bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Monday, July 26, 2004 ::

A "new" idea for convention coverage
Actually, it's an old idea, but one that hasn't been considered by the news media for some time. That old idea is what was once called "new" journalism, and in the words of a guy named Jay Rosen, it requires a news organization to "[s]end a writer and let the writer find a language adequate to the event."

For his object lesson, Rosen points to the example of Norman Mailer, who covered the 1960 Democratic National Convention for Esquire with such rich writing that it seems refreshing and new all over again.

Consider the excerpt:
Since the First World War Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.

The twentieth century may yet be seen as that era when civilized man and underprivileged man were melted together into mass man, the iron and steel of the nineteenth century giving way to electronic circuits which communicated their messages into men, the unmistakable tendency of the new century seeming to be the creation of men as interchangeable as commodities, their extremes of personality singed out of existence by the psychic fields of force the communicators would impose. This loss of personality was a catastrophe to the future of the imagination, but billions of people might first benefit from it by having enough to eat—one did not know—and there remained citadels of resistance in Europe where the culture was deep and roots were visible in the architecture of the past.

It is just this surface coverage of the "concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull" that has made political journalism so dull in recent years (or decades). Rosen includes his own snippets of Mailer's stellar prose but, in the end of his post, cautions that journalists writing on deadline won't be able to come up with anything quite so Maileresque -- nor should they. His point is this: Try something different, journalists. Break free from the herd mentality that enslaves you. "You don't have to do things the same old way. There are other, perhaps even older ways; and they may contain hidden instructions for journalists who feel boxed in by the Conventions and their own conventions for reporting on them. (There are more of these peoples than you think.)"

Maybe the convention bloggers -- like this one (Greater Democracy, which directed me to the Rosen piece -- will bring a refreshing insight to the political circus that the conventions have become. Writing about the Rosen piece, Aldon Hynes of Greater Democracy addresses the power of narrative, which is really what good journalism should be about.
Is the story being told about the convention one that resonates, that is part of one of the archetypal stories, and is a story that the readers feel that they participate in? It ties into the beer primary, who would you rather be swapping stories with over a beer in the backyard, Bush or Kerry?

The typical convention stories do not resonate with most of us, Hynes continues. "The story of 'accepting the nomination' feels very removed from the daily life of most of us. ... Too few people have an experience like that, and part of her campaign is to encourage people to step up and allow themselves this sort of experience. Getting credentials for the convention also has a little bit of a feel of 'accepting the nomination' as well, and perhaps people can think of other examples of being publicly recognized, with great expectations placed upon them, but it doesn't seem to be a story that grabs a lot of people."

Maybe the story of the national conventions isn't even worth telling anymore. Maybe they've become nothing more than political ads, and maybe convention coverage -- by bloggers or the traditional journalists -- will be nothing but conventional. But I doubt Norman Mailer think so. I doubt a writer like Mailer would fail to find a story that resonates, somehow.

:: Andrew 09:17 + ::
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