Media

As Kaiser points out in "Act of Congress", the one thing members of Congress have in common is that they don't know anything but attack politics. What politicians and pundits have in common is that they need each other.

You can't survive in Washington unless you are a part of and a supporter of its corrupt, elite and power greedy culture. There is nothing worse than the greed for power, which is on full display in the NSA-Snowden story.

Americans' respect for the presidency and Congress has been in the tank since Eisenhower. What little trust in the military that existed was undermined with the appointments of Hagel as Secretary of Defense. As for national intelligence agencies, think 9/11, Boston Marathon, etc. There is no there there.

As a conservative Republican who always has given institutions and the government the benefit of the doubt until people like LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and Obama showed their true colors, the decline in trust in American institutions, including the media, is disappointing and alarming, but not a surprise.

Americans outside the beltway have 1000% better access to information than we did in the 50s, 70s and even the 90s. We've learned that all the blather that we hear on the Sunday suckup shows is coming out of the mouths of West Point C students and affirmative action and trustee Ivy League kids who know politics and little else.

If the elite don't listen to the people and respect their knowledge and assessments of what is happening in Washington, the powers of the elite will go the way of the once powerful GOP "establishment."

One of the advantages of having been on social media sites for some 30 years is that I've experienced the fun of being on CompuServe, Internet message boards, this blog since 2003, newspapers' comments sections, twitter and FaceBook.

And now we have another social media site that I rediscovered this morning on twitter.com. 

http://www.Medium.com announced its plans last year, and I registered as a member, but I didn't realize that it was up and running until I saw its tweet a few hours ago. 

After signing in with my RealDonJohnson twitter account, I read a few articles and then dug into the "About" pages. (You may have to sign in with your twitter account to read that and other links I'm going to post here.)

Medium appears to be for people who want to write real articles, not just 140 word tweets or one-paragraph posts on FaceBook.

The site wants people to follow its style books, use its specified dictionaries and write "percent" instead of "%", which takes only one keystroke. I'm a "%" kinda guy. But if I decide to post on Medium, I'll try to use their style, which I think will keep a fair number of contributors away.

The next thing I read in the "About" section was a very detailed explantion of how "authors" and commenters can use the site. Writers can authorize readers to post "notes" next to sentences and paragraphs, not far away, deep in the middle of 1,000 comments posted below the article.

Notes appear in the margins of the page, right next to the sentence or paragraph they address. Notes writers are limited to only 200 characters per note, and you can't break those notes into paragraphs.

Long blocks of type are unreadable and unread. I believe in short paragraphs—the old Chicago Daily News style.

What's great about Medium's notes is that an author can turn them off, zap trolls and nasty comments and reply to those who post notes. And the author is the "moderator" and can make useless and nasty notes (flames) invisible to all but the author and the note writer.

In other words, authors and commenters can have real conversations. I'm hoping that Medium's authors will engage their writers. Few if any reporters for blogs, news sites like Politico.com or WSJ.com interact with commenters. I think that's a mistake and missed opportunity to engage readers.

Articles are posted in what Medium calls "collections". There are dozens of them. Sign in and take a look.

LINKS:

http://www.medium.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.facebook.com

Why the media are Obama Democrats and encourage Divider-in-Chief/Liar-in-Chief Obama:

Copyrights protect the property rights of those of us who write, make movies, write and sing songs and patent inventions, among other things. The internet has caused millions to disregard copyrights, and now newspapers around the country are asserting their legal right to protect their intellectual property. I have always tried to respect copyrights and to make only fair use of copyrighted materials, which includes about anything anybody writes. In an effort to make peace with some Colorado bloggers whose writers and commenters have posted complete articles in violation of the Denver Post's copyrights, the paper has clarified its copyright policy. Basically, it says I can summarize its article as I've done here, and it would appreciate some kind of link to its stories when summaries and comments about the articles are posted on blogs and other web sites. LINK: Notice to readers about Denver Post copyright protections.

Stephanie Simon is reporting that Colorado's tea party and related groups are "splintering", which is absurd. First, most tea partiers and Republicans are united behind Tom Tancredo for governor and Ken Buck for U.S. senator. And most are backing John Suthers for attorney general and Ryan Frazier, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner and Mike Fallon for Congress.

Having endorsed appointed Obama Democrat Senator Michael Bennet over Republican Ken Buck, the Denver Post is going after Buck, and he's helping them make their point. This makes sense and is predictable. I am doing the same thing on this blog—cheering on Tom Tancredo, Buck and Ryan Frazier while highlighting their opponents' missteps whenever I can. That's politics and attacking candidates is one of America's great political traditions because it informs voters. Yes, the attacks often are unfair and even untrue, but because both sides do it, voters have plenty of time and ways to process all of the opinions and facts that they see and hear during a campaign. Sometimes voters blow it as they did when gullibles elected Obama, but most of the time, they make pretty good decisions. LINKS: Off the cuff, Buck missed the mark; The candidate reaffirmed his knack for sticking his boot in his mouth with his comments about gays choosing their sexuality. Denver Post editorial. Buck's reprimand was no youthful indiscretion, Bob Barr's Denver Post op-ed.

When candidates like Colorado's appointed Obama Democrat Michael Bennet (D-Washington, DC) hide behind body guards so reporters and bloggers can't ask them questions, most voters tend to shrug and not give it much thought. But when Alaska's  Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller hires thugs to protect him and they handcuff a blogger who wants to ask an embarrassing question, you know that Miller has no business going to the U.S. Senate. LINK: Reporter handcuffed at Joe Miller event, by Alexander Burns.

