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Monday, June 12, 2006

YearlyKos Open Thread

Posted by DavidNYC

I wasn't able to go to YearlyKos (stupid bar review), but it sounds like it was an awesome event. Did any Swing State readers go? And if so, please tell us all about it in comments.

Posted at 06:34 PM in Open Threads | Technorati

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Comments

Um, since no one is stepping up, I'll say it was good. But tiring.

Matt Bai is either profoundly stupid or disingenuous or some of each. (I'm going with some of each, but I wanted to leave the purer options open.)

People asking questions at the bigger-audience panels need to grandstand less. I don't need a description of every recommended diary you've ever had, you know?

But it was good.

Posted by: MissLaura at June 13, 2006 03:29 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Matt Bai - a guy who always misses the point. Not surprised to hear that your encounter matched expectations.

As far as the grandstanding... oh man. That sounds especially brutal. Maybe next time, questions can be submitted on written cards?

Posted by: DavidNYC at June 13, 2006 11:48 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

pshh...forget bar review. i'm working full time on the hill AND studying.

Posted by: The Woo at June 13, 2006 03:01 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Matt Bai was on a political journalism panel. The other panelists made solid points about how traditional media is structured in ways that produce bad reporting and inadequate analysis. Matt Bai talked about how hard individual reporters work, how they don't go to cocktail parties all the time like they're accused of, that he doesn't even know Judy Miller. Totally either not getting or blowing off the structural points to essentially accuse leftwing bloggers and their readers of being mean.

My thought for how to avoid the worst of the grandstanding, at least at the more meta panels (which in my experience drew the worst of it) was to have random selection of who would be allowed to ask a question. At those meta things, everyone has some kind of thought about what they thought was good/bad/important about the conference, or about Daily Kos, and in fact the people who don't make a run for the microphone to promote themselves probably have more interesting, or at least less often-heard, or more sincere, things to say. At the topical panels, questions were usually more substantive.

Posted by: MissLaura at June 13, 2006 03:05 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment