During the past campaign, college journalists from swing states blogged about what was happening in their states for the Washington Post. The 12, as the series was called, featured Marquette’s very own Tessa Fox. She visited my elections class Tuesday to talk about the experience.

Most of the work involved short posts, like this tiny post on Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to comply with the Affordable Care Act. But she also did some multimedia, like her audio slideshow of an interview of one Wisconsin voter.

Overall, Fox said she averaged two hours a week on the project, which she said was “time-consuming but manageable” alongside her job at the Marquette Tribune and her classes. What made it nice was that if she couldn’t observe some event, she could lean on someone else’s coverage by linking to them.

What made Fox’s presentation interesting was that she is a fellow student. Like Brynne Ramella tweeted, “It was nice to have a student visitor for once!”

More to read

—Melanie Lawder covers Fox’s visit at her blog.

—Tessa Fox’s blog about the experience. (What do you call a blog about a blog? A metablog? A web log log?)

On Tuesday, I was perhaps the closest I’ll ever be to being “On the Issues with Mike Gousha.”

Gousha, host of “On the Issues” and occasional debate moderator, was the latest post-election speaker in my elections class. Since our class has exactly five people in it, it was more of a conversation between us, Herbert Lowe and Gousha.

Like with Sharif Durhams, we didn’t have a definite structure. We began on one subject and let things develop from there.

One of Gousha’s biggest points was what he called an “alternative media” that enabled the Romney campaign and supporters to be overconfident going into Nov. 6. His point was not that this is a Republican or conservative phenomenon, but that it was most obvious in that case.

I wish I’d asked if he thinks Romney’s loss will stop people from retreating to their carefully selected group of news and opinion sources that already agree with them. I’d guess not. Future campaigns might decide to run with their eyes wider open, at least in terms of the data coming out of pollsters and poll analysts like Nate Silver. But the average voter is probably going to be in as much of an echo chamber as ever.

We also discussed the 2016 elections. (Yes, already.) There are early signs of what the field for both parties might look like. But at this point, it’s entirely speculation. We have an entire mid-term election to go through, after all.

More to see and read

—My blog posts about “On the Issues” events we attended and tweeted as a class: former Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Ron Johnson.

—Gousha moderated the second senate debate between then-candidates Tammy Baldwin and Tommy Thomspon. You can watch it on Wisconsin Eye.

—Gousha’s next “On the Issues” guest is Danae Davis, CEO of PEARLS for Teen Girls, an organization that works with girls 10–19 throughout Milwaukee. Information about the event is here.

Sharif Durhams, social media editor for the Journal Sentinel, visited our elections class Tuesday.

It was interesting to hear about how the Journal Sentinel approached Election Day in terms of social media. The paper posted reporters’ tweets through a widget that automatically fetched them from Twitter. Reporters would also call or use their laptop to transmit longer updates, which appeared on their “All Politics” blog.

As an interactive piece, they had a mood map, which allowed people to share their thoughts and feelings about voting and the election. Those comments were overlaid as color-coded dots on a map. For instance, people who said they were happy showed up as yellow. The person’s full comments showed up if you hovered over the dot.

It is neat to see everyone’s impressions laid over a map like that. It would have been interesting to see a pie chart or bar graph breaking down the proportions. The map isn’t a scientific poll, but nonetheless, an addition showing some sort of breakdown would be nice. I hope the Journal Sentinel continues doing interactive features like that — I look forward to what they come up with.

We also talked about the legality of taking photos at polling places, something that came up when some of my classmates (but not me) tried to live-blog on Election Day. Durhams said taking pictures should be legal at polling places, as long as it doesn’t interfere with voting, contrary to the signs in the AMU that categorically banned taking pictures.

It was really a long, winding conversation, but I liked it and learned quite a few useful bits and pieces.

More to read

—For the 2008 election, the Journal Sentinel tracked how long people reported waiting to vote on a similar map. Since smartphones were less common then, they allowed people to call a phone number to record a response. Someone had to answer the phones, and Durhams did — for 5 hours.

—My classmate Bryne Ramella also wrote about Durhams’ visit at her blog.

—Durhams also visited a Sports Journalism class on Oct. 29. Christopher Chavez, Jacob Born and Patrick Leary — among others — blogged about it.

—My professor describes Sharif Durhams’ visit back in February on his blog. Interestingly, that visit came soon after Herman Cain famously flubbed a question about Libya the Journal Sentinel asked him.

Election Day finally came Tuesday after a semester of talking about it with friends, reading about it online and discussing it in my classes, particularly my class on journalism and elections, JOUR 4932.

So after casting a ballot at my own polling place in the Alumni Memorial Union, I trekked over to Centennial Hall on 733 N. Eighth St.

Talking to people went fairly well. I didn’t seem to have the rejection rate Brynne Ramella and Alex Rydin had at the AMU. I managed to get a majority to talk to me. My personal theory is that people who have been waiting in line have lost the patience necessary to chat with a reporter, student journalist or otherwise.

