Mt
Lg
Ex
Tl
Tr
Legion. An amalgamated journal.
  • About Legion
    "I do not know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied .... It is not one but legion." —Henry David Thoreau, to the Secretary of the Harvard College Class of 1837, in response to an inquiry on his employment.

    At Legion, we reserve the right to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticise after dinner, just as we have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. Legion is an organ of the Matinicus Syndicate, of which more here.
  • Features and Foci
    Finders Keepers
    Collodion
    A Call On The Shoreline
  • Meta

The conventional press

Apparently even the Crimson is going to be in Denver.

In light of this, I give you this assessment by Jack Shafer:

A still better way to improve convention coverage would be to withdraw all reporters and force the curious to rely on a C-SPAN feed: Unless a brokered convention threatens to break out, these political gatherings tend to produce very little real news. Yet the networks, the newspapers, the magazines, and the Web sites continue to insist on sending battalions of reporters to sift for itsy specks of information.

If the political press corps were honest, they’d start every convention story with the finding that nothing important happened that day and that your attention is not needed. Or they’d go searching toilet stalls for somebody with a wide stance. Instead, they satisfy themselves by being the co-producers of a bad reality-TV show about the coronation of a man who would be king.

—Garrett Dash Nelson

August 25th, 2008 at 11:11 am

But perhaps you disagree

One response so far

  • [ # ] Garrett Dash Nelson — Aug 26, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    See also Ezra Klein:

    Thus we get the Clinton v. Obama storyline, an intrigue-filled narrative rich with characters and anger that few believe will have any actual effect on the convention or the election, but will get tremendous amounts of coverage because, frankly, the assembled journalists need some way to convince corporate that it’s worth covering the whole political team’s airfare and hotels every four years. And who knows: Maybe the amount of coverage the tensions get will serve to amplify their impact and make the rift more meaningful, and thus the media will have managed to retroactively legitimize their coverage of the story. But I doubt it.