Huckabee–Journalism is dead

In an article on Politico.com,  former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was quoted from his blog saying, “I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism.”

“The once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.”

He couldn’t be further from the truth! Journalism is not dead at all!

It’s just becoming harder to define what journalism is in a time where “everyone is a journalist.”

So when I read the Huckabee quote at the end of the Politico article, I realized he was confusing bloggers with journalists:

“Journalism had grown increasingly dependent on spin-doctor spoon feeding and the circular and insular quoting of other journalists instead of attempting to locate and quote actual first person sources.”

That sounds more like inexperienced bloggers than professional journalists–they aren’t idiots like he says they are.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are many great bloggers out there, who fact-check and write coherently. And then there are the inexperienced bloggers like me, who did exactly what he said is wrong with journalism in THIS blog post…but I’ll get this blogging thing down soon enough…

Here’s the original article from politico…he’s a jackass

Mike Huckabee: Journalism is dead

Obama’s ‘Make or Break Speech’

Tomorrow, Obama will be addressing Congress on healthcare reform and the media is saying that his speech will “make or break” his presidency.

According to The Boston Globe, Obama’s approval rating right now is at it’s lowest it has been during his whole presidency, 53%.

Traditional media sites have been covering the story by using political pundits and op-ed writers who have been making assumptions and giving their own opinions on what Obama is going to say and how it will affect the future of his presidency.

Politico.com, using multimedia to their advantage, complied multiple clips of pundits talking about what they thought about the speech and created a four-minute video out of it. The clips came from big television news networks like: CNN, MSNBC, ABC and CBS. Politico basically gave a quick and simple overview of what everyone was saying about Obama’s speech.

I wish all news would cut the BS and just go straight to the point like Politico did.

Politico.com\’s Pundits on Obama Video

Politico.com–My thoughts

Because I’m not really into politics, Politico.com is the last website I would ever go to. The first time I ever typed it into my web browser was three days ago when I was assigned to track it. But surprisingly, I like it.

Even though I don’t follow politics that closely, I appreciate the amount of unbiased information and news the site has to offer on the subject (though their blogs and op-ed pieces are entertaining). It has every bit of information you would ever need or want to know about politics.

Their media page is pretty good–they have a lot of interesting photo/audio slide shows and video clips from different television news outlets.

I think it’s really funny that they have a political gossip page. It’s like the “E! News” for people who are obsessed with politics. It’s pretty lame. I want to meet the people who get pleasure out of watching “autotuned” youtube videos of senators and other political officials.

Something that I also thought was weird was their “Politico 44″ section–basically a twitter page that gives you minute-to-minute updates on Obama, his family and administration. They call it, “A living diary of the Obama Presidency.” I say it’s really creepy.