The audacity of Mother Jones (II)

Jay Rosen got an answer out of Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief, David Corn, as to why the magazine is asking the question “Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in U.S. history?”

Corn points to a speech Obama gave earlier this year in which he conjured up visions of the American Revolution, Abolition, the Depression, World War II and other patriotic touchstones in order to drive home his campaign theme of “Yes we can.” MoJo has since added that in the form of a blog post from February unsubtly titled “Barack Obama’s Messiah Complex.”

I’m not going to reproduce the Obama speech excerpts here, because you can just follow the links. But I do want to consider Rosen’s three questions:

Which comes closest to your view?

1.) Sure enough, Obama in this except “compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in U.S. history” and Mother Jones caught him at it, puncturing the Obama hype. Good for them!

2.) No, Obama does not “claim that his campaign is comparable to the great progressive movements in U.S. history.” Not even close. Mother Jones is engaging in the kind of audacious hype it claims to be opposing. Bad move.

3.) It doesn’t matter whether Obama actually said anything like that because his supporters believe his campaign is a movement of transcendent historical importance, and that’s what Mother Jones really meant, it’s just that the editors phrased it badly, attributing to the candidate claims that have been made by others about him.

Jay thinks the correct answer is #2. Strictly on a factual, non-emotional basis, I agree. But it’s more complicated than that. I think the truth is #2 plus a strong dose of #3, along with at least a slight whiff of #1.

All politicians invoke great moments in American history, as Obama did. But Obama has gone farther by explicitly drawing parallels between his candidacy and those moments. It’s understandable — the election of an African-American as president would rank as a stunning achievement for our race-benighted culture. But it’s got nothing to do with Obama personally.

The thing is, I think Obama understands that, and I think David Corn and company understand it, too. So the question becomes why journalists would compress Obama’s argument into a shallow soundbite that makes it sounds like Obama thinks of himself as a combination of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s not so much that MoJo is completely wrong; it’s that the magazine is being reductionist and stupid. Why?

By the way, I know Corn and have a lot of respect for him. We spent part of the afternoon on Election Day 2004 at a Starbucks near Copley Square, picking out John Kerry’s cabinet for him. But to the extent that he agrees with this particular editorial decision, well, I think he’s wrong.

MIT gag order has been lifted

Media Nation reader J.H. passes along word from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the MIT gag order has been lifted. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole reportedly found that the MBTA is unlikely to prevail in its lawsuit against three MIT students and the university itself.

Background on the case here and here.

Although this is clearly better than not lifting the gag order, it’s also not much of a victory for the First Amendment. The fact is that the MIT students had every right to make their presentation on flaws in the MBTA’s electronic fare system, and they were not allowed to do so.

It makes a mockery of the principle that prior restraint is to be reserved only for serious issues of national security, obscenity and incitement to violence.

The audacity of Mother Jones

Mother Jones magazine asks: “Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in U.S. history?”

Jay Rosen asks: “Has Obama compared his campaign to the great movements in progressive history (like civil rights?)”

Media Nation asks: Where is the evidence for Mother Jones’ premise? Perhaps Obama did say such a thing, but I don’t remember it. Let’s have the precise language.

Update: Welcome, Huffington Post and PressThink readers. Here’s my latest on the subject.

A world without editors

Jeff Jarvis argues in his Guardian column that editors are becoming obsolete. These days, he says, we write first and edit later, often in response to what our readers tell us.

The Jarvis system works for a certain type of journalism (mainly short, bloggy-type stuff like this), but it wouldn’t work for everything. I can’t imagine a major investigative series coming together without deep involvement on the part of skilled editors. Then again, that’s the sort of journalism most endangered in the current environment.

And it would seem to me that an editor whose intervention prevented a libel suit has just covered her salary for the next five years.

Where does Rupert get his ideas?

After Alan Taylor launched “The Big Picture” on the Boston Globe’s Boston.com site earlier this year, he told an interviewer, “I know it’s totally copy-able.”

No kidding. Last week, the Wall Street Journal — not exactly known for its photojournalism — started a photo blog that was, well, identical to what Boston.com has been doing: a blog featuring huge photos of stories in the news and off the news.

The Journal even took the same name, “The Big Picture.” If you go there now, you’ll see that it’s been changed to “Photo Journal.” But I found last week’s version in Google’s cache, and I’ve reproduced it above. And “thebigpicture” remains part of the URL.

It’s a terrific concept: huge photos, mostly from the wires, of the sort that you’re bombarded with every day, but that you probably don’t really notice because they’re too small. “The Big Picture” invites you to look. As Melanie Lidman wrote in the American Journalism Review, “What sets his blog apart is its simplicity. Taylor lets the photos speak for themselves, one at a time, encouraging the viewer to scroll slowly down the page to take in the images.”

The Journal’s act blog thievery did not go unnoticed. Check out some of the comments, which, to the Journal’s credit, have been left intact:

I think it’s sad that a major news outlet like the WSJ lacks the creativity to come up with a blog name that isn’t already in use by another newspaper.

Agreed. If you’re going to lift someone else’s concept the least you can do is come up with an original name for it.

You couldn’t even change the name slightly? How about, “The Large Picture”? A hella-wicked ripoff, I tell ya! LOL!

“The Big Picture” is a great idea, and there’s no reason other news organizations can’t copy it. But for the Journal to steal the entire concept, right down to its name, without so much as a hat tip to the Globe and no original features of its own, seems like a bit much.

At least someone read the comments and changed the name.

Update: In a bit of irony, I discovered late today that I wasn’t the first to report this. See “Credit where it’s due.”

Hazardous hiking in the White Mountains

Click on photo for slideshow

Mark Pothier’s Boston Globe Magazine story on amateur hikers who get into trouble in the White Mountains inspired me to post photos from my last hike up Mount Washington, in August 2003.

My son, Tim, his friend Troy, Troy’s mother and I hiked to Mizpah Spring Hut on a muggy Friday afternoon, along the Crawford Path to Lakes of the Clouds Hut on a clear, cool Saturday. The next day it was up and over Mount Washington in a cold wind. We descended via the Jewell Trail.

For me it was a nostalgia trip, because it was largely the same route I followed on my first hike up Washington, with my Boy Scout troop in September 1968 at the age of 12. Back then, you were still allowed to camp above treeline, and we pitched tents by the shore of Lakes of the Clouds under full cloud cover. (I’ve still got photos from our return trip the following year. I should scan them in and post them someday.)

The next day we hiked to the summit in a howling wind, surrounded by clouds and rime ice-covered rocks. My guess is that, today, our leaders would have been denounced as lunatics for taking a bunch of out-of-shape kids to the summit under such conditions. But we all came through it fine. We did have winter coats, gloves and hats, so it’s not like we weren’t prepared.

I was glad to see Pothier make mention of Nicholas Howe’s excellent book, “Not Without Peril,” which documents 150 years of fatal accidents in the White Mountains. In my much younger days I also liked to read the accident reports in the Appalachian Mountain Club‘s journal, Appalachia. Invariably, the victims would head up into the mountains wearing shorts, T-shirts and little else, only to be overwhelmed by winter-like conditions regardless of the time of year. Cell phones and GPSs may have increased the stupidity quotient, as Pothier writes, but it’s nothing new.

Unfortunately, I never managed to hit the trail this summer. Tim and I talked about doing a five-day 50-miler in Vermont, but the summer got away from us, and then I sprained my ankle while running in a downpour a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we can get away for a couple of days during Columbus Day weekend.