Democratic Convention Watch: Washington Post needs to do a little research


Saturday, January 13, 2007

Washington Post needs to do a little research

WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

The Washington Post tried to give an overview of the site selection process, but didn’t do a good job:

The Democrats’ choice of Denver for the convention, to be held Aug. 25-28, 2008, in a downtown basketball and hockey arena, had become almost a foregone conclusion in recent months.

First mistake. Denver was always a netroots favorite, and often a front-runner, but never a foregone conclusion, especially when their bid was considered “disatrous“.

In the initial jostling to be host city, New Orleans seemed to be the front-runner, because a convention there would remind voters of the Bush administration’s much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.

Mistake 2: New Orleans was always an intriguing choice, but it’s downsides never made it the front-runner.

When New Orleans officials dropped out of the competition last summer — the city said it couldn’t afford to host a convention in the midst of rebuilding — New York and Denver became the finalists.

Biggest mistake. When New Orleans dropped out, that left three cities. The Post missed St. Paul, which was probably the favorite until the GOP picked it for their convention. Only then did New York and Denver become the final two. Three mistakes in three paragraphs. Let’s hope the rest of the paper has a better average.

3 comments:

Anonymous said…

See Matt-

You have become the EXPERT on this subject! That’s why we all hope you keep your site up & running through ’08, until you change it to 2012! 🙂

Corinne said…

WaPo is incredibly lazy when it comes to publishing facts. Many of their best “reporters” are actually stenographers.

Anonymous said…

The press in general got more wrong about Boston than they got right, just about every single day. I don’t expect much different when it comes to Denver, unfortunately.