of Obama infused attire the likes of which I thought were relegated to the backs of the wardrobe since November 5th 2008. It’s clothing that defies any reasonable categorization on the basis of style or taste, but boy, it screams enthusiasm. This is simply about repping for the president in the best and most unique way you know how, and these photographs capture this and convention life as a whole in all its crazy, diverse beauty.

I would like to thank all of those who voted

Here and there I will catch up on the general idea of what is going on in politics, usually by default of having watched the evening news. I suppose the reason is because broadcasts tend to be biased, whether they are slightly or extremely biased is a debate in itself, and the fact is I am not that interested. Live blogging is an interactive way of seeing political coverage. See: New York Times. Those feeding the updates are including comments, reactions and other pieces of information that make things multi-faceted, exponentially so. The best part of this is that the presentation effectively helps those who are newly exploring the subject or have missed something, understand what is happening, in context. Television networks don’t have “time” for this kind of thing. Consumers should recognize though that there are ways to access both formats, even simultaneously, and with a little effort, for free.

Via, this New York Times site, you can see a breakdown of the speakers and what was discussed. This is the equivalent of chewing for the consumer so things are easier to swallow, but just because the smaller pieces have names doesn’t mean the consumer knows what they ate.

On a side note, when did the Democratic Convention become an awards show?

Politics/ Florida’s Vote

In a seven video look into the varying aspects of life in the I4 stretch of Florida, a swing state, video journalist, Erik Olsen’s crisp, clear, and beautifully lit videos, are a joy to watch. Warm, non intrusive and charming, his videography style has a way of allowing his subjects to really showcase their opinions and tell their truth to camera without it seems much thought of fear or judgment. Trust me, being non judgmental is hard to do when one voter sitting beneath a confederate flag states “I was a Democrat until Obama got in because I don’t like black people” or when the Freeman family line up evokes a scene from the TV show The Munster’s (such is their rather scary choice of hairstyle and all black clothing)

But odd and offensive subjects aside (yes grandma, that includes you wearing the Super Bitch hat) overall, the people chosen are a diverse and engaging bunch, with many of the interviewees like Jeanette Ocasio, a Democrat who represents the Hispanic vote, or Alexander and Christian, the teen Super Pac Republicans, coming across as really likeable. The overall impression that remained was that no one really likes Romney all THAT much, and few people have the same fervor for Obama that was stirred up for 4 years ago. I for one have a taste for some chicken empanadas and an ice-cold mojito, so I’m off to Habana Outpost in Brooklyn to get away from all this election coverage, after all, I can’t vote in the darn thing anyway!

Photo Courtesy of  the NYTimes

I was drawn to this blog about former President Clinton because of the title, “Clinton Was a Bipartisan President, Except When He Wasn’t“. I didn’t know what bipartisan meant until I looked it up and found it’s meaning to be somewhat intriguing. Bipartisan means, of, relating to, or involving members of two parties. The photo above depicts Clinton talking about both parties with his hand gestures as saying we can co-exist. As I continued to read the blog from The Caucus, it seemed right to refer to President Clinton as a bipartisan president when he wanted to be. I would say President Clinton was the highlight of the DMC with his unanticipated speech nominating President Obama for a second term. As a first time reader of any sort of political blog, I found myself wanting to keep on reading and not just giving up at the first few sentences. The tone in this blog is appropriate for someone like myself who is not into politics.

“In that sense, the speech was a vivid reminder of Mr. Clinton’s famed capacity for juggling many different ideas, personas and narratives, and along the way rewriting the history of his own presidency. The story line of a relatively bipartisan era when Democrats and Republicans came together to overhaul welfare, balance the budget and expand the economy profoundly oversimplifies a much more complicated, messier presidency.”, as blogged by Peter Baker. President Clinton by far was in deed a president like no other. listening to Clinton’s speech and then reading about it gave me a little hope that maybe there is more to our future and the future of our little ones.  

I particularly like the photo with President Obama graciously embracing former President Clinton with a warm hug after his powerful speech. You can see Obama’s appreciation to his predecessor as he closes his eyes and accepts what Clinton expressed in his speech.  

Photo Courtesy of the NYTimes

The whole slide show was entertaining to look at and take in what the people of South Carolina were able to see front row and carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I definitely am not one to talk politics with anyone let alone read about it on my own. This weekend I caught up on the Caucus blog on NYTimes.com and I can’t say I was uninterested. The Caucus blog did a very good job on covering the campaign of both the Republican and Democratic parties. But of course, to no surprise of mine, Obama was definitely in the center of attention since after all the New York Times is a more liberal publication and would give him more attention than his running mate, Mitt Romney.

