The City of Toledo, Ohio five days prior to historical primaries.http://toledotalk.com/
“News is not a reflection of actual events; it is a construction by news workers who are subjected to many influences and constraints” (Potter p. 101).
With this key idea in mind I set out to analyze a certain style of news media found on the Internet, grassroots media efforts. Going through a list of sites that fit this criteria I found one I thought would be very interesting at this time in our nations political history.
The Toledo Talk ( http://toledotalk.com/) site primarily covers the happenings and concerns of the Toledo area but doesnt' limit itself to this. With historic candidates available to Ohio voters I was excited at what the citizens might have to say about their choices. And then...
Wow! On the site there was a complete lack of reporting on what I would consider a prominent issue concerning Ohioans right now; this was astonishing. Although many relevant topics were in this compilation of blogs and short reports there was an absence of reporting on the upcoming primary that has the potential to affect each issue important to Ohio's citizens.
I am unsure as to the reason for this, maybe the Toledo Talk site wants to limit any inflammatory issues on its site? The one mention of Clinton is just a joke and refers to a street named Clinton that intersects with a street named Toledo and displays a picture of these street signs conjoined. Is this all the people there have to say about the topic?
http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/12901/Signs_indicate_Toledo_prefers_Clinton
Reading posting after posting made it obvious that the people posting reports on this site were knowledgeable and interested in the news. There was not a complete absence of articles mentioning Obama, Clinton, or McCain but the news-framing that occurred was puzzling to me. http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/12506/Obama_Drama This article received the most comments of any in the last two weeks and thus created more puzzlement for me.
The resources in the news gathering for this site seemed quite considerable and the many contributors posts seemed well backed with facts. The patrons of this site are not bombarded with excess images and forms of commercialism thus leading one to believe this is truly a forum created to share and comment on news directly affecting people that interact with the site.
All these reasons inform me that the contributors are genuinely concerned with their communities and the site seems disinterested in playing to any particular profitable influences; again adding to my confusion regarding the lack of serious political discussion.
http://toledotalk.com/
2 comments:
I found your quote from Potter interesting and relevant to the themes we explored in Mass Comm last year.
I also listed you on my blog-o-rama round up for BC Capstone this week.
Keep blogging!
Good identification of the stories lacking about the primaries. Try not to include long urls in y our posts...give article titles and then hyperlink those.
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