John Edwards Follow

A (still) working journalist writes: Also, listening to Clemente's speech [on CSPAN], I realized that she is the first candidate since John Edwards to bring up the issue of media mergers and consolidation and the impact of same on the political process. I wonder if this will present an opening to shed some broader public attention onto issues of journalism and what's happening to our industry (the mass layoffs so many JAWS members have been hit hard by, either because of their own job losses or because of having to do more work with fewer resources and less time). Food for thought. Of course, this cartoon is more serious than a line on a ballot. It has over 1k media cites in under 8 hours, and the McKinney/Clemente story has less than 1/10th of that accumulated in 72 hours. So much "outrage", and so little irony. I suppose next Atrios will start getting 1k media slams for describing US politics as "so dumb" ... because it just couldn't be true that media is consolidated, and so amazingly dumb, that the snobs at the New Yorker could actually look down their noses at the Broadcast News Rubes. Something worth reading.