The honourable tradition of British tabloids

Most of the newspapers, as you'd expect, are running with the US elections on the front page, though the Express concentrates on the assassination risk, the party-poopers.

Other papers (Daily Star and Daily Sport) however, aren't so impressed. The headline of the Sport (sorry, can't get a bigger image) announces 'Barack and Corrie Rosie, An Apology' - and goes on to promise that there won't be any more political coverage (or much coverage at all).

State of the Nation

The election's over. Obama won. Or rather, the election isn't over but he's won the Presidency. What's important now is getting a 60 seat majority in the Senate so that filibustering can't delay legislation, and it's looking unlikely. However, at least having a few more senators (hopefully including Al Franken currently behind by 700 votes) means that the Democratic Party can now hound, harass, isolate and generally make life unpleasant for Joe Lieberman, traitor, turncoat, egotist and blackmailer.

I'd still like to have seen President Kucinich, even if he is slightly hippy, but Obama will do as long as there's a good leftwing ginger group in Congress (this seems to be the position of the CPUSA, which is good enough for me). Langston Hughes would approve.

Election Results

Arianna Huffington declares the election winner: the Internet, declaring TV coverage tonight will solely be for entertainment. She also provides a useful list of all the sites and blogs (is there a difference any more?) which will provide a composite picture of events.

US election stats

I follow the US election statistics on the Guardian's round-up page, but an article today suggests that if you really want to get into the electoral nitty-gritty, you should head to FiveThirtyEight.com where Nate Silver, who used to collate baseball statistics, is hard at work tracking every bit of polling data available. 

Is blogging unsuitable for political journalism?

John McCain certainly thinks so, according to Robert Draper. The idea is that blogging journalists are so desperate to get a 'gotcha' comment online that they've lost the art of sustained questioning - though neither candidate has gone out of his way to encourage this type of interview. 

Inaugural Message

Greetings to the world - and in particular to the Wolverhampton University Media MA students, to whom this blog is dedicated as an example of new media.

The topic for the week is the U. S. election

If you would like to develop your blog into a substantial and sustained piece of work, you may wish to put this forward as your research proposal (due Tuesday 2nd December), to be developed into a finished product. 

Hint: to comment on a posting, click the posting title to open a new page: a comment box will be at the bottom.