By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Strictly virtual reality: I took this photo on Hickory Ridge Road in Putney, Vt., with my iPhone on Sunday morning. Instagram filters brought out the highlights, but the focus was soft. So I ran it through iPhoto and turned up the sharpness all the way.
With today’s Boston Globe poll reporting that Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown by five points, get ready for Brown’s defenders to dredge up an infamous Globe poll from two years ago — the one that showed Attorney General Martha Coakley leading Brown, a Republican, by 15 points.
Globe-bashers like Howie Carr love to point to that earlier poll as a sign of the paper’s liberal bias — and I’ll predict right now that that will be the subject of Carr’s next column in the Boston Herald.
In fact, Globe polls are not Globe polls — they are conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, a respected, independent polling operation.
So what went wrong in 2010? My theory: Nothing. The story about that earlier poll is protected behind a paywall (I’m a subscriber, so I’ve reread the whole thing). But as you can see from this excerpt, the poll was conducted between Jan. 2 and 6, and the election to fill the U.S. Senate vacancy created by Ted Kennedy’s death was held on Jan. 19.
Thus it’s likely that the poll was accurate when it was conducted. People were just getting back to their normal routines coming out of the holidays. The race broke very late for Brown. By the time the story was published, on Jan. 10, the race was already trending away from Coakley, and within days, other polls were reflecting that.
What does that mean for Brown now?
First, the margin of error in the new poll, which shows Warren with a 43 percent to 38 percent lead, is 4.4 percent. In other words, if the election were held tomorrow, Brown could beat Warren by several points without calling the validity of the poll into question. The race is still essentially tied.
Second, this is not a low-turnout special election, and as the Globe story notes, Brown faces some harsh realities. By wide margins, people like Brown and like the job he’s doing — but they are increasingly leaning toward Warren because of the enormous enthusiasm among Massachusetts voters for President Obama. I suspect you would not be able to get Brown to utter the words “Mitt Romney” these days even if he were being waterboarded.
Third and most important: It’s still early. No, it’s not as early as it was during the pre-Labor Day period, when you could argue that most people weren’t paying attention. But it’s early enough for things to change dramatically if Warren stumbles badly. That’s why I think Brown is making a mistake by putting a torch to his nice-guy image with his continued attacks on Warren’s claim that she’s part-Native American.
David Bernstein of The Phoenix offers some further analysis of the Globe poll. And Nate “The Great” Silver of the New York Times takes a deep look at conservative claims of liberal bias in polling — and buries the assertion in an avalanche of well-marshaled data.
Illustration (cc) by DonkeyHotey and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Coming out of Thursday night’s WBZ-TV (Channel 4) debate between Republican senator Scott Brown and his Democratic rival, Elizabeth Warren, I thought the issue that could have the most resonance was Brown’s accusation that Warren profited from a legal case that harmed victims of asbestos exposure. Warren didn’t handle the question well, and the matter was left hanging.
Boston Globe reporter Noah Bierman wrote about the case in May. It is convoluted, to say the least. In essence, though, Warren was paid $212,000 by Travelers Insurance to argue that the insurer should be immune from future asbestos lawsuits in return for setting up a $500 million trust fund to compensate victims. The liability belonged to Travelers because Johns-Manville, the company that actually manufactured the asbestos, had gone bankrupt.
Later, after Warren no longer had anything to do with the case, another court ruled that Travelers did not have to pay out the $500 million. So the victims got nothing. Warren told the Globe:
My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible, terrible disaster. It’s heart-wrenching that there are new victims every year…. I think they should be compensated. That’s it for me. That’s what this is all about.
She added that the principle she was fighting for — a provision in bankruptcy law that would allow the establishment of trust funds for victims in return for no further legal liability — was “a critical tool for making sure that people who’ve been hurt have a fair shot at compensation.”
Brown is scheduled to discuss the asbestos case with reporters later this morning. Warren needs a better answer.
Overall, I thought Warren came across well — focused, substantive and calm, if a bit repetitive. Brown was snide and personal. Moderator Jon Keller began by inviting Brown to comment on Warren’s character, and Brown chose to go all-in on Warren’s claim that she’s part Native American. Senator, there are people who will do that for you — and have been doing that for you.
Here is my Northeastern colleague Alan Schroeder, writing for the Huffington Post:
The opening debate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown … at times felt like the classroom dynamic between an earnest, soft-spoken high school English teacher and the defiant jock who plants himself in the back row and makes sour faces until the bell rings. Although the teacher never quite subdued her student, neither did he manage to get the better of her.
And how good a moderator is my friend Keller? Other than keeping the conversation moving, you barely knew he was there. In other words, a first-rate job.
