I’d offhandedly mentioned a couple of posts back that there’s no real news at this convention and it was up to bloggers and the more established media to find the story. Boston2004 isn’t nominating a candidate, nor even introducing a vice-presidential running mate. Dan Kennedy is hardly alone in predicting the party convention’s near demise.
But I started thinking about the ones we now remember as more exciting. What made them “real” events, in distinction to our slick political informercials? Fortunately, The New Repubic’s Marisa Katz has been thinking along these lines and argues that it’s a good thing that things are polished and excitement-free today:
[T]here are two problems with this defense of diminished news coverage. First, nostalgia for the conventions of old is misplaced. The drama of some of the earliest televised conventions–the seismic ideological shifts of 1964, the protests of 1968–was anomalous in the context of a long history of conventions that more often than not were dull affairs. And to the extent that such conventions did provide drama, it was only because substantive decisions were made there by a cabal of party insiders–an anti-democratic phenomenon whose passage we should hardly mourn. Second, regardless of what did or did not take place at past conventions, and contrary to the disdain of Brokaw, Rather, and Koppel, the modern political convention remains an important, and possibly irreplaceable, part of the contemporary presidential campaign.
I tend to agree with her points. To which I’d add one more: our understanding of political conventions has always been linked to our mass media. 1964 and 1968 were not merely moments of crisis in the party coalitions, they were also supremely televisual moments. Fanny Lou Hamer, Lyndon Johnson’s premptive press conference, Richard Daley’s “fuck you”, and the arrests of bloodied protesters were the convergence of ideological shift and the liveness of a medium hitting its stride.
Neither is going to be repeated anytime soon, if ever. But despite feelings that too many are chasing too little story, there may in fact be more ideological shift and transformation of the news media than we realize.
By the way, if you’re interested in the story about the media at this convention, make sure to watch Greater Boston’s Meet the Press edition from last Friday (available streamed in high and low quality). It’s one of the best discussions on the topic I’ve seen. Tonight they start their convention coverage, so I will be sure to tune in to WGBH soon.
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