Health Care Update 12.13.09

On December 13, 2009, In Arkansas, Local News, Politics, By Blake

As the Senate awaits a Congressional Budget Office estimate of its latest health care proposal, word is trickling out that Democrats are entertaining what Sam Stein of The Huffington Post describes as the “nightmare scenario.”

He writes,

There is, currently, a nightmare scenario afflicting Democrats on Capitol Hill with regards to health care reform. And it goes like this: Sometime early next week, leadership gets word from the Congressional Budget Office on their latest outline of reform. The legislative language on which they’ve settled — the one with the clearest promise yet of getting the votes needed to cut off a Republican filibuster — has actually scored quite poorly, saving less money over time and covering fewer people than earlier versions of the bill.

Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, a pivotol player in the health care debate, stated that if the CBO cost estimates are too high or if the plan covered too few then senators would have to “go back to the drawing board.”

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Gene Lyons Should Read This

On April 16, 2009, In Arkansas, Local News, Newspapers and Media, By Blake

Jack Shafer has an excellent piece in Slate today. It’s about The Huffington Post and its use of “borrowed content.” In his column today (The Think Tank responded below), Mr. Lyons describes many of the bloggers and Internet commentators as “parasites.”

Mr. Shafer takes a different view and observes,

The gripe against the Huffington Post isn’t the total amount of borrowing as much as it is the frequency and concentration of their borrowing. By that I mean that no publication screams “theft” when a thousand blogs do the same thing as the Huff Post but do it once each. In fact, they love it when a thousand blogs excerpt and point to their copy. What they find insulting, I think, is that the Huffington Post borrows again and again and again without end, and they serve millions of pages and sell ads against this borrowed copy.

Instead of getting wigged out at the Huffington Post, offended sites would be smarter to glean a lesson from experience. Top journalists aren’t going to like hearing this, but not everybody has time to lounge about with the 2,000-word masterpiece that you and your editor handcrafted. They want to get to the salient point, and they want to get there now. As heretical as it may sound, the Huffington Post is adding value by skinning alive that beautiful baby seal you just birthed and serving its fresh, beating heart to readers in a hurry.

Instead of feeling diminished by the Huff Post’s excerpts, more publications might want to pre-empt the site by serving distilled versions of their own articles. That’s right: Even the Post and the Times and the Journal can learn something about how to serve readers from the Huffington Post.

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How To Blog

On December 19, 2008, In Arkansas, Culture, Newspapers and Media, By Blake

Arianna Huffington of the famed Huffington Post has released a book – interesting, I know – titled “The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.” I’m not sure what prompted her to release the book as opposed to, say, a detailed microsite. But she probably didn’t want to give away all the content for free, you know? Something’s working because the Amazon.com website is telling me it’s temporarily out of stock. Uh, oh. Are we about to flooded with more bloggers? Someone needs to call the state police. . .or at least John Brummett.

Farhad Manjoo of Slate read Ms. Huffington’s book, and then he got the good idea to telephone and e-mail some of his other blogging friends about tips they might have on how to blog. He’s compiled a reasonable and comprehensive list, with the most important point right up front: you have to blog often. It can be six posts a week or six posts a day, but your readers have to know that and you have to set expectations.

Anyway, check out the list. If you have other tips or thoughts for bloggers (what say you, Arkansas Bloggers?), I hope you’ll post them in the comments section.

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Huffington Post columnist explores Huckabee’s ties to white supremacists

On January 21, 2008, In Arkansas, Corporate, Culture, Government, Politics, Voting, By Blake

Max Blumenthal, writing for The Huffington Post, explores Mike Huckabee’s connections to America’s largest white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens.  Blumenthal writes,

“Making coded appeals to white racism is nothing new for Huckabee. Indeed, well before he was a nationally known political star, Huckabee nurtured a relationship with America’s largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee’s interaction with the racist group is unclear, but this much is known: he accepted an invitation to speak at the group’s annual conference in 1993 and ultimately delivered a videotaped address that was “extremely well received by the audience.”

Descended from the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, including at Arkansas’ Little Rock High School, the Council (or CofCC) has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

He continues,

“During a lengthy phone conversation in 2006, CofCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum detailed for me [Blumenthal] Huckabee’s dalliances with his group. Baum told me that Huckabee eagerly accepted his invitation to speak at the CofCC’s 1993 national convention in Memphis, Tennessee.”

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