The Drudge Report’s accuracy

By: Sara Crouse

The Drudge Report has been known to produce high profile stories over the years. The Clinton Scandal first emerged on the Drudge Report. The Drudge Report has also been known to exploit its fair share of baloney.

Rarely, does a local or national paper generate a story idea from The Drudge Report for fear of its contents being too outlandish. Papers and news sources educate the public on current events, and any source that may not give true information is often disregarded.

Earlier today the report published “2001 Obama: Tragedy that ‘Redistribution of Wealth’ not Pursued by Supreme Court.” Fox News was quick to jump on the news, rather than casting it aside as hushed gossip during a drink with a coworker.

Fox News’ hasty decision to pick up the story will come back to haunt them. The attack on Obama’s statement appeared to many as a harsh blow from extreme Republicans picking a fight.

Whoever first reported the statement forgot to recognize it’s origin from a long interview, in which Obama addressed issues concerning civil rights cases focusing on minorities rights. In context to the interview, the term ‘wealth’ meant qualitative wealth, rather than quantitative economic wealth.

Interpretation of the initial quote can be described as Obama’s support for the redistribution of civil rights, but not through economic means only.

It’s important to base reporting interpretations from the entire interview, rather than picking and choosing. While The Drudge Report said Clinton had options, a journalist/reporter has only one option. That option is presenting the truth.

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Deadlines come and go

By: Taylor Browning

One thing I've come to realize it that a deadline is not the end of the world, just the end to your project at hand.

I thought about our stories we are writing in class and thought about the reporters for major newspaper and multimedia outlets. Being assigned a strong project with a short amount of time, on the national news basis, would be really difficult to accomplish.

With the election coming up and newspapers trying to find new angles on the subject, it would be even more difficult to create, research, and write more and more articles on the same thing, but with a twist.

I am thankful we get to relate our stories to Simpson Campus, or else I would probably still be researching and writing my first story!

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NRA gets shot down by Virginia newspapers

By: Erin Floro

The National Rifle Association has proposed to several newspapers in Virginia and other states about wrapping their products in plastic anti-Barack Obama advertisements on Election Day. The plastic wrap would read: "Vote for Freedom... Defeat Obama."

Although the Richmond Times-Dispatch originally told employees they would accept the NRA's deal, they now report that the newspaper's wrapping will not feature the gun lobby's political advertisement.  The Virginian-Pilot also rejected the proposal.

This tactic may be unusual, however the current scheme is not the first time the NRA has employed ads in newspapers. Two years ago in Montana, the gun lobby used a similar technique to support a candidate for re-election in the U.S. Senate.

The newspapers' say they rejected the proposal to prevent appearing as though they only endorse one point of view.  The Pilot's policy, for example, is to sell space on its print pages to candidates or interest groups of varying persuasions.

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Breaking news in Northeast Iowa

By: Quinn Albrecht

There has been some late news coming from Northern Iowa today. A woman and her two children went missing sometime Sunday evening and where reported missing Monday morning.

The three were found about 8:00 am Monday in rural Littleton. 

This would not be such a strange situation, had this been the first time these three have been in the news. In December of 2007 the woman, Michelle Kehoe, and her two sons, Sean and Seth, plunged into the Iowa river in Iowa City. Several people passing by helped recover the three out of the icy waters.

I remember this story very clearly and thought it was fairly odd. No further investigation followed the accident however. The accident got extensive news coverage at the time. This recent accident is receiving a lot of coverage as well, but the Buchanan County Deputies are keeping a lot of information to themselves at this time.

They say that there is not public threat at this time and no warrants have been issued. I am concerned with the large media coverage that is hitting this very small town, but there is no news to report on at this time. When do news stations decided to let something like this go, and move to the next big story.

There are two main new stations in the area, and the one that is the furthest away, seems to have better coverage of the story. It seems that to one station the story is dying before it even gets started.

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MTV: get out the vote campaign

By: Shauna Agan

While watching MTV tonight I saw a commercial where a bunch of young adults, including the members of Fallout Boy, were sitting around having conversations about the election. In this particular commercial, a young man was speaking about how many opportunities Barack Obama is providing for minorities and that this has never happened in a campaign before.

As I continued watching my show and more commercials came on, I saw four more MTV made political commercials. Two were repeats, but two were new commercials.

One of these commercials featured musical artist Pink. Pink was briefly explaining the need to voice your opinion and vote.

In the end of Pink’s commercial, she expressed that she had the right to her opinion just as Sarah Palin has the right to her opinion. To me, this insinuates that their opinions are different, and Pink is an Obama supporter.

The final commercial I saw was another group of young adults in a conversation about the election. While I cannot remember exactly what was said in this commercial, I do remember that the commercial supported Obama also.

These commercials do not specifically tell individuals to vote for Obama, but rather they promote the power of voting. However, every one of these commercials does mention support for Obama somewhere in them.

MTV has a lot of power and influence, especially within the community of young adults. Teenagers and young adults are the target audience for MTV.

