Craig links to both Antle and Cochrane. [left. Photo: cbc.ca. Does that look like the face of a wild-eyed radical to you?] You can find them elsewhere on Bond as well.He makes some valid, well-argued points about the difficult job of reporting. No argument from here and your humble e-scribbler will take a few lumps if some of the criticism of reporters Craig mentions has come from this space.
Then Craig wonders where the pro-Danny blogs are.
There are a few. It doesn't take much scrolling to find them on the blog roll at right. Craig mentions Liam O'Brien at Responsible Government League and rightly notes that Liam has changed his view markedly over the course of time. Check out nf.general on the old part of the Internet, though, and you'll find many more doing their bit to support the Danny cause. For a case in point, have a gander at the thread on Cochrane's speech.
On blogs, it can be easy to forget that the audience for blogs in this province is small. While something like Bond can reach some pretty influential audiences, there's just no matching the readership of the province's major daily or the eyeballs glued to NTV every night for Fred, Lynn, Toni, and Glen. Government puts its effort where it brings the greatest result.
It's also important to recall that Danny's comms approach is inherited, in large part, from what went immediately before. A surprising number of his comms people - starting at the top - came out of the Tobin/Grimes system and they continue to do what they learned when they started. Others who have come on board since 2003 follow the general pattern already laid out. Largely it works, or, to be more accurate, seems to work.
There's a reason why this administration, like the Tobin and Grimes ones before it, uses radio talk shows as extensively as it does. Talk radio makes it much easier to get the word out unfiltered. In dealing with other media, the messaging still works, largely because reporters work with the disadvantage of not knowing a lot of things or having the time to background a story to be properly briefed. The entire crowd in this market can be as hardnosed and persistent as the best of them out there anywhere, but more often than not you need to know what to ask in order to get the information.
Given the pressures on modern newsrooms, it is rare to see a place - print, radio, or television - with the budget or a reporter with the time to be able to undertake the sort of in-depth research Antle obviously did. Not so long ago, that sort of background would have been done shortly after the story first broke. As it is, Antle wound up taking something eight months to piece it all together. That isn't a criticism of him; rather take it as an admonition to consider the human dimension to his job and that of all his colleagues.
To get back to blogs, though, this provincial government pays as much attention to blogs as most business people in the province. While blogging has become a very potent communications tool elsewhere, around these parts, people are still waking up to the phenomenon. Your humble e-scribbler was asked again this evening by a colleague if this effort generates any business. Not a stain, went the reply, although in virtually every other market, the seemingly obvious demonstration of the impact a blog can have plus whatever other skills and knowledge are evident here would likely pull the odd hobble.
Craig finishes off with an observation about what the next six months might bring. The first couple of months of the New Year have brought all sorts of bizarre developments in politics and elsewhere.
No one knows what's around the next corner and that's part of what will make 2007 a fascinating year in Newfoundland and Labrador.
It also makes for great blogging.