News Bytes
April 22nd, 2008 by KimI’ve been feeling a bit under the weather the last few days, so going to bed by midnight is my attempt at getting to sleep early. Here are a few things that caught my eye today:
Mark Bowden’s ‘The Point’. I had the opportunity to meet Black Hawk Down author and journalist Mark Bowden and interview him for an article while working at my college newspaper five years ago. Black Hawk Down is one of my favorite books and a masterpiece of journalistic work, which Bowden researched partially in Mogadishu (he flew there in 1997 with a photographer sitting on sacks of khat). A national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, he also has a column that appears in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Currents section and has written about US policies at Guantanamo, gangs in Columbia and a shield law for journalists.
His June 2007 column about the future of print journalism is particularly interesting … he predicts about newspaper web sites:
I suspect news sites will open with a bang, displaying the most powerful video image of the day in the way editors have long chosen the day’s most dramatic or informative still images to anchor Page One. In that sense, they will look more like TV news than a newspaper - with this difference: All these production values will lead into detailed written stories.
Unlike with TV and radio, which are stuck with people reading out loud, customers of digital journalism will get the best of all media forms. They can wade into any story that attracts them as deeply as they wish. Readers will gravitate toward prose, while those who prefer sounds and images can simply watch and listen.
But do they vote? Young people are among four groups of voters The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib believes will be key to the election in November. Although this election has generated amounts of interest among the 18 to 30 crowd not seen in years, the question remains: will young voters show up on Election Day?
Seib writes:
The rise in both registrations and primary-election turnout by young voters certainly suggests the possibility of a big showing this year. In a sign of that potential, turnout by voters under age 30 four years ago rose faster than among any other voting group, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan group Rock the Vote.
Yet even with that uptick, young voters turned out in lower proportions than any other age group. Turnout among those under 30 was 49%, compared with 73% of those age 60 to 74, the Rock the Vote data show.
The Quinnipiac survey of Pennsylvania shows Sen. Obama leading among Democratic voters under the age of 45 by a 57%-to-41% margin. But the real turnout test will come in November.
The other three groups that matter? Working-class white males, rural voters and Hispanics.
A measure of racism in America? Roger Simon of Politico writes about an issue that’s been on my mind about the general election: How much will race count in November if it comes down to Sen. Barack Obama vs. Sen. John McCain? Simon tries to quantify just how much the race vote will matter:
There is a percentage of the American electorate who will simply not vote for a black person no matter what his qualities or qualifications.
How big is that percentage? An AP-Yahoo poll conducted April 2-14 found that “about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black for president.”
I don’t know if 8 percent sounds high or low to you, but I was amazed that 8 percent of respondents were willing to admit this to a pollster. And I figure that the true figure is much higher.
The same poll also found that 15 percent of voters believe Hawaii-born Obama is a Muslim (he’s actually a Christian). I am not sure how that matched up with the people who said they would not vote for him because he is black, but I’m sure whatever rumors are circulating about Obama being a Muslim are not working in his favor.
Yes, she can! Sen. Hillary Clinton emerged victorious in the important Pennsylvania primary today, besting Obama by 10 percentage points (55-45). Good news if you can’t get enough of the excitement swirling around this primary race. Bad news if November is six months away and you already feel like you’re getting sick of election coverage.
Tags: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, politics, young voters
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 am
Bootiful prose will beat a flashy video or witty news anchor any day, every day.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 am
^^ Fo shizzle.
Hope you get better Kim! Vog has been upsetting my allergies for a few days now…and I heard we might get more this weekend!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
As many people as there may be unwilling to vote for a black man, I think there are even more people unwilling to vote for a woman. While I think society’s standards for racial tolerance make the kind of bigoted xenophobia required to be “uncomfortable” voting for a black person something most people are hypersensitive to, the mild sexism that permeates our culture is largely ignored. The bias is there, though, and I think it’ll become obvious if this election comes down to Clinton v McCain.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 am
this is a tough one. if obama loses, and the exit polls show whites didn’t vote for him, do the media outlets start firing off about racism? what if he loses because more voters feel he was not the better candidate?
my concern is that not enough talk is addressing our economic problems. hillary and obama rail against each other, while mccain continues to focus on the war. does this mean all 3 are out of touch with what is on the mind of many americans?
molokai ranch, aloha airlines, and ata, are just examples of business failures affecting hawaii, but every region and state has their own aloha airlines story.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
As a graduate of Columbia, I resemble that remark about the gangs of Columbia. We had no gangs at Columbia; all we did was study great literature and take the subway to Greednwich Village. [Of course I hated every minute on that train because it was steel-on-steel mass transit. Pardon my IRONy!] Okay, I know, I know, you meant to write Colombia.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
And I meant to write GREENWICH Village. There’s a lesson there for me somewhere. By the way, in my opinion, Kaimuki could become the Greenwich Village of Honolulu, if someone could open up second-floor space for artists’ studios.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Going to bed by midnight is early? What time is late? I’m in bed by 10:00 and that’s late for me. I’m getting really old….
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I believe the greatest damage that the Reverend Wright inflicted on the Obama campaign was not his ranting against America or his talk of AIDS, but the picture he presented of this very strange phenomenon for white people: the Black Church. In short, he called attention to Obama’s black (or half black) race…a race that whites were getting comfortable with, until they peeked inside the Reverend’s church and didn’t like what they saw. Their conclusion? “They’re not like us, after all, and perhaps they don’t even like us.” Without the good pastor, I suspect this race would have been over a long time ago.