As my coverage of this newspaper has progressed, I have started to become less impressed with each visit. As the race narrows, the Post-Dispatch should be paying more attention to the primaries than before, but it appears to have it backwards. I am hoping, begging, pleading and praying that the Post-Dispatch will not disappoint me on Super Tuesday.
The race in Michigan was far closer than in Arizona, but Mitt Romney was able to win in both primary elections. Despite projected doubts, Romney was successfully able to gain the majority of votes in his home state of Michigan yesterday. Prior to the election, the media were reporting that Michigan could be a deciding factor in the race. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was not one of those media. They didn't seem to think much of anything about the Arizona or Michigan primaries until after the ballots were cast. The Missouri newspaper only featured one article about the Romney win. This morning the story was on the homepage of the website, but it has already been replaced.
As my coverage of this newspaper has progressed, I have started to become less impressed with each visit. As the race narrows, the Post-Dispatch should be paying more attention to the primaries than before, but it appears to have it backwards. I am hoping, begging, pleading and praying that the Post-Dispatch will not disappoint me on Super Tuesday.
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Up until recently, I was very impressed with the political coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Post-Dispatch has produced next to no primary election coverage in the last week. The only national, political piece I found on the newspaper's political page. There was no written article on the topic, however, all that existed was a video of Santorum ranting about Obama's position on energy. Despite being disappointed this week, I have faith in the Post-Dispatch that it will soon pump ups its political coverage with Super Tuesday looming. Thursday Sharif Durhams, social media editor at The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, gave my journalism class a presentation about his job experience with social media. Durhams says his job is composed of three parts: working a a reporter for the newspaper's Twitter account, NewHub; directing other social media accounts such as Facebook and Google+; and looking forward toward new things such as Pinterest. Durhams presentation also discussed how the Journal-Sentinel used Twitter to cover Madison politics last year. I always knew that Twitter could be a great journalist tool, but the way he talked about using it to analyze Scott Walker's Twitter account behavior was very interesting. I found this guest speaker to be very helpful and informative. As a contemporary journalism student, you always hear about how helpful social media can be in the workplace. You always hear it, but hardly see it. However, Durhams made it perfectly clear that Twittter is more than just a phenomenon and it is not going anywhere for some time. I have always loved to write and before I went to college, I had a lot of extra time to do it. However, it was never online. I have been blogging since Sept. 2011 and find myself getting more used to writing for the web, but there is room for improvement. The most important of which is time commitment. Feb. 14, Professor Herbert Lowe shared a few articles with his class about how students can be better bloggers. One blog post was written by an professor from Alabama. In his post, he explained the top five problems students make when blogging: 1) Students think they're writing for the professor. 2) Students tend to report on what happened in class. 3) Blog posts are link-less and text-only. 4) The posts fail to take a stand on an issue. 5) Some posts feel like they're written because it is requirement. I have a confession. I have fallen victim to a few of these, particularly number five. There has been multiple occasions where I just wanted to finish the assignment and go to bed, thus resulting in a blog post with multiple typos and little conviction. I hope I have not let you down with a few lackluster postings. Consider this a renewed sense of focus. This blog is not just away for me to pass a class, it is a way to better my journalism skills. Frankly, an editor doesn't care if you're really busy, they just want the story done and done they want it done well. After analyzing and accepting my blog's shortcomings, I will devote more time to my blog posts – to everything I do really. Feel free to remind me of this post if I stray from the path along the way. Like my mother always told me, "Nothing is worth doing if you don't to it right." I definitely do not want to disappoint you...or my mom. Before Tuesday's primary elections, I already knew that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would have great political coverage, especially focusing on its home state primary, Missouri. I was not let down, in fact, my expectations were exceeded. The news site featured a slew of articles and photos with the occasional video. The majority of the coverage focused on Santorum's win or Romney's defeat. There was virtually no coverage of Ron Paul's second place win in Minnesota or Gingrich's poor results in Minnesota or Colorado (he didn't run in Missouri). Not surprisingly, most of the articles focused specifically on Missouri, with only one focusing on Minnesota and no coverage on Colorado. Predictions on how Missouri voters was far from reality according to one article, something that appears to only be covered by the local Post-Dispatch newspaper. I found it especially interesting to read a Missouri-based newspaper writing about a Missouri-based primary election. The Post-Dispatch also focused their coverage toward the future, speculating about potential challenges for Santorum and how Santorum's win will complicate Romney's campaign strategy. The Post-Dispatch produced and article discussing how Santorum's recent success has made the primary outcome 'far from certain'. I see Santorum becoming a more viable candidate as Gingrich continues to lose steam. