Thanks to all of you who have read and shared this blog. I'm eager to hear from people about what they think. You can contact me on Facebook, email, old-fashioned hand-written letters, smoke signals or Braille. I may not understand smoke signals or Braille, but at least I'll know you read the previous sentence.
Friday, I'm in trouble
When is the best time to release bad news? There's an easy answer: Friday afternoons. This is for several reasons:
1) There's very little time to interview news sources before the end of the M-F work week, so lazier reporters will tend to publish the press release without further investigation.
2) The weekend (starting Friday night) is typically family time. It's not a time when most people are paying the most attention to politics, so it's easier to sweep bad news under the rug.
3) Do you like cable 24-hour news? Well, they don't have their "A" teams on the weekends unless something is incredibly major. They save the A-team for M-F. It's one thing to have the Chris Wallaces and Anderson Coopers hosting a major news event. But it's rare on the weekends, when they've typically got people who get paid a fraction of those men and women. It signals to a viewer that "this news isn't as important, because if it were, they'd have been in the Situation Room."
4) Because of the above reasons, the hope is that serious inquiries won't take place until Monday, at least two full days later. Perhaps by then, something else will have happened to push the bad news deeper.
Need an example? Last Friday afternoon, at 4:42 p.m. EST, CNN published a story that the State Department will not release 22 of Hillary Clinton's emails because they are "top secret." To summarize why this is important: This is the first time the Obama administration has admitted that Clinton's personal server had "top secret" information on it. Because of the timing of this story's release, it made me recognize that this was news that was only begrudgingly being released.
Expect Yourself
Iowa is about expectations. The Daily Show had a good clip about how the media reported that Clinton lost even though she won, Marco Rubio and Bernie Sanders won even though they lost, and Jeb Bush didn't win or lose, so he lost. In truth, politics is often about expectations. Sanders and Rubio both outperformed what most media expected, so they were "winners," even though they haven't won anything yet. Likewise, both Trump and Clinton performed worse than expected, so they lost, even though they finished second and first respectively. Going into New Hampshire, I expect Sanders and Trump to win. Long-term, Clinton will win the nomination easily on the Dem side, while the GOP is too early to call.
Summary Judgments
One thing I love is to laugh at silly names of people. Luckily, high school athlete Signing Day provides plenty of fodder. Here's this year's list of the best names from the 2016 recruiting class. My favorites include Priest Bluitt, Divine Deablo, Brodarious Hamm and, of course, DiCaprio Bootle. • • • While covering politics, I've seen the sort of "Voting Violation" mailers that Ted Cruz's campaign sent out before the Iowa Caucus that listed people and their neighbors' "voting scores." It's a terrible tactic that seems to be legal. Cruz said he'd apologize to no one for using every tool he could to encourage Iowans to vote. It's ironic, then, that the candidate who uses shame tactics has no shame himself. • • • RIP to the Presidential campaigns of Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Martin O'Malley. More candidates will drop out after New Hampshire. Jim Gilmore, who received 12 votes (!!) in Iowa, somehow thinks he still has a chance. • • • Kevin Durant plays for the Thunder. He'll be a free agent after this season. Yet there have been reports recently that IF he decides to sign with another team, then the Lakers are the frontrunner. Or maybe the Warriors. Speculative journalism is the worst journalism, because it's reliant on an if. IF Durant stays, the frontrunner for biggest foot in mouth are these two reporters. • • • Column-ending story about the kids: Roland and Evie were giggling and happy, running through the living room yesterday. What they didn't realize is they were running right at each other. I watched as they collided, like two trains barreling into each other. Luckily, they got up right away. Good: Because if they were hurt, I would have had a hard time consoling them while I laughed.
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