Professor bellows "Woo-Hoo"

Professor bellows "Woo-Hoo"

Political Panel a roaring success

This past Wednesday the U-Mass Amherst journalism department hosted a public lecture. The lecture covered the ever changing use of multimedia journalism in another ever changing realm: politics. The panel discussed how this new feature of reporting has led to a tendency for a national narrative to surround the political scene. This lecture attempted to explain why that was, and to give advice on the future of political journalism.

Mary Carey, U-Mass professor and political reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette was the first speaker to discuss the national narrative. Carey said “I want to talk about sort of the national narrative you know. I think you hear people talking a lot more, people are saying well the narrative was that Hilary {Clinton} was unbeatable. Then all of a sudden Obama came out of nowhere and Hillary was nose diving real bad.”

When host and U-Mass professor Steve Fox commented that the national narrative is often responsible for several mistake predictions USA Today’s national political correspondent Jill Lawrence explained why that was the case. Lawrence said “I think we get in trouble when we made predictions. The national narrative comes from the fact that we are reading the same tea leaves.”

The third panelist deputy publisher of Governing magazine, Mark Stencel commented that the national narrative is hard to keep a hold on. Stencel said “It is an endless treadmill to face the narrative, it is exhausting. The phrase you always hear is feeding the beast you know that kind of thing.”

Host Steve Fox enthusiastically introduced the three guest speakers to the captivated audience. Fox said “I feel like it’s my birthday, Christmas…everything wrapped into one. I get to just talk politics with these guys. We spent lunch talking politics. We hung out in my office for the past couple of hours talking politics and we get another 90 minutes of politics. Yes, I’m very excited here.”

The lecture was a complete success, and if you don’t believe me, would you believe U-Mass professor B.J. Roche? Either way this is what she said “Two things really thrilled me about this afternoon. One was I though it was a terrific line up of speakers and had very exciting and interesting things that they were talking about. Also, what I got a really big kick out of was that all of the students were either taking pictures of it, or video taping it, or taping it on their audio thing. I’m really thrilled that the students are going “all in” on the multimedia track. Hiring Steve Fox was the one of the best things we’ve ever done. We are a super happening department right now, and believe me a few years ago we were not.”