Monday, February 11, 2008
Al Diamon
Demand a Recount
Or maybe not.
An Associated Press story on page 4 of that day’s Telegram put Clinton’s total at 1,095 and Obama’s at 1,070. On that same page, the paper’s Washington correspondent, Jonathan Kaplan, reported the score as Clinton 1,055 and Obama 998, but didn’t bother to include the delegates won on Saturday. And no editor went to the trouble of updating the numbers for later editions. Or attempted to reconcile the contradictory returns.
In the next day’s Portland Press Herald, Kaplan had fresh figures. He wrote that, including delegates won in Maine’s caucuses and super-delegates who had announced support for a particular candidate, Clinton had reached 1,135, while Obama was at 1,106. That didn’t jibe with the AP, which had it as Clinton 1,125 and Obama 1,087 on page A8 of the same paper and as Clinton 1,127 and Obama 1,093 on page A2. Take your pick.
Fortunately for those interested in the actual results, they were readily available on the Web, where newcomer PolitickerME.com cleaned the competition’s clocks with frequently updated figures for both the Democratic contests on Sunday and the previous weekend’s Republican race. Even though the fledgling site has just one full-time reporter, it managed to cover a sizable sample of cities and towns across the state and to pick up some real news. It was Politicker that first reported Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins going on the attack against her Democratic rival, U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, for accepting money from MoveOn.org (a story the print media wouldn’t notice until several days later). The site also scooped its rivals with news that GOP state Sen. Dana Dow of Waldoboro announced at his local caucus that he would not seek another term in the Legislature, but would explore a run for governor in 2010. And while the Press Herald devoted much of its Democratic caucus coverage to how crowded it was at Portland High School, Politicker was busy reporting on what those in the crowd heard from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Patrick’s feisty speech on the merits of Obama and the shortcomings of Clinton – and whatever effect it had on the results – didn’t even rate a mention in the Press Herald..
— Filed February 11, 2008
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Posted on Monday, February 11, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
Look around the Web and you will find even more delegate counts. The New York Times has must read for political junkies about counting delegates:
"The greatly divergent delegate totals say as much about the byzantine nature of the Democratic nominating process as they do about the different counting methods of various news organizations. Add to that delays in reporting results from the bundle of states that voted on Tuesday and the loss of delegates for some states that moved their primaries up in defiance of party rules, and voters are left with a frustratingly unfocused picture of who is ahead in the Democratic field."
nytimes.com/2008/02/09/us/politics/09delegates.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin
Hrm. T. Cushing Munjoy over at Pressing the Herald goes on hiatus for "unplanned surgery," so Al becomes the standard-bearer for all things anti-PPH.
And Al has been the only media person, so far, to interview the elusive Munjoy.
Methinks there's conspiracy afoot.
Munjoy and Diamon are one and the same!
For the record, I'm not T. Cushing Munjoy. Or Wally Edge.Or any other fanciful character. I do, however, appreciate the irony of being accused of using a pseudonym by somebody called "Anonymous."
As for the Press Herald, there's a sign of improvement. The paper only had two conflicting sets of delegate-count numbers in its Feb. 12 editions. In a page A1 story, Jonathan Kaplan cites the Web site Real Clear Politics for figures showing Obama leading Clinton 1,144 to 1,138. On page A6, the Associated Press has it the other way around, with Clinton at 1,147 and Obama at 1,124.
As usual, nobody at the paper thought it was important to help readers understand the situation by resolving those contradictory numbers.
Al,
I agree that PolitickerME.com has cleaned the clocks of the competition when it comes to its coverage of the various caucuses. And though I reported Sen. Collins's MoveOn.org attacks a full day before Politicker (it's buried in my account of the Westbrook Republican caucus on February 2 at my blog, westbrookdiarist.blogspot.com), Politicker was the first news source that anyone reads to report it. As for other newspapers' coverage of the caucuses, I can tell you that I--a blogger who does this for a hobby--was the only reporter at either of the Westbrook caucuses.
John C.L. Morgan
(Full disclosure: The folks at PolitickerME have graciously linked to a couple of my posts, including my coverage of the Westbrook caucuses. So, yes, I did accomplish the trifecta of softly criticizing the two news sources who've given me some exposure, as well as my own blog.)
Don't be so hard on yourself, Al. You are quite a fanciful character.
One concern I have is your characterization of PolitickerME scooping its "rivals" on such thrilling stories like unassuming Sen. Dana Dow is not running for re-election, and may consider running for governor.
Who did Politicker scoop on the Dow story, exactly? Dow's district is dominated by weekly papers with marginal web presences, at best. While Politicker deserves credit for having the story, it shouldn't be construed as this grand coup.
As for Sen. Collins' efforts, this kind of story is in Politicker's wheelhouse. They focus on the political process, rather than the substance. It's a trade mag for political junkies.
In other words - they're paying closer attention to the political machinations than anybody, because its their job, and their core audience demands it.
This story was also reported on Politicker on Feb. 8, two days before the Democratic caucuses, which the state's print media covered quite well.
So it's easy to scoop an 'inside politics' story when all of Maine's political media is focusing on perhaps Maine's biggest political story of 2008.
And, I might point out, the author of the story was the mysterious Wally Edge, who remains just as anonymous as I. There's some irony for you.
None of this is meant to demean Politicker, which is doing great work, and filling a great niche. I read it often, and have great respect for its publicly identified staffer.
But citing these two examples of the site "cleaning the clock" of the print media is a tad overblown, don't you think?
They're doing a good job at what they do.
Isn't that enough?