In Ottawa this week, Conservatives hoping to sharpen their political skills looked south, to the United States of America to replicate the success of the back-to-back electoral victories of George W. Bush and the Republican machine.
In caucus, Conservative MPs and senators were treated to a strategy session that was based on information written by “Bush’s Brain”, Karl Rove. Rove served in the Bush administration as deputy chief of staff to the President and is largely known as the architect of Republican victories during the past decade. “Bush has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation” was heard from Wednesday’s caucus session.
Pollsters agree that Rove’s approach to mobilizing select groups of voters on highly motivating issues is the key to creating a permanent Conservative majority. Conservatives may be facing an election this fall and are increasingly known to be studying Rove’s strategies to achieve more seats when Canadians go to the polls.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a bit of a complex media research tool and web project that I’ve dubbed the “Newspaper Viewer”. Using the application, one is able to view some of Canada’s most popular broadsheet and tabloid newspaper front pages from just over the past year when I started to collect them.
In June of 2006, I wrote a web script that collected PDF files of about 15 newspaper covers per day. I let the script run automatically each day since that time and I’ve accumulated over 3 GBs of PDFs on my server! These files weren’t browsable in any convenient form and without purpose — beyond my own general interest in having a stock of these files — they were becoming a burden on my server which hosts this blog.
Like any web designer amazed by the presentation abilities of Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash, I’ve poked around the application since its early versions. However, up until this time I’ve never really been confident enough in Flash to publish anything substantive. That is, until I was faced with an idea to take this very visual collection of files and present it in a complimentarily visual way. I transfered the gigabytes of files from this server to my more permissive btblogs.ca server and got to work on the project after buying a book on Flash and its underlying object-oriented language, Actionscript. I also recommend subscribing to the video tutorials at Lynda.com
This Newspaper Viewer is the product of that initial script that I wrote over a year ago and the result of my clumsy climbing of the Flash learning curve over the past few weeks. I believe that this is the only archive of its kind available online and I hope that you enjoy browsing through this collection.
There are two ways that you can sort through the database. On the right, a dropdown box contains dates from June 5th to the present day. By selecting a date from this dropdown, you can view the newspapers from that day. Try browsing today’s newspapers or view how the various newspapers differ in covering a certain event, such as the Toronto 17 (June 5th, 2006), the Dion leadership victory (December 3rd and 4th, 2006), the Virgina Tech shootings (April 17th, 2007) or the Conrad Black verdict (July 14th, 2007). The other dropdown menu contains a way to view each newspaper by month. Thus, you can see a monthly spread of each newspaper.
When flipping through the newspaper archive, if you double-click on a particular paper, it will load the original PDF of that cover. I recommend trying this because some of these covers come in beautiful detail and those that appreciate design and layout will want to take a closer look.
I also designed this application as a media monitoring/research tool. A significant number of Canadians get their news from Canadian newspapers and some researchers may find it worthwhile to track the evolution of a story as expressed to Calgarians via the Herald, or to Torontonians via the Sun, to give two examples. To illustrate another example of this tool’s use, one might find it interesting to see how the National Post was covering the Conrad Black trial in comparison to other newspapers. Further, some believe that papers cheer for political parties during elections. It may be interesting to see if this is true by tracking Globe and Mail or Sun media headlines over the course of a writ period. A lot of power resides in news media as reporters, editors and columnists are able to influence millions of readers by a carefully crafted headline or by highlighting/burying scandalous details above/below the fold. As Canadians, we ought to be savvy media consumers in order to be informed participants in our democracy. Hopefully, as a comparative tool, this Newspaper Viewer application will help contribute.
I do hope that you enjoy this project. I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, bug reports via email or in the comments section below.
I was sent this video by a friend who wanted to bring it to my attention. I’m glad that he did because the video speaks a few lessons and appeals to me on a few levels.
First, watch the video:
Also, watch the comments (here and here) for more context.
If the context presented in the video is truthful and complete, then this sort of practice is unacceptable.
As someone that follows politics, as a democrat, a grassroots conservative, and a blogger that occasionally films items of interest for my readers, I find the events that unfolded in the video disgraceful.
Last week, I was called by a reporter at the Toronto Star asking how blogging and “YouTube” will change the next election. Of course, I’m becoming almost evangelical about blogging, video blogging, and their roles within an open democracy. The most striking evolution that I highlighted was that the cost of video recording, editing, processing and delivery is dropping at such a rate that almost anyone with a hobby-like (or less) dedication to the medium can use the tools. The effect of blogging is similar; the act of publishing one’s thoughts to a worldwide audience is now next to nil. Case in point: the lowest barrier to overcome is the public library’s internet access. In Canada, every citizen is entitled to participate in democracy. Classically, for most this has meant filling out an “X” next to their candidate of choice, every time an election is called. However, blogging enables greater participation, direct action and political participation by contributing to the many debates, advocating on the various issues and holding our public officials to account.
In this age, one does not need to be an “accredited” member of the press, an “approved” opinion maker, or a “certified” talking head to have a “value-added” role in politics and in our democratic process. Indeed, I have been struggling to define and understand what it means to be some of all three in the political process over the past few years.
For Scott Ross, the harassment that he faced from local Conservatives at the Open House was unacceptable. And political parties should take note. Ross’ video will cause more damage to a party that has campaigned on transparency than any footage that he could have recorded from locals complaining about the budget or any other policy. As I told the reporter from the Toronto Star, video/audio recording is becoming ubiquitous. When one pairs this with democratic participation, we all benefit. Parties not only ought be mindful of the now famous “macaca” moment, as Sen. George Allen (R-VA) experienced during the ’06 campaign, but they should never be seen to be restrictive of a constituent with a camera in an open community forum.
The “Youtube” effect will do much to amplify any mistake and any hypocrisy encountered on or off the campaign trail. Perhaps this will have a positive effect on weeding out candidates that don’t walk the walk and talk the talk when they are in less guarded situations such as town halls or coffee parties.
Is this situation limited to local Conservative riding associations? Of course not. Those with control (whether earned or not) and those that wish to retain control are in the position to do as the Conservatives of Kelowna-Lake Country did to Ross. Personally, I’ve witnessed the same on many levels including, but not limited to the Liberal Party, the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the sandbox of university student council politics.
If we are to practice what we preach, we ought to be removing the barriers to our political representatives and those that wish to become them. A free press is a free press, no matter how it is becoming redefined.
UPDATE: Never trust a Liberal? Mel Wilde gives his account. Apparently he was there: I sat at the next table from the guys who wanted to disrupt the meeting. The video was out of context and only covered what the Ross wanted. For those of us who went to the meeting for the opportunity to talk to our M.P., we lost out. It was obvious that these people were organized and committed to disrupt. Folks do have freedom to protest, but should they have license to prevent others from participating in a meeting called to allow discussion with an M.P.? Makes me want to go disrupt the next Liberal Party meeting. I won’t because I respect the rights of others, Which Ross obviosly does not.