Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman talks politics and the Internet
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Howard Fineman Imagine if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters covering the Watergate scandal in the 1970’s, were exposed to every opinion of every reader of The Washington Post. Would that affect their reporting? Would it have influenced their boss, Ben Bradlee, to curtail or expand the duo’s investigative efforts?
Time does not provide a clear answer to that question, but in the evolving world of journalism such a conundrum can present itself. In fact, it already has.
Howard Fineman, a veteran of political reporting who now writes for The Huffington Post, shared insights into his initial days with the news web site that showed the potential, both positive and negative, of the new world of political reporting. He comments came during the second of three lectures at The Annenberg School for Communication on the subject of technology and its impact on politics and political reporting. Read about the first lecture here.
His first story for “HuffPost” was about an appearance by former President Bill Clinton at a political rally. “It was thrilling to see Bill Clinton doing what he does well,” Mr. Fineman said, “explaining things very clearly to working class people … [he] explained why government is for, not against, the people.” Near the end of his story, Mr. Fineman wrote it is too bad President Barack Obama is not good at this kind of campaigning.
“Within about four hours of the story being posted online, we had something like 4,000 comments,” Mr. Fineman said. “Most said I was an idiot, albeit they said so in nicer terms than that. They felt I came off sounding like I did not like Obama. Then the conservatives weighed in, saying ‘Oh, now you are criticizing Obama after so many years of kissing his butt.’”
In a subsequent story he reported that Delaware U.S. Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell saying she does not need financial support from the Republican National Committee because she can appear on “The Sean Hannity Show” on cable TV to raise campaign funds. That story generated over 8,500 write-in comments and drove over 300,000 unique visits to The Huffington Post web site.
He said he was happy to have generated good traffic numbers, but the process also gave him pause.
“For better or for worse every reporter now knows what the ether is saying and knows exactly how impactful what they write is. Is that bad or is that good?” he asked. “The challenge in this new environment is how do you preserve your guts and independence and still work in this new frame of reference?”
During his hour-long lecture Mr. Fineman, who provides on camera commentary for news programs on NBC and MSNBC, talked about changes in television news. As in his previous lecture, he pointed to moments in time where seismic changes occurred:
· The first was in 1968 when Walter Cronkite, managing editor of the CBS Evening News, went to Viet Nam and reported that
America’s war effort in that country was futile. He said that planted the seeds for a conservative backlash that Mr. Fineman said is manifested in Fox News’ recent donation of nearly $2 million to conservative political campaigns. “Fox can say [to critics in the media] ‘Yea, we gave money to Republicans, but you guys used to control the whole thing.”
· Another moment came in the emergence of PBS as a source of news. In the early days of the program “
Washington Week in Review”
Chicago Sun-Times reporter Peter Lisagor regularly offered commentary on Watergate. “This guy was a fearless reporter,” Mr. Fineman said. “He explained things, he was acid tongued, sharp, he knew more than most people knew, and as a print reporter on television he had more credibility simply because he
was a print reporter. He ‘made’ PBS.”
· Twenty-four-hour news, beginning with the ABC show “Nightline,” and coming to fruition with the launch of CNN in 1980. “Nightline showed there was a market for continuous coverage of a single story,” he said. CNN’s success drove the emergence, in part, of MSNBC, Fox, and other cable news programming.
The upside to all this, Mr. Fineman said, is more diversity in news reporting, both on cable television and on the Internet. “We will still need people with guts and conviction [so that] the ‘net will deliver the kind of reporting the news business has always done.” He said there will always be “public-spirited” families like the Annenbergs who will do their journalistic work on the web.
“The downside is that sometimes we may be limiting ourselves by reporting only for one audience – one demographic or ideological slice. I want to report about and speak to the whole country, and that is the aim of The Huffington Post as well.”
The third and final lecture in Mr. Fineman’s series will take place on November 15 at noon; he is scheduled to talk about the mid-term elections.