Uncovering - West Virginia University
Uncovering - West Virginia University
Uncovering - West Virginia University
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Election2008<br />
SOJ partners with<br />
National Press<br />
Club for interactive<br />
election panel<br />
By nEil Saft<br />
Public relations student Anna Phillips wanted<br />
to know if blogs, YouTube and Facebook killed<br />
objective journalism in the 2008 presidential<br />
election, so she jumped at the opportunity to<br />
question a panel of nationally renowned digital<br />
media professionals in Washington, D.C.<br />
Phillips, however, traveled no farther than<br />
WVU’s Evansdale Campus to question the<br />
panelists during the public forum, “The Bloggers,<br />
the Campaign and the Future of Journalism.”<br />
The panel of national journalists and<br />
bloggers was held at the National Press Club in<br />
Washington, D.C., and was satellite-broadcast<br />
to an audience of more than 200 students on<br />
the WVU campus and webcast live via streaming<br />
video.<br />
Co-sponsored by the School of Journalism<br />
and the National Press Club, the September<br />
2008 interactive forum raised questions about<br />
the impact of digital media on the presidential<br />
election.<br />
“The explosion of information online has great<br />
potential to engage more citizens more directly<br />
in more personally meaningful ways in the<br />
democratic process,” said WVU Interim President<br />
C. Peter Magrath, who introduced the<br />
event from Morgantown, W.Va. “It also has the<br />
potential to overwhelm and confuse them and,<br />
in some cases, to obscure accuracy and truth.”<br />
The panelists included Ana Marie Cox, founder<br />
of the political blog, “Wonkette,” and Washington<br />
editor of Time.com; Ross Douthat, senior<br />
editor and blogger for The Atlantic magazine;<br />
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for<br />
Excellence in Journalism and former media<br />
“We’re all bloggers now.”<br />
— Ana Marie Cox<br />
critic for the Los Angeles Times; and Michael<br />
Tomasky, former editor of GuardianAmerica.<br />
com. Gil Klein, a veteran national correspondent<br />
and director of the National Press Club<br />
Centennial Project, moderated the D.C. panel,<br />
while Dr. Steve Urbanski, SOJ assistant professor<br />
and director of graduate studies, hosted the<br />
Morgantown site.<br />
4<br />
Above: More than 200 students gather at WVU’s National<br />
Research Center for Coal and Energy building to participate<br />
in the interactive forum satellite-broadcast from the National<br />
Press Club in Washington, D.C. Below: SOJ graduate student<br />
Michael Conti poses a question to the panelists.<br />
Kendal Montgomery<br />
In response to Klein’s question on how blogging<br />
has changed since the 2004 elections, Cox<br />
said that the distinction between independent<br />
bloggers and bloggers for mainstream media<br />
outlets has blurred.<br />
“We’re all bloggers now,” she said.<br />
Cox also said that forms of new media have become<br />
an extremely effective fundraising tool for<br />
campaigns. She noted that along with receiving<br />
a text message announcing then-Sen. Barack<br />
Obama’s choice of vice presidential running<br />
mate, she also received several text messages<br />
seeking donations.<br />
Douthat agreed. “Back in 2004, there wasn’t<br />
a deep understanding on how much impact<br />
blogs and social media in general could have on<br />
fundraising,” he said.<br />
Tomasky (BSJ, 1982) said that new communication<br />
technologies have also made it easier for<br />
voters to stay on top of the news about political<br />
candidates by giving them access to the work of<br />
citizen journalists. For example, a blogger who<br />
attended an Obama fundraiser that was closed
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