The post that intrigued me the most was the article with the famous cover photo that was printed on nearly every single major newspaper across the nation of Obama being hug-lifted by a pizza man. Obama, trying to get some undecided voters to join Team Obama, went down to Florida to advocate his health care plan. In doing so, he bashed opponent Mitt Romney and his vice president candidate Paul Ryan is saying their proposed health care strategies will just make their lives much worse. One thing I do not like about politics is the bashing and I am pro-Obama all the way but maybe that was a bit more than he needed to say. Nonetheless, it’s politics and everything is fair game. Back to the story, the now famous pizza man, Scott Van Duzer, found some discomfort with his freshly acquired fame as he was bombared with hundreds of comments on his Yelp! page, both good and bad.

Of course, this blog is consisted of many articles pro-Obama and pro-Romney, yet through reading many of these I could only get the feeling that this blog was mainly an Obama cheerleader. The Nicki Minaj article where she tweets Obama saying “Thank you for understanding and creative humor Mr. President, the smart ones always do”, a reply to a public misunderstanding on her lyrics in a song, is a perfect example. Not only does this article promote Obama’s candidacy but it also ebbs Romney’s with the implication that these “smart ones” should have understood that her preaching for Romney in the song was a complete joke. Nonetheless, the caucus was filled with many good posts, some more over the top than others but definitely needed to be a little less “bashy”.

The multimedia coverage on the other hand was definitely more objective coverage than the caucus blog but again leaned more towards Obama. This portion of the Election 2012 section on NYTimes.com was filled with pictures and videos of Obama and Obama supporters. There was a slideshow of the backstage images during the Nation Democratic Convention however I found it interesting that there was no slideshow for the Republic side. But it was definitely a lot less bias than the blog. Many pictures from both sides were provided and videos as well. A very neat feature was the interactive one that tells you what words were said more by each candidate. Pretty much for reasons that tell you which topic each candidate would focus on more such as jobs, tax and energy as well as other friendlier words like family and the American dream. This was an excellent demonstration of last week’s conventions and public opinions through multimedia.

The crowd goes wild for Obama, credit for photo goes to WashingtonTimes

First off let me say that we are truly blessed to have the technolgy that we do today.  The day of the convention I was in class until 9pm which made it impossible to watch the convention on televsion with all its sights and sounds.  However, using my tablet I was able to access NYT’s live blog and stay in touch with up to the minute news of exactly what was going on, right from my cramped desk amongst my marketing research classmates.

I beleive that the Live blog set out to be a substitute for those who were unable to watch it live, such as myself.  You did not get to see all the glamour and glitz of the venue but bloggers posted pictures along with their posts which gave readers a better feel of what was going on.  That is probably the part that surprised me the most.  When I think of live blogging I think of small tidbits of information, a retro form of tweeting if you will.  I was taken aback to see bloggers writing posts up to four paragraphs long, filled with insightful news.  Even posting images which must take time and accuracy to make sure it can go from one’s camera to the computer is a feat.

I really enjoyed this type of reporting and believe they succeded in achieveing their goal.  It wasnt as brief as a tweet which allowed for more imersion and you werent bored out of your mind by a rambling speaker on television.  The perfect middle ground in my opinion.  This is why they were so successful.  They mixed in different elements from actual tweets, real blog posts, as well as images of the night.  NYT also did not constantly update every few minutes.  The information was somwhat staggered so you werent overwhelmed by constant updates. (which I feel twitter can be at times)

NYT Reporters kept posts simple, concise, and interesting and that is exactly what a blog should be.

Multimedia Round-up Coverage

Now I will be the first to tell you that I am not a politically savvy individual.  But this slight flaw is what made me enjoy the Times’ multimedia coverage.  The interactive bubbles of the piece “At the National COnvention, the words they Used” were engaging and informational.  You really got a feel for the big issues facing the nation.

There were also the two pieces comparing Obama’s use of “I want” in his speech compared to Romney’s “I will” in his speech.  The two pieces highlight the phrases thorughout the respective candidadates speeches.  These peices really caught my attention and not to get too political here but, I beleive a presidential candidate should be confident in what he says and saying “I will” speaks alot more to me than saying “I want.”

The last piece I will discuss is the “Dodging the Police at the 1968 Democratic Convention.”  This blog does not really have anything to do with this years issues but you can see the history of the DNC and how far we have come since then.  Len’s blog includes images of riots, national guardsmen patroling streets, and civilians being dragged away.  While this year’s campaign are filled with pictures of cheering crowds and celbrities.  It really puts into persepctive how important these convetions are to our way of life.