By running these ads, MTV is campaigning for Obama and promoting his name to young voters. I do not have any problems with MTV running advertisements for Obama because MTV has a right to voicing the opinion of their company just as any other company has the right to voice their company’s opinions.

The problem I do have with these advertisements is that MTV has always been about getting out your vote no matter which candidate you vote for or which party you are in favor of. These commercials do promote individuals voting, but they also add towards the end of all of them that they are supporting Obama.

If MTV wants to openly endorse Obama, they should do that rather than running commercials that just insinuate they want Obama to win.

Furthermore, I believe that commercials promoting to get out and vote and voice your opinion should be separate from commercials supporting Obama. It is okay to have both, but MTV should keep them separate so it does not look like they are saying get out and vote for Obama.

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New Gen. New Times

By: Adrian Aitken

As technology advances today so must the media to keep up with the times. Newspaper publishers especially need to keep this in mind because the medium has been around for quite some time with little change.

Recently publishers have begun uploading videos onto their respective websites including Simpson's own. Even now this technique alone has become outdated and the New York Times are combating it.

Videos are being uploaded to the Times' website in high definition bringing the company into the latest generation of technology. To usher in the new format the site itself is getting an overhaul.

The entire library is being transferred to the high definition format and given a wide screen format. Also the videos are given their own window to enhance downloads and the quality of the video. Another piece now added to the site includes a "most viewed" videos section for quick picks.

By staying caught up with the times and technology newspaper publishers have a chance of increasing their lifespan a little longer. Also upgrading the site may attract younger people who could become customers in the future which is also need to stay alive.

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The bashing is getting out of control.

By: Katie Anthony

I will begin this by just stating that I am a supporter of Barack Obama and that this blog is going to be extremely biased and it could possibly make a lot of people angry. Somehow, I'll live with that.

Today in class we discussed the scandal that happened over the weekend with the woman that faked the "B" in her face claiming (stereotypically at that) that an Obama support had sexually molested her. Considering the "victim" ended up confessing to doing this to herself (after, of course, realizing that the "B" was backwards) it got me thinking.

This "victim" talked to both Palin and McCain after the alleged incident. Not to mention the amount of "free publicity" she got for McCain and Palin. Now, I'm not saying or implying by any means, that McCain or Palin supported her doing, but are McCain supporters getting desperate?

This evening in Dayton, Ohio, McCain gave a speech at his rally. However, it was reported by Slate that his message could be summarized into one word; "Boo." This headline got my attention because it read "Political Halloween," and those two words normally don't go together.

McCain seems to have fallen back into the Obama bashing, again, grasping at anything he can get his hands on in order to get his number back up. However, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe the results were that the more McCain bashed Obama, the lower his numbers got.

Call me crazy, but I think that McCain really is grasping at all straws. I'm not sure what's going on in his head, but I don't understand why they [politicians] find it necessary to bash each other. I realize it may be "part of the race," but I think that the media can find another angle to report on.

For me, the bashing has become old news, and doesn't need to be reported on over and over and over again.

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The bad stuff means the most

By: Jessica Hamell

Why is it that the bad stuff said about the candidates gets the most attention? It isn't what they say they want to do that gets the top spot. It's what relations they have with certain religious figures or what their supporters fabricate.

The news went wild Thursday and Friday about a McCain supporter who thought up a fabricated story about how an Obama supporter had attacked her. Even after they knew it was a fake story people were still going crazy about it.

People have been saying that Obama has been connected with terrorists when he was just on a committee with them. Some people even believe that he isn't even American. If that was the case, I don't think he would be running for president, obviously.

Isn't it more important what the candidates are say or what they want to get done? The people in today's society pay way to much attention to rumors that they hear about the candidates and not about their ideas.

Their ideals are what are going to make a difference in our lives and this country, Not who they were connected with in their past or news about their supporters.

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Sale decisions

By; Sarah Keller

Have you ever had trouble making money decisions dealing with sales people, such as getting insurance on a rental car, or more likely for college students; insurance coverage on cell phones? I am sure at some point you have come across a salesperson who has tried to get you to take some kind of warranty, whether it be over an iPod, camera, or something completely different. If you are like me you probably have had trouble deciding whether it was a good deal or not, whether you would be saving more money or spending more.

Luckily people like Ken and Daria Dolan from Wallet Pop had people like me on their mind and decided to make a blog about “When salesmen put you on the spot: Answering eight common questions”. In the article that they wrote they answered questions on what are good deals and what are bad deals to take up. They make valid points, points that will help me to be able to say yes or no to a salesperson the next time I am asked if I would like coverage on a certain type of plan.

I might not be asked if I would like fuel coverage anytime soon on a new car because I do not plan on buying a car anytime in the near future (as discussed in the article), so I do not have to worry about turning them down, but I was asked recently if I would like a three month free trial of magazines, it sounded tempting, but luckily I turned the offer down. I am glad I did, because according to the article, I would eventually have had to pay the subscriptions off, and it would have been charged to my credit card. I really enjoyed reading this article, it gave me a lot of insight on things I was not previously aware of, and I would recommend people reading it because it really does give you valid information.

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