NOTE: This is the first in a formal series excerpting bloggers who use solid journalistic techniques that live up to the form’s potential. In the past we’ve informally pointed to innovative bloggers such as Citizen Smash, who has done original interviews and attended demonstrations (even organized one) and to The Talking Dog for his excellent recent Q&A report.
In this occasional series, we’ll point to someone using serious journalism techniques, give you a link and a SMALL TASTE of their post (in other words, visit their site and read it all).
Jonathan Singer of the blog Basie! did two highly timely interviews — one with former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini and the other with Third Way Founder Jon Cowan. Both info-packed interviews are done in highly solid Q&A style. Here’s a small part of each.
Interview with former Senator Dennis DeConcini:
DECONCINI ON THE NUCLEAR OPTION:
I think it will be attempted by Mr. Frist unless he is certain he is more than two or three votes away from it. If he thinks he is within one or two votes, I think he will do it.I’m not sure it will pass. There’s been a lot of Republicans – I’ve talked to many of them – and some are opposed to it on philosophy, though they’re very upset with the Democrats. One of them who is a very influential man, Senator Hatch, he really doesn’t want to do it, but he feels like he’s at the end of his rope with the Democrats.
I think it will be attempted, and my guess is that this very right leaning President – and his popularity with the Republicans – it may carry. It will be a big mistake. It will not bring down the Republic, but it will be a big mistake.
ON CALLS BY SOME IN THE GOP TO IMPEACH JUDGES:
I think it’s a big mistake, and I think eventually it will really backfire on them. The American public doesn’t pay a lot of attention to the everyday politics in Washington, DC, but I just believe that there will be some revolt by the American public eventually if the right wing continues to pursue what they pursue. They appear to be on that road, which as a Democrat, that’s just fine. I may be wrong. It may be wishful thinking.
Read the entire interview.
Interview with with Jon Cowan, the founder and president of Third Way, “a Senate-focused progressive advocacy group.”
ON LEFT WING OR RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY
The simplest way to put it is [that] the focus on whether there is a vast left wing conspiracy or a vast right wing conspiracy really misses the point. The central question is, What are both sides doing to prepare themselves to advance their longterm arguments and to win elections?Right now, conservatives are simply doing a better job of preparing themselves to win the longterm arguments about the country’s future and to win elections, and progressives are not nearly as well organized to do so. Until progressives figure out a way to organize themselves and make a set of arguments that will connect with self-identified moderate voters in much greater numbers, we have absolutely no chance at building a progressive majority again.
ON JOHN KERRY AND MODERATES
When you are behind by almost 50% in terms of the percentage of voters who identify as liberal versus conservative, you have to absolutely crush conservatives among self-identified moderates. That’s not what Kerry did, and it’s not what we’re doing in many of the twenty to thirty so-called “red states� where we’re losing. That’s the simple kind of electoral reality.More importantly, there’s a huge opportunity there. Moderate voters are much more in synch with the long tradition of the progressive cause – of social justice, of economic opportunity, of strong national defense – they’re much more in touch with those values, and the conservatives are steadily being drawn further and further right by their right wing to a place, ultimately, where they’re going to turn off moderate voters.
We’ve got to be positioned so that we are ready to pick up those moderate voters that conservatives consistently turn off. That means we need new ideas and new messaging that will work with those voters and protect our progressive values.
Read the entire interview.
FOOTNOTE: This is the kind of post that truly lives up to the potential of what some thought blogs would be — a new medium of information that would provide solid fresh information done by citizen journalists who don’t need to jump through office-politics hoops to get permission to write or need a publisher’s expensive corporate infrastructure to get their message out (just energy, creativity and a computer…)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.