Democrats are doing all they can to scare Republicans into voting for the ethically-challenged Dan Maes instead of helping elect former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo governor of Colorado. And the Denver Post political writers are doing all they can to help the Democrats by writing misleading stories about the situtation and quoting warnings by a Democrat political consultant, Fred Ciruli. Even if the reporters are trying to be objective and fair, their work looks very biased in favor of Obama Democrat John Hickenlooper. I support Tancredo and my agenda is obvious.

The Denver Post is proving that it’s no longer just a liberal newspaper. Its political reporters are exposing the character flaws of not only the disgraced Republicans, Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, but also those of Obama Democrat John Hickenlooper. This morning, the Post’s editorial calls on Hickenlooper to disclose all of his contributions to charitable organizations and hard left political advocacy groups like ACORN and Re-Create 68, which threatened to disrupt the Democrats’ 2008 Convention in Denver. This editorial comes only a day after a Post editorial that questioned Tom Tancredo’s support for Amendments 60 and 61 and for Proposition 101. The Post is becoming Colorado’s newspaper of record and its doing a good job of trying to keep politicians honest. LINKS: Hickenlooper ought to reveal donations, Denver Post editorial. Governing a state of ruins, Denver Post editorial.

If you’re wondering why the hard left Huffington Post is promoting writers and articles that support building a Muslim-owned mosque near Ground Zero in New York City, you might be interested in knowing that it also is very anti-Israel. LINKS: Huffington Post—attacking Israel for fun and profit. By Paul Mirengoff. HuffPost spits in the eye of a murdered IDF officer, Israel and Jews everywhere—while deep-kissing Lebanon and Hezbollah. By Huff Watch.

Some of Scott McInnis’ supporters are trying to turn the story about his plagiarism into an opportunity to flame the Denver Post and Channel 9, which jointly investigated the plagiarism. No one should be defending McInnis. Plagiarism may not be a crime, but a lot of people have been fired for plagiarism. No one who has 

While I’m a conservative and report more about Republican politics than I cover Democrats, I also feel free to call out Republicans and conservatives when I think they’re off course. I also interview and cover Democrats when I can. This, of course, upsets conservative readers who expect conservatives, Republicans and journalists and bloggers who share their values to be “loyal.” The same thing goes for Democrats and liberals and the journalists who share their values. When someone fails to follow Obama over the cliff, the dissident is soundly criticized.

In one of the best articles I’ve seen about media bias since I first subscribed to the Columbia Journalism Review back in 1961 or 1962, The Dangers of embedded journalism in war and politics, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius explains why Fox looks biased to liberals and all the other networks and main stream papers look biased to conservatives. Having been a journalist and publisher for more than 45 years and a blogger for more than 7, I totally relate.

Simply put, we’re all human. We remember the last thing we hear or read, and we are much more likely to read and listen to those who reflect our views than those who don’t. I read my first employer, The Wall Street Journal, much more than I read The New York Times or Washington Post, although I read all of their web sites several times on most days. I watch Fox now and then, CNN when there is breaking news and ABC evening news a few nights a week. I never watch MSNBC, NBC or CBS, because I don’t trust them and there’s only so much time available. I read the liberal Coloradopols along with the conservative RockyMountainRight and PeoplesPressCollective. Politico.com is moderately liberal and my favorite political site because it’s what political leaders from both parties read. In Colorado, The Denver Post’s The Spot is the best political blog for news and gossip. Everybody in Colorado politics is or should be reading it.

The Columbia Journalism Review, however, has become a left wing political journal, and I no longer subscribe to it or read it or its web site.

In any case, read the Ignatius piece. It is right on.

The holding company that owns the Denver Post and Boulder Daily Camera is filing a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy that allows the executives who borrowed the company into bankruptcy to retain control of the company and 20% of its stock.

How did Dean Singleton,

Some of the best political reporting and blogging on this election cycle’s gubernatorial and senate races is being done by Michael Roberts at WestWord. He has an excellent report on Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams’ current views on the contest between Scott McInnis, the near consensus choice of the GOP establishment, and Dan Maes, the political rookie who’s making a good impression at forums and in interviews. Wadhams tells Roberts that McInnis still has to sell himself to the GOP base, and Maes has to show he can be competitive in the fundraising primary. Link:

After I started my career in the Chicago bureau of The Wall Street Journal, I joined the Chicago Sun-Times as a business and financial writer.

For more than three years, I covered the commodity futures, transportation and auto markets, among other things. And I had a great time at the Sun-Times. Fortunately, The New York Journal of Commerce offered me a lot more money, and away I went.

Anyway, it’s good to see that the Sun-Times has new, mostly local owners. The company has been entangled in bankruptcy brought on by the fraud that put the former CEO, Conrad Black, in jail.

If the new company can start with relatively clean balance sheet, it will have a chance to be profitable. Mesirow Financial chairman James Tyree, the lead investor and the new chairman of the company, may not be a journalist, but he does know finance and business, which is more than you can say for most newspaper publishers. Most newspaper companies are hurting because they are over their heads in debt. Even when interest rates are virtually zero, too much debt makes it difficult to survive a severe recession.

Link:

James Tyree names Chicago Sun-Times investors