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch continued its thorough coverage of the GOP primary race. The Post-Dispatch offered various articles about Romney's win in Florida. The most interesting article related to the primary quoted average American voters about why they didn't vote for Gingrich. According to the article, many Florida voters didn't choose Gingrich because he is too "short-tempered" and "untrustworthy". Gingrich's past experiences with love also resulted in a lack of votes from Floridians. It is very possible his love life will cost him votes in the future, and potentially even the presidency. Romney continues to use Gringrich's past to his advantage. "[Romney] has been emphasizing his own 42-year marriage to the same woman, as well as his five sons and numerous grandchildren, as a way to contrast himself to Gingrich," said the article. The coverage was nothing spectacular, but I found it very informative. It did a significant job addressing supporters and opponents of both GOP front-runners. Below are the results for the Florida Republican Primary. After the Republican Presidential Debate in South Carolina where Newt Gingrich slammed moderator John King for beginning the debate about his ex-wife, all eyes were on the Florida debate's moderator Wolf Blitzer. The issues covered in Thursday's debate were quite typical, such as immigration, healthcare, taxes and the economy; but the way the questioned were asked was anything but ordinary. During many debates, candidates tend to avoid certain questions or give ambiguous answers, but Blitzer was determined to get answers from the presidential hopefuls, especially Gingrich. It is possible that Gingrich's attack on King helped fuel his South Carolina victory. He appeared to try and take the same abrasive approach against Blitzer, but it was not quite as successful. At one point in the debate, Blitzer addressed Gingrich's attack against Mitt Romney's financial accounts, but he refused to answer, claiming that the question was "nonsense." "But, Mr. Speaker, you made an issue of this, this week, when you said that, 'He lives in a world of Swiss bank and Cayman Island bank accounts.' I didn't say that. You did." Blitzer fired back. It appears that this took Gingrich off guard and there was even booing from the audience. I believe that Blitzer went into the debate knowing that Gingrich would likely attempt to talk down to the moderator and did a tremendous job of retaliating. Blitzer also served to be a great moderator in this debate by making sure all four candidates had time to address his questions. This was quite different from the "Newt and Mitt Show" that took place during the South Carolina debate. Overall, I believe that Blitzer did an exemplary job at moderating the debate and hope that future moderators will continue to use his strong focus to address the issues. When I went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website to review their coverage of the State of the Union, I was wowed. They worked with the Associated Press to offer something that I had never seen before: a four-part multimedia breakdown of the 2012 State of the Union address. The main tier of the analysis was a topic by topic breakdown of the President's speech, complete with video and a written transcript. This interactive graphic allowed for you to click a variety of topics covered by the President in the speech and then the video and transcript would automatically redirect to the exact point in the speech where Obama addressed the issue. I saw this as a very unbiased way to allow easy access for people to watch the speech that missed it on Tuesday night. The next segment provided a "highlights" tab from the address offering brief proposition about Obama's plans and innovations in the fields of education, housing, insourcing/outsourcing, energy, taxes and using war savings for infrastructure. The third portion presented a bar graph compared the word count of Obama's speech to past president's. According to the graph, throughout history, U.S. presidents have used as few as 1,089 words to as many as 33,667 words in official and unofficial State of the Union addresses to outline proposals for the country. Obama's speech on Tuesday consistered of 6,817 words. The final component of the piece was a compilation of videos with American voters responding to the address, negatively and positively. I really enjoyed the way the Post-Dispatch covered this address because it offered an unbiased, one-stop way for people to efficiently watch the speech, analyze Obama's propositions, compare his speech to past addresses and listen to other voters' commentary and critiques of this years State of the Union. Saturday morning the St. Louis Post-Dispatch began producing content regarding the South Carolina primary election. An article explaining how close the race was and what was at steak was produced early in the day. It was predicted that there was a good chance Gingrich would win the primary, which he did, despite recent negativity from his ex-wife via the media. According to the article, "Since 1980, no Republican has won his party's nomination without first winning South Carolina's primary." Gingrich thanked his supporters last night after the race was called by tweeting, "Thank you, South Carolina!" Former front-runner Mitt Romney also addressed his supporters after receiving the results. According to the Post-Dispatch, "Romney criticized Gingrich without naming him, saying his opponent was joining in on a frontal assault on free enterprise when he castigated Romney's time at a private equity firm." Romney also attached Gingrich for never running a business or a state but plans to fight for every vote in every state for the remained of the race. Third and fourth place presidential hopefuls, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, respectively, will turn their focus to other states. After the polls closed, Santorum announced that he would open his campaign in Florida on Sunday. Paul reportedly intends to skip Flordia and focus on upcoming caucuses in Nevada and Missouri. This morning the Post-Dispatch produced a detailed article recapping the primary and previewing upcoming polls. Overall, I feel that the Post-Dispatch coverage of the primary was very appropriate. It addressed each candidate while focusing more on the prominent battle between Romney and Gingrich. This semester, I will be following online news coverage produced by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The first thing I noticed about the website was the layout. There are various adds on the main page of the website, but there are not intrusive or distracting. Similarly, the website's easy navigation makes the site very user-friendly. The spread of news content of the site is also very impressive. From former Penn State coach Joe Paterno's death to pet nutrition, the Post-Dispatch offers in depth articles on a variety of issues. The incorporation of social media on the Post-Dispatch website was also notable. The website provides quick links to its various social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. Not only does the website link to the Post-Dispatch Twitter account, it also provides the Twitter handles of editors and staff. The website also allows for easy subscription to its RSS feed. Overall, I am very excited to be covering the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this semester. I believe that I will be more pleased with this website than I was with ABC News last semester, because it seems to focus less on entertainment and celebrities and more on hard news coverage (like any newspaper should). |
JOUR 4953:
I used this blog for my political journalism seminar class during spring semester 2012. This blog follows coverage of the presidential primaries from a variety of news sources, especially The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archives
April 2012
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