Barack Obama
Source: Arktimes.com

First the positive:

The live streaming blog that went live on September 6th showed us how amazing technology is.  I personally, was in awe at how fast the journalists watching the speeches wrote not only about what was being said but actually gave a detailed analysis. That takes a lot of skill and it’s probably why the New York Times is one of the best newspapers in the world.

The tweets contained the observations of the journalists. I liked this aspect of the live streaming blog as it gave the reader an imagery of the convention in case they were not watching or were just switching back and forth between tabs. This shows that the New York Times is really adapting to the technology age where people don’t want to be overwhelmed with too much information at one time. This brings me to the negative aspect of the blog.

While I like how they were presenting the information, the content itself left a lot to be desired. Maybe it’s because journalists are very jaded or cynical these days or maybe it’s because presidents usually say things like this but I thought Obama’s speech was very touching. In the first few minutes of his speech I found that he said a lot of things that a lot of immigrants could relate to. He said,

“My parents were given the chance to go to college, buy their own home and fulfill the basic bargain at the heart of America’s story. The promise that hard work will pay off, that responsibility would be rewarded, that everyone gets a fair shot”.

I thought this wrapped up nicely what I think of America. Yes, there is corruption and some lack of ethics. Yet, as a person from a third world country where the idea that the government pays for your college is laughable, I have to agree that this country does give everyone a fair chance. That the New York Times chose to analyze the decorations and the venue over positive messages like these really disappointed me. However, the multimedia presentation really made up for this.

The multimedia presentation was very detailed and very educational. The Times did a good job of providing information not only for the people who have been following it all along but also for the people who do not know anything at all. The presentation included tabs featuring the different issues such as abortion and the war and then it stated what each candidate’s stance was on that issue.

I also thought that their interactive feature was very fun to play with and that the information they provided is actually very helpful, such as the the swing states and how they have voted in the past. I also liked that the interactive feature went one step further and gave the user the option of making their own scenarios about what would happen if each state voted democratic or republican. I think … that’s very democratic.

The multimedia presentation presented both sides equally but it is still very clear that the Times leans democrat as their own scenarios of how the election would play out mostly indicated the different ways Obama could win and Romney could lose. I also liked that they included the latest twitter feeds on each candidate as well as the latest news stories when you clicked on their name. However, one negative of the presentation, is that the twitter feed mostly shows tweets from journalists. I would have loved to have seen tweets and Facebook updates from regular people and what they think about each candidate.

In conclusion, the New York Times did a good job educating the people with their multimedia presentation. As for the live streaming blog, I have to congratulate the journalists on how fast they can analyze and how fast they can write but It also needs to be said that in the future they should not only write about the negatives and the issues but also provide some positives of this country and its candidates. I mean don’t we vote because we care for and love our country? Well show us why we love it.

WHAT THEY DID RIGHT, WRONG, AND MISSED 

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

The New York Times says it starts coverage of the DNC at 7pm EST. but in reality the REAL live blogging didn’t hit off until the end of VP Biden’s speech.

For better or for worse the editors, staffers, and blogging experts of the Times barely skimmed over speeches made by Scarlett Johansson, Caroline Kennedy, and Eva Longoria (just to name a few). Albeit I understand the ‘celebrity’ aspect Scarlett and Eva brought to the conference might not have been a Clint Eastwood spectacle.

But their speeches mattered. 

They spoke to a generation that’s desolate about what their futures might hold, students that are caving under loans and interest rates, and women who don’t want ownership of their bodies questioned or disputed. The Times lack of acknowledgement was disappointing to me and anyone else that was following them along since 7!

They did get some things right though. They updated regularly once President Obama came on. Most times taking a little over 5 minutes to catch up with the live feed (annoying, but understandable). Something I learned I have a love-hate relationship with was the effusive commentary. 

Following any event on Twitter, especially the DNC, means you get a bit of wit and the facts all under 140 characters. Following the DNC through live blog is a lot different. The editors expressed their opinions thoroughly. It took some getting used to.

 MULTIMEDIA – GRADE A

The NY TIMES has a nice post-DNC multimedia roundup.

I looked through a few multimedia pieces because it took me a while to find the 3^rd day roundup. I enjoyed them all. The Times knows how to vet what images or video are worth their own piece. The images of DNC- backstage were great, the black and white really gave it a serious, thought provoking mood. The images of the last day of the DNC showed movement and emotion, which is what the speakers and President Obama wanted to provoke.