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Like all political junkies, I’m looking forward to tonight’s U.S. Senate debate between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. (Assuming it comes off.)
The first debate is often the most important in terms of drawing the biggest audience and establishing a story line. So I’m glad that this one will be moderated by political analyst Jon Keller of WBZ-TV (Channel 4). Keller, a fair-minded centrist who doesn’t mind delivering an occasional zing, is good at keeping things moving while not cutting people off. Among the things I won’t miss: a panel of journalists and a timer.
Recent polls have been all over the place, showing Warren unexpectedly taking the lead or Brown maintaining his months-long advantage. All are within the margin for error, so the race is essentially tied. That could change starting tonight.
If you’re live-tweeting (as I’ll be) or just following along on Twitter, search for #wbzdebate. The action begins at 7 p.m.
Photo (cc) by John Atherton via Wikimedia Commons and published here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Joe Kahn wrote a smart piece on the future of the Boston Phoenix — ahem, The Phoenix — in Tuesday’s Boston Globe.
As you may know, the current issue of the Phoenix, lowercase the, is the last as a newspaper. This week, The Phoenix will debut as a free weekly glossy magazine, combining news and arts coverage from the Phoenix with some lifestyle content from Stuff, a magazine that will cease to exist as a standalone. And if you’re worried about The Phoenix’s straying from its alternative roots, keep in mind that the Phoenix had lots of lifestyle content in the 1990s. I look at this as a recalibration more than a complete reinvention.
The unusual aspect to this story, and one we Bostonians take for granted, is that the founder, Stephen Mindich, is still at it, and in fact has taken charge of the new publication. In an era of corporate chain media, The Phoenix, at 46, is still proudly independent. Mindich recently talked about his long career with Emily Rooney of “Greater Boston.”
The story of the Boston Phoenix, as with other alternative weeklies, is that it was heavily dependent on classified ads — not just the personals, but everything from a band needing a bass player to a student looking for a roommate. Needless to say, nearly all of those ads have moved to Craigslist.
And at a time when many newspapers, including the Globe, are asking their readers to pick up an increasing share of the costs through home delivery and digital subscriptions, The Phoenix is free both in print and online.
It’s a tough model for the Internet age, but glossy should enable The Phoenix to attract some of the high-end advertising it needs in order to thrive. In that spirit, I think former Phoenix contributor Mark Leccese, now a journalism professor at Emerson College and a blogger for Boston.com, was too pessimistic in his own recent assessment.
I’ve got my collector’s item from last week, and I’m looking forward to grabbing a copy of the new magazine as soon as I can. As most of you know, I was the Boston Phoenix’s media columnist from 1994 to 2005, and I still contribute occasionally.
I wish all the best to Mindich, executive editor Peter Kadzis, editor Carly Carioli and all my friends who are still there. See you tonight.
Taken a little after 6 a.m. today.
How could I resist? Nick Cafardo updates us on Bronson Arroyo’s remarkable career.
Like all of us who live in Greater Boston, I’ve been reading Gloria Negri’s stories in the Boston Globe for a long time. Today she gets a nice sendoff, marking her retirement after 53 years at the paper.
David Filipov begins his article by describing her decision to leave for a reporting trip in South Africa in 1975 despite having suffered a broken leg days earlier.
Columnist Brian McGrory actually manages to top that, recounting Negri sitting on a city bench at night hoping to lure the Boston Strangler — into what? an interview? — and later defying both the publisher and her editors, who didn’t want a woman reporting on the Vietnam War.
Earlier this year the New England Society of Newspaper Editors honored Negri with a “Master Reporter” award. She most certainly was — and is.
Here’s more grist for the comment war that broke out over my Nieman Journalism Lab piece on photographer Gage Skidmore’s practice of giving away his pictures of Republican politicians, and thus theoretically harming paid photojournalists.
The New York Times reports on singer Amanda Palmer’s invitation to local musicians to join her on stage during her latest tour. The compensation: “joy and beer.” The Times blog post, by Daniel Wakin, continues:
Some musicians are enraged, flooding her Web site with angry comments saying that she should pay her backup band. At least one musicians union, Local 76-493 in Seattle, has been sending out Twitter messages denouncing the move and calling for people to post the comments.
Clearly there are some differences between the two situations, but what Palmer is doing raises a few of the same issues.
On the one hand, at a time when free is becoming an expectation in some parts of the economy, aren’t people like Skidmore and Palmer undermining folks who are trying to make a living as photographers, musicians, whatever?
