{"id":1453,"date":"2004-07-21T13:39:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T17:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/07\/21\/press-questions-for-the-bloggers\/"},"modified":"2004-07-21T13:39:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T17:39:00","slug":"press-questions-for-the-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/07\/21\/press-questions-for-the-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"Press questions for the bloggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The blog server at Harvard has been down since sometime yesterday, so I’m just getting back in today.<\/p>\n

I’ve received a couple of requests from different media outlets about
\nhow I plan to cover the convention.  Here’s the longest one, from
\nNew York Newsday:<\/p>\n

> QUESTIONS:
\n>
\n> 1) What is your general strategy for covering the convention? Where and how will you spend your time?<\/p>\n

Follow my instincts.  I’m most interested in seeing what’s going
\non around the margins of the convention and also in listening to what’s
\nbeing repeated over and over again.  I think we probably learn
\nmore about politics when we pay attention to what’s being said without
\nreflection as well as to what’s not being said.  So I’ll go see
\nthe protestors in their “cage” (see
\nhttp:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/politics\/conventions\/articles\/2004\/07\/21\/protest_zone_draws_ire\/,
\nfor example), to see how that’s affecting them, as well as to see
\nwhether the protestors themselves have fallen into “scripts” like Jay mentions in his pressthink article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

> 2)  Is there a particular gap that you are trying to fill with your coverage?<\/p>\n

Not particularly.  There’s 15 000 journalists who are going to be
\nthere, so it’d be a tad hubristic to think that I’m going to find some
\ngap that they haven’t.  Mostly, I’m interested in watching to see
\nwhat unfolds away from the eye of the camera.  I want to talk about
\nwhat it all *means*, from a background of political philosophy and
\npolitical science.<\/p>\n

> 4) Who is your readership?<\/p>\n

I have no real idea.  I write about politics and religion and
\ntheir confluence, and I seem to get a highly varied group of people.
\nPriests, academics, friends, other bloggers, a couple of journalists,
\nand those are just the ones I’m aware of.<\/p>\n

> 5) Will your blog be reviewed by anyone before it goes out? If so, how will that process work?<\/p>\n

No, it won’t.  And that’s not really a problem.  I don’t make
\nclaims to be “objective”, as objectivity, in the sense that most people
\nmean when they use the word, does not really exist, as we’ve learned
\nfrom
\nmany years of social theory and research.  For more on this,
\neveryone should read a little Max Weber and a little Ludwig
\nWittgenstein.  My goal is to be aware of my biases, to report
\nthem, and then try to minimize their impact upon my analysis.<\/p>\n

> 6) What will you do at the convention that a mainstream journalist would not do?<\/p>\n

I’m not a journalist of any sort, as far as I’m concerned.  I’m a
\nprofessional political scientist.  I plan to talk about the
\nconvention form the viewpoint of a political scientist who likes to
\nthink and write about politics out loud.<\/p>\n

> 7) Are there any ethical rules that you plan to follow?<\/p>\n

Yes.  Don’t lie.  Be clear about your biases.  Don’t attack someone ad hominem.<\/p>\n

I find it interesting that there’s been all this hullaballoo about
\nwhether bloggers will act in an ethical fashion.  Especially after
\nAlex Jones’ straw man piece in the LA Times<\/a> this weekend, there seems to be this idea that we’re renegades, ethically ambiguous, and ready to
\ndestroy whomever we decide to take a dislike to at all costs. What’s
\nfunny about this is that the press seems to forget all the scandals of
\nthe past two years, in which high profile reporters for USA
\nToday, the New York Times, and so forth, have been found to violate the
\njournalistic code of ethics.  The mainstream press had no real
\nsafeguards either; they simply asked the public and each other to
\naccept their word on trust.  So, even though I am not a
\njournalist, I’m following the same set of guidelines that a journalist
\nwould, with about the same level of scrutiny.<\/p>\n

> 8) How long will your dispatches be? How will you decide that?<\/p>\n

Lewis Carroll put it quite nicely:
\n“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
\n— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
\nAnd, to paraphrase the Mad Hatter: I will write my dispatches precisely as long as they need to be, no more, no less.
\n<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blog server at Harvard has been down since sometime yesterday, so I’m just getting back in today. I’ve received a couple of requests from different media outlets about how I plan to cover the convention.  Here’s the longest one, from New York Newsday: > QUESTIONS: > > 1) What is your general strategy for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-nr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}