I had an interesting range of responses. First was a woman, Anna Sweet, who said she voted straight Democrat and probably would voted Green if they were a viable choice. The next person I talked to, Marquette University student Chris Hardin, said he agreed with with his chosen candidate Mitt Romney across the board. Milwaukee is perceived as being extremely Democrat. (And correctly: It went 80–20 for Obama on Tuesday.) But parts of the city are much more moderate. The two wards that vote at Centennial Hall, 187 and 188, did go to Obama 55–44 in 2008, but that’s hardly a blowout.

If I had any problems, it was that Centennial Hall was too boring. There were very few people there when I was and things just went smoothly. I talked to a few election observers who really had little to report. There were no ballot shortages, broken machines or people disturbing others as they exercised their right to vote. This is good for the democratic process, of course, but makes live-blogging that much less interesting.

More to read

—Michael LoCicero shared what he learned from live-blogging — namely, that it isn’t his cup of tea.

—The Marquette Tribune and other Marquette student media had their own live-blog. (Full disclosure: I work for the Tribune.)

—Our professor aggregated the coverage from 14 other students and me at his website.

Our class visited and tweeted about the law school’s latest poll Thursday. Of course, the poll got plenty of attention, due to how close it is to the election. There were several media outlets there, and the room was quite full.

The biggest headline was, naturally, the presidential results. The poll showed Obama leading Romney 51–43 among likely voters, which beats the margin of error. But the senate race is a statistical tie. Baldwin leads Thompson by only 4 points, 47–43.

A recent visitor to our class, blogger Craig Gilbert, warned of overanlyzing poll results. Gilbert, who works for the Journal-Sentinel and blogs at the Wisconsin Voter blog, noted that there’s still a one in 20 chance that the data is off by more than the margin of error. This is even ignoring the possible mistakes the pollster could have made.

That meant that a single poll is most valuable in the context of the most recent polls. A poll showing a bigger lead than previous polls could either be the result of statistical noise or a pollster’s mistake. It could also indicate an actual change.

So what did the flurry of polls after Marquette’s show?

We can see that Obama’s edge in the Marquette Law poll has continued. However, the average lead is smaller than what Marquette gave him. Whether this is due to a minuscule gain by Romney or statistical noise is hard to tell. Some national measures of the race — including Rasmussen’s tracking poll — show a slight increase in Obama’s lead over the past few days.

Polls agree that Obama is more popular among Wisconsin’s likely voters, whether the lead has grown remains ambiguous. Unless you have reason to think polls are systematically wrong in the president’s favor, that translates to an actual lead. As fun as it is to muse, we’ll only know in about 72 hours — when the results come in after Wisconsin’s polling places close at 8 p.m. on election night.

More to read

—The Marquette Law School blog on the event features a clear summary, but not as much depth. The Law School’s polling website has a more detailed summary.

—The details of the poll results announcement and video.

—My classmate Alex Rydin and Brynne Ramella summarized the results. Rydin focuses more on the poll results; Ramella on her experience there.

—Gilbert didn’t post about the Marquette Law School poll itself, but looked at the past 12 months of Marquette’s polling.

Yesterday, Sen. Ron Johnson came to Marquette Law School for the latest “On the Issues with Mike Gousha”. My classmates and I were there for the event, which served as a natural counter-point to us attending Russ Feingold’s visit on Oct. 4.

I had expected Johnson to present some less-common views, given his Tea Party connections. But I wouldn’t have predicted how little everything had to do with the debate and election. I think Johnson fielded two questions on the elections and debate before the conversation moved on to completely different topics.

A number of those topics were driven by Johnson’s Power Point presentation. There was a lot of budget numbers. You can see some examples at his website, like the slide he showed comparing spending cuts House Republicans proposed versus the ones Obama proposed.

As I tweeted during the event, the amount of statistics Johnson was referencing on his slides was too much to fact-check in anything approaching real-time.

This is one of the general challenges of live-tweeting, of course. The time for research is limited. There were some good ones during the debate. Like this one by Alex Rydin, linking to an article that debunked the claim that Obama went on an “apology tour.” And one by me — if I may be so bold to name my own — noting that the Buffett Rule, a proposed tax on millionaires, would raise only $5 billion, as Johnson said.

Because of how much effort is required, I’m not sure that you can do much worthwhile live-tweeting on your own. Doing a stream of key quotes isn’t hard. But if you want actual analysis or fact-checking, it’s harder to do those and create a complete picture.

Besides the Power Point, the biggest surprise was his graphic on out-of-wedlock births. As Johnson acknowledged, out-of-wedlock births are not one of this election’s hot issues. Nonetheless, he maintained it was important.He argued that the drastic increase in births to unmarried couples has weakened our society. The rate of nonmaritial births has definitely risen, but connecting that to other societal changes is beyond my province as blogger.

Johnson’s take on issues and data-heavy style contrasted with Russ Feingold’s presentation on Oct. 9, which you can watch here. Besides the obvious difference — Feingold is liberal, Johnson is not — there were some others. Feingold seemed to focus more on current events, rather than on trends and future projections like Johnson did. He also didn’t stress numbers as much, let alone use graphs and give a Power Point presentation.

