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We expend a lot of energy decrying pontification on cable news, in the op-ed pages of the major papers, in the blogosphere, etc. But when the pontification is literal--as it is in the case of an article in the Times of London, headlined "Pope says world financial system 'built on sand'"--delicacy and, above all, accuracy should be the...

In most of her speeches, and in her debate last week with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin seems to be speaking directly to the “hoi polloi.” That previous sentence is likely to elicit outrage from two places: the people who believe that it wrongly implies that Palin associates herself with the upper class; and the people who think that it’s an...

As the VP debate wound down last week, Andrew Sullivan's insta-reactions included the following: There was only one loser: Gwen Ifill. She was intimidated, peripheral, neutered. The rules didn't help. But Ifill put in a dreadful performance. At the time, I thought that sounded a tad harsh. But after watching Ifill talk about the debate...

A couple months ago, when Veepstakes speculation was at its inane/pointless/baffling height, Campaign Desk asked a favor of the press: that, in the flurry of Veep speculation, they'd take a moment to step back and contemplate, in light of The Cheney Years, what the role of the vice president should be in the next administration. ...

CNN's Campbell Brown, from a New York Times profile on Saturday: As journalists, and certainly for me over the last few years, we’ve gotten overly obsessed with parity, especially when we’re covering politics. We kept making sure each candidate got equal time — to the point that it got ridiculous in a way. So when you have...

Today is the deadline, in nineteen states, for residents to register to vote in the presidential election that will take place four weeks from tomorrow. So, knowing a good news peg when they see one, several outlets are using that fact as an opportunity to report on voter registration issues. The Washington Post has a cover story discussing...

While we're on the subject of The Economist... The magazine's Increasing Cultural Cred and its Desire for Creative Publicity have, it seems, united as one. In the form, specifically, of Off the Page, a total rip-off of the New Yorker festival weekend of events sponsored by the magazine. Events, um, vaguely reminiscent...

Did you know the one thing missing from Southern Afghanistan was an increased focus on eradicating poppies? After a whopping three day visit to the country, U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe, certainly thinks so. He is pushing for a NATO mandate to eradicate opium crops and “go after traffickers,” or...

In naming The Economist "Magazine of the Year," Ad Age paraphrases an ad agency VP saying that the publication is "riding the currents that are relentlessly pushing business and global perspectives to the forefront," and: I think it has a bit of nerd chic to it -- economic nerd chic. When in the recent past have there been best-sellers...

A friend of mine asked if I thought Joe Biden was spinning health care to the Democrats’ advantage during last week’s debate. Was he telling the truth, she asked? Was John McCain really going to tax the value of health insurance benefits from employers? I thought you would know, she said, and I told her that Biden’s remarks on this...

CNN has a deep bench on debate nights -- rows of seated pundits, laptops glowing before them, telling us what to think about what we just heard. Gizmodo seems to confirm what you already suspected: there might be some multi-tasking going on there...

What was the public to make yesterday of the health care repartee between Governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mel Martinez of Florida on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos? Probably not much. The discussion was he said/she said journalism at its very best—unfortunately on a complex...

Last Thursday, Steven A. Smith resigned as editor of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, after he was ordered by his publisher to cut 25 percent of the editorial staff. Later that same day, assistant managing editor Carla Savalli followed Smith out the door. Savalli, considered a rising star at the Spokesman-Review, had been instrumental in plotting the paper's new media...

More Monday Morning Movie-ing, this one courtesy of the good people at Slate V. The clip below offers a neat little summary of the campaign thus far...tongue in cheek, yes, but if you're one of those mythical voters who are, you know, Just Now Starting To Pay Attention To The Campaign, it's actually a quite useful summary of...

New York Times columnist Bill Kristol gets a Palin interview before any of his colleagues on the, you know, news side of the paper. What a scoopmeister! Towards the end of the column, after Kristol notes that Palin has recently begun to raise the (non)-issue of Bill Ayres comes this exchange: I pointed out that...

Tina Fey And The Gang might just have outdone themselves: -->

Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post says all this talk about the crisis being caused by deregulated markets failing is dangerous “nonsense.” He’s right that one of the chief causes was the Fed’s easy money policy, but he's dead wrong in arguing that lax oversight didn’t play a huge part. Here's one foolish argument: The key financiers in this...

What's worse (low-information-, high-headache-quotient) than a morning news show segment pitting Campaign A's spokesperson against Campaign B's spokesperson (headline, "Getting Offensive: new attacks start campaign week")? A news article summarizing that segment? Good Morning America this morning hosted Robert Gibbs and Nancy Pfotenhauer (Obama and McCain campaign advisers, respectively) to attack one another over how their campaigns have been attacking...

Sometimes it’s hard to know when Tom Brokaw is actually gauche or playing gauche; actually ironic or ironizing his own irony. On Meet the Press, Brokaw played a clip of McCain’s interview last week with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, featuring a woman off-camera who notes that “fairly conservative Republicans have expressed doubts about Palin.” “Really!” says...

Moderaterna, the Swedish Moderate Party which is part of the ruling right-wing coalition, predict that blogs and social media will become an integral part of the 2010 election campaign. In a speech this weekend in Sollentuna outside of Stockholm, Secretary-general Per Schlingmann said that the web will be the hub in the next campaign (my translation below). The web will be the hub in the campaign. In ten days we will release our new digital platform which will create new opportunities. How well it turns out depends on us. How open do we dare to be? Dare we let go? For me one thing is clear: in the election 2010, every Moderate blog will be valuable, every Moderate video, every Moderate Facebook group. Let us make sure that there will be as many as possible. I am also convinced that we will carry out more activities where we will meet voters directly, but these activities will be co-ordinatet online and will make it easier for people to take part of our campaign. The prediction that the next election will be web-centric is not very risky, but nevertheless it is interesting to see that the Moderate Party is stressing social media tools so actively almost two years ahead of the election.

During the last few months, blogs have made a huge impact on the political arena, first and foremost from the FRA debate, i.e. the resistance to the new controversial Swedish wiretapping law that enables FRA, Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, to screen and store all digital traffic passing Swedish borders. Blogs about politics and society are also one of the most popular categories in the Swedish blogosphere. The blog portal Knuff.se lists the 50 most linked to blogs in Sweden and currently about 24 of the top 50 are commenting regularly on political topics.

A question I would like Swedish party strategists to answer is how they plan to engage with female voters via social media. If my latest blog survey BlogSweden 3 is anything to go by, female blog readers don't see blogs as an interesting channel for news about politics and society. While this was the most popular topic among male blog readers (49.2% of all male blog readers), the situation was radically different among female blog readers.

Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about (Jan 2008):
- Fashion and design (53.0%)
- Everyday life experiences (51.6%)
- Photography and art (26.6%)
- Parenthood and children (24.3%)
- Music (22.0%)
- Literature and writing (17.2%)
- Movies and tv (16.9%)
- Journalism and media (16.7%)
- Sex and dating (16.5%)
- Politics and society (14.4%)

Tags: election, blogs, 2010, moderaterna, politik, fra. Ping.