On the other hand, why shouldn’t a creator have the right to give away his work if that’s what he wants to do? Why shouldn’t one musician be able ask others if they’d like to join her on stage without being denounced as a rapacious exploiter?
This article also appears at the Nieman Journalism Lab. Don’t miss the comments — a full-scale debate has broken out over the role of free in what has traditionally been a paid craft.
If you’ve spent much time scouring the Internet for news about the Republican presidential campaign, you’ve probably run across the work of Gage Skidmore.
Skidmore’s high-quality photographs of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and their compadres have appeared on hundreds if not thousands of sites, including those of The Atlantic, “The World,” Tech President, and MSNBC.
It’s not just the quality of his work that has made Skidmore so popular. It’s that he posts all of his photos to Flickr under a Creative Commons license, making them available free of charge as long as he’s credited. The license he chose even allows for commercial use, although he has sometimes been paid for the use of his photos. I discovered him when searching for free photos for Media Nation, and have used his pictures on a number of occasions.
As it turns out, Skidmore is a 19-year-old student at Glendale Community College in Phoenix and a freelance graphic designer. A Ron Paul supporter, he began photographing politicians when he was living in Terre Haute, Ind., attending events held by Rand Paul during his successful 2010 Senate run in Kentucky. Skidmore also showed up at stops on the presidential campaign trail in order to see Ron Paul and took photos of other prominent Republicans while he was there.
Skidmore doesn’t know how many times his photos have been used. Some version of a Gage Skidmore photo credit appears more than 1 million times online, and looking up his name on Google Blogsearch yields about 40,000 results. That makes him the political equivalent of David Shankbone, the nom de photo of a Wall Street lawyer whose free celebrity photos have appeared in venues such as The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Skidmore told me his Flickr account has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times.
(He also photographs comic-book conventions, and has attended Comic-Con the past six years.)
Skidmore is a paradigmatic example of the pro-am media ecosystem fostered by the Internet — a professional-level photographer without the means or the interest to become part of the traditional journalistic system, but who is nevertheless making a name for himself through the quality and quantity of his work.
I interviewed him by email last week, and have lightly edited our conversation.
Q: How did you get started shooting politicians?
A: I first began photographing then-Senate candidate Rand Paul in Kentucky when I still lived in Indiana. I followed him to various events throughout the state over the course of a year and attended close to 40 events. I had become interested in his campaign very early on due to my support for his father in his presidential campaign in 2008.
I have only photographed a majority of the presidential candidates because Ron Paul was attending the conference that I was attending, whether it be CPAC [the Conservative Political Action Conference] or the Values Voters Summit. And it really helped to have photographed them before the presidential race began. For example, at CPAC in February 2011, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and the like were still mostly unknown, and thus there was a lack of very many free-to-use photos.
Q: Your work has been a real boon to bloggers. Why did you decide to take the Creative Commons route rather than focus on selling your work?
A: My interest has always been to see my photos used as widely as possible. If someone wants to pay me to use my work, that is really only a bonus. But I find that attribution is sometimes more rewarding in getting your name out there among the crowd, which will continue to use your photos.
Q: Have you given any thought to the effect of unpaid photographers like you on the market for professional photojournalists? Is it all right with you if you may be hastening their demise, or do you think society may be losing something?
A: I don’t really think I’ve had an effect on professional photojournalists, as I still see their photos widely used by many of the mainstream publishers. A lot of the sites that do use my photos would probably find another source of free photos regardless, so it might as well be me.
Q: Do you charge for some of your work?
A: I usually only charge for my work if it is going to used in a for-profit publication. I’ve been paid in the past by publications like Reason magazine, which have found use for some of my libertarian-related photography. I also got paid for a photo that appears in Senator Rand Paul’s book, “The Tea Party Goes to Washington.”
Q: A lot of bloggers, including me, are probably at odds with you politically. Does it bother you that people may be using your work for free in order to criticize political figures you admire?
A: I don’t agree politically with hardly anyone that I photograph. My only allegiance is to Congressman Ron Paul and a few other liberty-minded politicians, whom I admire greatly. I don’t mind that my photos are used by some not-so-nice publications. The only thing I really care about is whether or not I was attributed.
Q: What are your photography plans for the remainder of the 2012 presidential campaign? Have you started thinking about 2016?
A: The only plans I have currently is a trip to attend the 2012 Liberty Political Action Conference, organized by the Campaign for Liberty. If Mitt Romney or Barack Obama visit Arizona, I’ll probably make an attempt to photograph them as well.
My focus has never really been to cover the presidential race, but really only what I would enjoy seeing photos of, and enjoy attending events to take the photos, and what was convenient for me to attend.
