Join us for our last live blog of the campaign. We'll launch it late tomorrow afternoon and blog throughout the evening. Join us. Let us know how your voting experience went, whether you faced long lines, saw anyone get kicked out or arrested for wearing a campaign button, etc. We'll talk about the results as they come in and try to figure out what it all means. See you there.
Some of you have complained that we are running more pro-Obama than pro-McCain op-eds. That is true. The op-eds written by local people are unsolicited. We try to publish a representative selection of what we receive.
I just went back and counted those published and those rejected for the month of October.
Here's the breakdown:
The number of local essays published as of Monday: 44. Of those, 17 favored Obama; 4 favored McCain; 23 did neither
The number of essays rejected as of Monday: 60. Of those, 20 supported Obama; 13 supported McCain; 27 did neither.
I jotted down the reasons for the McCain rejections: 4 were from out of state; two came in today past the deadline; and one each were rejected for being a mass e-mail, a compilation of rumors, could not be verified, was incoherent, was submitted by a frequent writer before her 30 days were up, half of it quoted Scripture, was too long. The last writer was invited to edit and resubmit but did not.
I did not go back and count for September, but it seems as though it was similar to October. Then, though, there were far more anti-Palin pieces coming in. I rejected most because they were redundant. If there is interest, I'll try to set some time aside this week to count September as well.
There remain one McCain and four Obama op-eds that have been processed and are awaiting publication.
As to those that were published, I tried to select the pro-Obama pieces that moved beyond character and personality and looked at the issues and where each candidate stood. As to the McCain submissions, if they were within our word count, had opinion based on facts and not discounted or unsubstantiated rumors, were from a local person and were verifiable, they made the cut.
McCain supporters have only themselves to blame if they are not satisfied with the numbers. We cannot publish what we do not receive.
The bottom line: They weren't writing.
We're having difficulty with our blog software.
We'll post and approve comments as we can, but things are running extremely slow and we'll need to ask for your patience while the tech folks attempt to resolve the issues.
We've been tweeting for the last month and a half or so. For those who don't know, Twitter is a tool that allows you to send out short (145 character) messages, known as tweets, telling people what you're up to. Some people use it as a personal tool to keep friends up to date. Others, like us, use it as a way to send out short text alerts when a site or blog is updated. You sign up to follow people or sites you're interested in, and can get updates from them when you log on to Twitter, or even set it up to send alerts to your cell phone.
We have only 12 followers (we'd have more, but I've been blocking the spambots). We'll keep at it for awhile, but I'm starting to doubt that this is an effective use of time (granted, it only takes a minute or two each morning). If you're a Twitter user, and you haven't signed up to follow us yet, please do (the Roanoke Times news department also uses Twitter, by the way). If you're not a Twitter user, but want to be alerted about blog entries on The RT, check it out.
Blue John posted the 10,000th comment to The RT.
Thanks for the incredible participation, everyone.
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We had a post to one of our other threads that deserves pulling out for its own discussion thread, in part to avoid taking the other one off topic again. I've reproduced most of it below. It came from a user named Lisa.
| The last gazillion posts that I just read only reaffirmed for me that Josh is not real. How can he be?
Josh is everywhere. He doesn 2007.01.23Live-blogging the State of the UnionSeveral members of the editorial board will be commenting here live during the State of the Union and Sen. James Webb's response tonight. Join us, and get in on the conversation. 2007.01.22Columnist searchYesterday was the deadline for submissions from people interested in writing a regular column for The Roanoke Times. The response was phenomenal. I haven't done a count in a while, but I'm guessing more than 100 people sent in submissions. I'm starting the initial screening process now. It will take some time to narrow down to the final candidates, and we haven't decided yet exactly how we'll make the ultimate selection - but we'd like to find a way to get reader input. We'll keep everyone updated on the process here. Site Index |
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