Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

they seem all too happy to let Trump completely control the media narrative. Their headline today is about this flag-burning nonsense.

the hicks who voted for trump don't read the NYT

― k3vin k., Tuesday, November 29, 2016 4:17 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obviously we need some strategy beyond coastal media to reach people in swing states. Maybe papers in florida, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, PA etc. are better targets of support. There's also obviously a need for some kind of non-traditional media that can reach non-newspaper readers. I feel like there must be some possibility of a "left Breitbart" (which should not by any means actually be modeled on Breitbart, since that wouldn't work for the left).

have we mentioned yet that the popular vote is now the largest margin in 140 years?

what the fuck

huh? no it's not

I feel like there must be some possibility of a "left Breitbart"

isn't that what Huffpo is

I'm a stan of Chapo Trap House, which obviously has a highly limited appeal, but I think there might be something to learn from their approach, which dispenses with some of the high seriousness of a lot of left internet media.

high seriousness and also reaction gifs

in any case we need a counter to john oliver/john stewart 'buhhhh REALLY'??/mugging at the camera kind of humor

'republican said/did a thing'

re NYT - I feel like the biggest stories they had in the campaign were due to the fact that they were the ones who got the leaked pages from trumps tax return in the 90s. its not because they had reporters grinding it out.

the times were also the most egregious of posting news 'stories' that were posted and written in advance that didn't even accurately reflect what the fuck actually happened at the event/speech/whatever they were covering.

We just subscribed to the NYT even though I was not thrilled with them during the election. Feel like there's a potential onslaught coming and they're better than nothing.

xpz yr right, a friend misstated a maddow argument i should've double checked but it had an msnbc link. maddow is making a different argument [that confused my fb friend]
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/long-reach-to-find-precedent-for-2016-popular-vote-gap-in-us-past-816737347527?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

btw i think NYT did a terrible job and also i've had a sub to them for about a decade so i mean their reporting is really the without comparison most of the time they just stunk this election cycle. esp their foreign coverage is worth subbing for.

It pains me to think a penny of my money is going to David Brooks, Thomas Friedman or Ross Douthat

I think the nyt is 'okay' but I think the story of this election was that the nytimes matters less than patriotnewsrepublic.info and deplorableyorktimes.org and it has less control over the news narrative than it ever has.

pestering mark zuckerberg to push the nytimes harder on peoples' news feeds ultimately matters more than # of subscriptions.

NYT just hired a friend of mine who won a Pulitzer this year and she just had a baby, please don't take food away from my friend's baby

One thing I'm definitely not wasting a lot of time or energy on in the next four years is overanalyzing Trump's tweets. Deliberate distraction, telegraphing his plans, 11-dimensional chess or stupid childish outburst -- what difference does any of this make to organizing against his agenda?

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 29 November 2016 20:27 (one hour ago) Permalink

Obviously we need some strategy beyond coastal media to reach people in swing states. Maybe papers in florida, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, PA etc. are better targets of support.

I agree that buying newspaper subscriptions won't turn the tide.

IMO it's just one of those gestural defiance things. Like right-wingers' support of Chik-Fil-A and Yeungling and Duck Dynasty. Or lefties' spending at Penzey's (which is entirely justified BTW, no one else has sumac). Or the do-si-do recently where Land's End had Gloria Steinem in the catalog and right-wingers howled they'd boycott the company... until the company reversed course, which meant that all the lefties were suddenly NEVER AGAIN going to buy their quite sensible clothing etc. etc. We went through this with Domino's as well.

The traditional print media (of which I am an extremely sentimental veteran) have been mercilessly targeted as both out of touch (lamestream) and economically doomed. If this is a shot in the arm for that particular terminal patient, okay. It won't make much difference but it's a tiny avenue of resistance.

That said, I don't think there are all that many nonsyndicated "papers in florida, ohio, michigan, wisconsin, PA." Even the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with its rich Pulitzer history, is a watered-down clone of a thousand other faux-local papers. Most small-market newspapers are about as local as Clear Channel radio stations where all the programming comes from a central computer but they slightly alter the traffic reports and requests so as to "localize" the content and make it sound homegrown.

105.3 in Tampa says "here's the latest from Maroon 5, going out to Katie from Tarpon Springs!" Meanwhile 106.3 in Richmond is playing the same song, only they introduce it with "here's the latest from Maroon 5, going out to Katie from Northside!"

I spent way too long going "... Tampon Springs?"

as many problems as I had with the way the MSM would cover certain things they were put in a tough position. your job is to report the facts and to do so in a neutral, unbiased manner. that becomes much more difficult when one candidate is so much objectively worse than the other. if you do nothing but report negative Trump stories then you get picked apart for being biased or partisan...but then again, how do you handle a candidate like this?

at the end of the day I suspect people who subscribe to the NYT or watch CNN overwhelmingly voted for Hillary, but what do I know?

I wish someone had figured out (or will figure out) how to do fresher and more interesting local content in the internet era. Like if someone had taken the alt weeklies and actually figured out how to keep them local and exciting rather than blanding them into the ground, for example.

but idk, maybe there's something about the financials that just doesn't work out that well for local internet content, like you benefit much more from the national network effect kind of thing

Ever since our Penzeys closed I can't find sumac anywhere, though fortunately I rarely need it.

your job is to report the facts and to do so in a neutral, unbiased manner.

By this argument, it is completely legitimate for MSM to run an article titled "Donald Trump Claims, 2+2=5; Others Disagree" and call it a day.

Useful idiots dept: https://www.thenation.com/article/rand-paul-will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-block-donald-trumps-hawkish-secretary-of-state-picks/

your job is to report the facts and to do so in a neutral, unbiased manner.

this is the trouble: too many political reporters think this is their job.

oh yeah, never been happier for the existence of Rand Paul than right now.

And it's not just the reporters' fault. A buddy who works for an international newspaper gets resistance from editors who wonder why he's getting "political" for offering refutations of lies in stories.

xpost

By this argument, it is completely legitimate for MSM to run an article titled "Donald Trump Claims, 2+2=5; Others Disagree" and call it a day.

up until Trump's hotel/birther stunt this is pretty much how they were treating him isn't it? they kept writing that his claims were "controversial" or were "stretching the truth" instead of what they really were: baldfaced, easily disprovable lies

I remember getting really irritated at a person who had voted Trump and part of the reason why was that he just didn't trust Hillary, quoting that "we were under sniper fire" line as proof of her being untrustworthy. I was like..."you do realize that this is how Trump talks all the time, like all day every day? Half the things he says are literally made up". And he said..."well, that's what the media wants you to believe". How do you even argue with that?

you don't

you find two voters to render that guy's vote irrelevant, is what you do

otm

trying to sway voters who won't hear facts that contradict their worldview is a waste of time

The NYT is inarguably problematic, and supporting it by subscribing may be more symbolic than anything else, but I've made a personal pledge to do what I can to support the institutions that are so intrinsic to the fiber of this country that we mostly take them for granted and that our president-elect casually attempts to delegitimize. So if, for instance, he chooses to target particular outlets in his perpetual demonstration of contempt towards the 1st Amendment, I'll happily throw some money to those outlets. It's a gesture for its own sake but I'll continue to grudgingly hope that the influx of support spurs some quid pro quo in the form of actual journalism with a minimum of compromise.

Some people's idea of "fair" (or neutral, or unbiased, or whatever) means you have to spend exactly half your time being nice to Party A and mean to Party B, and the other half being nice to Party B and mean to Party A.

Because if the populace is roughly divided in half, then surely the truth is as well. I guess.

This is the "on the other hand, Mr. Hitler contends..." phenomenon.

It is, and has always been, a stupid way of evaluating media fairness.

Dude has definitely inspired a strain of crazy, drunk and stupid to act like it is ok to publicly freak out in his name. You could probably do a running thread of Trumpers gone Wild. It seems like there is someone daily in the news freaking out in restaurants, airplanes, stores on a daily basis with people capturing it on video.

In casual conversation over the past few months around here I have heard so much hearsay and lunacy passed off as fact, I kind of feel like I am living in "They Live". It was so pervasive around here, I sadly wasn't as surprised he won in many ways.

Meanwhile news happened:

In an unexpected sighting Tuesday, former Vice President Dan Quayle showed up at Trump Tower to offer his "personal congratulations" to President-elect Donald Trump, who has been meeting with potential Cabinet picks this afternoon.

"I was in the area and I stopped by to see the president-elect to offer personal congratulations to him. I talked to him recently on the phone," Quayle told reporters following his meeting. "Things are in good hands. He's moving forward and he's going to make America great again."

oh man

cabinet post in 3...2...1...

once a dirtbag, always a dirtbag

he looks super old, but its the flip side of looking super young in the late 80s..

I guess the company he works for pumped money into the trump campaign so he gets to kiss the ring.

The best thing about a trump presidency is that in all likelihood at some point in the not-too-distant future he will not be president. I look forward to him being an ex-president.

I look forward to him rotting in an unmarked grave

and Trump too

If he were savvier he'd be more dangerous, but as it is I dislike Dan Quayle more than most surviving politicos: a cynical, hungry little chiseler with a brain smaller than a sauropod's.

I'm so glad the children of today can experience the 80's just like we did; ghostbusters, dan quayle. maybe crack will make a big comeback

hell Reagan never went away. Neither did Duran Duran

Can someone start making quaaludes again? Kind of sad I missed out on those.

Jesus Christ, flag burning? Are we doomed to relive all of the '90s culture wars?

Absolutely, get 2Live Crew on tour again