The conversation was well-moderated, and whether you agree with Johnson or not, his positions and priorities are a helpful second (or third, or fourth…) perspective.

For more on the event, check out the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog’s post or the Marquette Tribune’s writeup. You can also watch it on the Law School’s website.

Who knew a wedding invitation could cause so much trouble?

Martha Raddatz is coming under fire for not disclosing that Barack Obama attended her wedding, all the way back in 1991. (The Daily Beast has more.)

ABC News defended her in a statement yesterday. This is no surprise, as ABC News’ own credibility is threatened.

I think for the sake of completeness — and avoiding these sorts of awkward situations — Raddatz should have disclosed the connection. But given that Obama was a Harvard Law School student at the time, it’s hardly indicative of bias. Especially, if he came as her then-husband’s classmate and not her personal friend.

Cynics might suggest the conservative brouhaha is a way of shielding Ryan from possible negative publicity post-debate. But the Romney campaign doesn’t appear to be using that strategy — a spokesman said the campaign has “no concerns.”

In the end, I suspect these concerns will be overshadowed by what actually happens at the debate.

But what else can we expect from Raddatz? Jay Rosen suggested today that the Commission on Presidential Debates might have intended for Lehrer to take a hands off approach, or as Rosen calls it, being a “vanishing moderator.”

Raddatz is a newcomer to moderating debates on the national level, but not to politics. At least, not entirely. She covered several campaigns at ABC’s Boston affiliate, WCVB-TV back in the 80s and early 90s. But most of her career was in national security and foreign affairs. Those topics certainly intersect with politics, but it isn’t the same as being on a political beat.

Before, during and after the first presidential debate, reporters from the New York Times live-blogged the events at the University of Denver starting at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

The Times’ live blogs feel very polished. Almost too polished to actually be called a blog. They even embed charts and graphics in and sometimes, photos taken that night.

One of the nicest features for someone looking back on the debate is something I haven’t seen anywhere else: five links to “highlights” at the top of the page. It’s a very simple technique, but it helps people who want to look back on it.

The secret does not appear to be reusing material from before, like Politifact did on the night of the debate. Some research and background information might have been prepared, however. Part of the key is staffing: 15 separate reporters posted on the blog, not counting the six photographers or the seven reporters whose tweets were included.

One thing I liked was the focus on fact-checking. The blog allows you to click a tab at the top and filter out everything but posts auditing the two candidates’ claims. The Times does not use any kind of rating system for claims — like the Truth-O-Meter — but I thought the posts made the actual facts of the matter quite clear.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold came to Marquette to be interviewed by Mike Gousha for “On the Issues” on Thursday. The Law School uploaded a video of the event.

Topics ranged from the Democrats’ odds in the 2012 races, to campaign finance and President Obama’s performance at the first debate.

Feingold is one of the Obama campaign’s 35 co-chairs. As Talking Points Memo noted back in February, Feingold may be a part of Obama’s campaign, but the two don’t always agree. Feingold has been deeply critical of the mass influx of money brought on after Citizens United.

I’ve gotten the impression that Feingold is done with public office. He certainly could run again for the Senate, but with his new group, Progressives United, he’s moving away from being a politician and more toward trying to advance progressive causes, primarily his favorite, campaign finance reform.

Regardless of your views, I think you can credit Feingold for avoiding some of the common talking points and being willing to work across the aisle. Also, he wasn’t afraid of criticizing his own party. After saying that he believes the influence of people sinking money into politics has exploded, he said, “Both sides become swallowed by this kind of corruption.”

For more, read the story in The Marquette Tribune or at the blogs of my colleagues Melanie Lawder, Brynne Ramella, Alex Rydin and Joe Kvartunas.

Yesterday, I attended a panel on modern media coverage of politics and elections.

The three panelists included Ben Tracy, a reporter for CBS News; Bonnie Brennen, a professor of journalism at Marquette and Christopher Murray, an instructor at the Les Aspin Center.

The panelists hit on a lot of trends in journalism and politics today: the rise of social media, the increasingly bold lies of politicians, the rise of fact-checking and the surge in spending from o SuperPACs.

I thought it was interesting how Tracy said that broadcast news shouldn’t be the only source. As panelists frequently noted, the typical 22-minute broadcast is not a lot of time. Tracy argued in favor of kind of a portfolio of news, supplementing watching TV news with magazine and newspaper reading.

A lot of discussion about how you can inform the public in the “22 min.” of nightly news. #loweclass #elections

— Joseph Kvartunas (@JoeKvartunas) October 1, 2012

I think the panelists were correct to point out that those 22 minutes seem even more inadequate in light of deluge of political ads that are part of the remaining 8 minutes.

One thing they didn’t get into was whether the increased fact-checking efforts of places like Politifact and Factcheck.org offset all this spending by SuperPACs.

Personally, I don’t think they have quite caught up. I think fact-checker’s growth has been boosted by the SuperPACs. More claims to check both leads to more content and more readers.

I liked the discussion as it was wide-ranging and pertinent. Erik Ugland's moderating was well-done, as usual, and the panelists were interesting, particularly Tracy.