Young Duncan Black Falls under the influence of even younger youngsters


Ezra Klein day before yesterday

TOO MANY REPORTERS SPOIL THE NEWS.

The convention is packed with reporters, as you might imagine. This is a bad thing. You often hear press types complain about cutbacks and "doing more with less," but there are times when the news media would literally do a better job if there were fewer of them, and they had fewer pages and fewer hours to fill and a smaller campaign travel budget. Since there were thousands of them who needed to justify their Denver junket today, they all hyped up a couple dozen disgruntled Hillary supporters (meanwhile, the platform was adopted without a hitch). Four cameras trained on the stage would have been cheaper, and more informative and reflective of the actual events of the convention, than all the assembled reporters combined. And with the savings, they could have hired 200 news foreign correspondents. As it is, the concentration of journalists ended up distorting the news and giving viewers a wildly hyped understanding of the scene around the convention. Making them stay home and watch it on TV would've been better for everyone.

[snip]

Posted by Ezra Klein on August 25, 2008 10:00 PM

Atrios Yesterday

Duncan Black

Nobody Needs To Be Here

Just continuing something I've mentioned before, it is really true that there really is no reason for even a small fraction of the press to be here, assuming the purpose of them being here is to inform the public about what's going on at the convention. Media members like to fret about convention coverage, as if the political parties force them all to come here against their will. Then they come here and write stories about how know news is being made here, as if they weren't aware of that fact before hand.

-Atrios 14:18

If you are alert, you already no that the other young whippersnapper is Matthew Yglesias.