On the way into teaching this morning, I was able to catch Barack Oama’s fine speech about patriotism on the radio. Listening to  Obama speak, one is reminded of what makes him — at least to me — quite an attractive candidates: he’s smart, he’s reflective and, miracle of miracles, he generally elevates, not lowers, [...]

Yikes! Looks like it’s a bit past time for Ralph Nader to hang up his spurs. His dead-ended candidacy this year already made no sense. As I suggested a few months back, if he wants to pressure Obama from the left — great. But do it in a way that counts and makes a difference [...]

Good news. At least for those who have to put up with me on a daily basis. I think I’m finally coming out of my funk. You know, my post-primary, post-partum blues. I as much as overdosed on schadenfreude, watching the prolonged, dizzying descent of the Clintons. Such an exhilarating high is bound to be [...]

There will be no state funeral for George Carlin as there was for Tim Russert. There will be no long line of dignitaries, pols, power brokers, media bigwigs or other assorted bloviating fools and hucksters eulogizing his sudden passing Sunday night. There will be no gaggle of the high and mighty publicly blubbering over what [...]

HuffPost’s OffTheBus has just launched “OffTheBus Listening Post.” We are now recording and uploading the daily Obama and McCain media conference calls so anyone –including you– can now hear firsthand how each 2008 presidential campaign interacts with the media to deliver (and spin) information. These calls are usually posted 60-90 minutes after they end. If [...]

Those who read this blog with any regularity know very well that I’m generally loathe to participate in knee-jerk partisanship. I can usually find as much to whine about the Democrats as about the Republicans. But in holding a long political conversation last night with a trusted friend, himself no choir boy for the Democrats, [...]

I was fortunate enough to see the always fabulous George Carlin in Las Vegas Saturday night. He summed up the presidential race perfectly in two lines. “Just look at the bumperstickers,” he said. “Obama: Change You Can Believe In.  McCain: Get Off My Lawn!” Sweet.

Tim Russert is dead. Long live Tim Russert! It should come as little surprise that, precisely at a time when the sanctimony of the Old Media stands threatened by blasphemes, bloggers and an increasingly agnostic public, the choirboys, priests and cardinals of the Media Church should treat the passing of a figure like Tim Russert [...]

I cede this space, for the moment, to my good friend and blogfather Micah Sifry (and his partner Andrew Rasief for this brief essay on the way the web is changing our politics. Here’s a taste: We’ve lost count of all the national figures that have been affected by online activism. Millions of small donors, [...]

  A handful of weeks ago I spent some more time on the Arizona-Mexico border. And let me make it simple: after millions of words and a couple of billion dollars invested in the new super-duper fence very little has changed. Secure borders? Right! Mission Accomplished. Here’s my feature report.

Oh no. John McCain might just have ruined my best laid plans. I explain: After much urging from colleagues and friends, I’ve been slowly mulling over the possibilty of trying my hand at…golf! Mind you, my only experience on the greens, to date, has been racking up nine or ten strokes trying to get a [...]

Here’s a debate between yours truly and the local chair of the Society for Professional Journalists as to what are the “rights” of politicians to be off the record in the digital age. As a teaser, here’s the question thrown me that spurred the exchange: Marc Extremely troubled by Mayhill Flowers’ item about Clinton’s indiscreet [...]

Howie Kurtz does a good job profiling Mayhill Fowler as well as trying to understand what citizen reporting is all about. Here’s the link.

In Sunday’s Week in Review section, The New York Times scratches it, um, head over the role of new media in old journalism by focusing on Mayhill Fowler and our OffTheBus project. It’s not a bad piece by any means and –eventually– it gets around to the point. You can read it and make up [...]

What a great election season it has been so far working at OffTheBus. If you haven’t been to our page recently, take a fresh look. We’ve got a great John McCain“News Hunt” going on. And over on the right hand side of the page, see our new battery of field repoter/columnists. Then, there’s Mayhill Fowler. [...]

You have to admit that for a card-carrying, charter and founding member of the Clintonphobe Society, this has been a simply marvelous couple of days. Right to the bitter end, Hillary’s uncontrollable self-obsession has produced one stumble after another and has, I think, effectively eliminated her from any serious consideration as a vice-presidential pick. With [...]

Here’s my quick thoughts on Barack Obama’s victory: If there was one single moment this historic Tuesday night that was most fraught with the potential embodied in the political juncture, it transpired exactly at 6:01 p.m.  on the west coast. The polls had just closed in South Dakota as an oddly lit and physically laboring [...]

New York City — Tuesday Night I’m staying only a few minutes away from Baruch College where Hillary Clinton will, a bit later tonight, be making her final campaign speech. I thought about going to see it up close and personal but decided to watch the whole thing from under the comfy covers of my [...]

Man, you know the end is near. Bill Clinton is asked a simple question today out on the campaign trail and he goes bonkers, calling Vanity Fair writer, Todd Purdum, “a sleazy, slimy, scumbag.” The breathtakingly intrepid citizen reporter Mayhill Fowler got the story. And, yes, the audiotape too.  Amazing. Mr. Clinton, meanwhile, is apparently [...]