Proposal to the Times Union
I sent the following e-mail to the Times Union editorial staff. We'll see if anyone really wants to talk about and cover issues in the 2006 congressional campaigns. Please e-mail jcrupi@timesunion.com telling her you want them to do this.
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Dear Mr. Smith, Ms. Crupi and Mr. Healy:
I write with a suggestion for covering the 2006 congressional campaigns here in the Capital Region. Your paper previously published an editorial suggesting that candidates should talk more about issues and sling less mud.
My proposal is that each candidate in the 20th and 21st congressional district submit two questions about issues. Each candidate would submit answers to the Times Union. The TU would then print the question and the answers of each candidate. Since there are roughly 8 weeks between now and the election, this could be done once a week (i.e. one of the questions and its answers would be printed each week, starting with 9/17). This seems appropriate for Sunday's "Perspective" section, but that is of course the TU's call.
There are some finer points of implementation I would leave to your judgment (i.e. what if two candidates submit essentially the same question? I'd prefer the TU substitute its own question, but that would be up to you; or how long can the questions/answers be? - given Mr. Smith's published concerns about using the paper's space wisely, that obviously should be the paper's decision).
By copy of this e-mail I am advising the Sweeney, Gilibrand, McNulty and Raleigh campaigns of this proposal. I've also cc'd Ms. Benjamin, Ms. Woodruff and Mr. O'Brien since they're covering the races.
I hope the other campaigns will reply to the paper to indicate their willingness to participate in such a "print debate". Raleigh, McNulty and I did a print debate a few weeks ago in the Informed Constituent, and that seemed to go well.
Please reply by e-mail or call me at 888-733-5299 with any questions or concerns.
Thank you for your ongoing coverage of the campaigns and for your attention to this proposal.
Very truly yours,
Warren Redlich
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Dear Mr. Smith, Ms. Crupi and Mr. Healy:
I write with a suggestion for covering the 2006 congressional campaigns here in the Capital Region. Your paper previously published an editorial suggesting that candidates should talk more about issues and sling less mud.
My proposal is that each candidate in the 20th and 21st congressional district submit two questions about issues. Each candidate would submit answers to the Times Union. The TU would then print the question and the answers of each candidate. Since there are roughly 8 weeks between now and the election, this could be done once a week (i.e. one of the questions and its answers would be printed each week, starting with 9/17). This seems appropriate for Sunday's "Perspective" section, but that is of course the TU's call.
There are some finer points of implementation I would leave to your judgment (i.e. what if two candidates submit essentially the same question? I'd prefer the TU substitute its own question, but that would be up to you; or how long can the questions/answers be? - given Mr. Smith's published concerns about using the paper's space wisely, that obviously should be the paper's decision).
By copy of this e-mail I am advising the Sweeney, Gilibrand, McNulty and Raleigh campaigns of this proposal. I've also cc'd Ms. Benjamin, Ms. Woodruff and Mr. O'Brien since they're covering the races.
I hope the other campaigns will reply to the paper to indicate their willingness to participate in such a "print debate". Raleigh, McNulty and I did a print debate a few weeks ago in the Informed Constituent, and that seemed to go well.
Please reply by e-mail or call me at 888-733-5299 with any questions or concerns.
Thank you for your ongoing coverage of the campaigns and for your attention to this proposal.
Very truly yours,
Warren Redlich
posted by Albany Lawyer at 11:57 AM
4 Comments:
my question to Sweeney: What is your criteria for victory in Iraq ?
my question to Gillibrand: Would you favor invoking the wars Powers Act in order to withdraw from Iraq ?
my question to Rex: Are you aware there are third party candidates ?
my question to Warren: why blogger ?
hint:WordPress or movable type
Responding to Eric Sundwall's comment, I have much better questions in mind for the candidates, but I don't see the questions as directed at only one candidate.
I use blogger because it's easier than WordPress or Movable Type. I'm not as much of a geek as Eric (close, but not there). If you know Eric, you'll know he'll take it as a compliment.
Just trying to stir the pot a little Warren . . . I'm working on a post about you on my blog soon . . .
Starting to top out at 800 uniques a day . .
How'd you know it was me ? LOL
I knew that would be your answer, still waiting for those better questions . . .
It's shame we only got to 'work' together and not debate. Good luck getting anyone to the table.
re: WordPress or movable type
Eric, We have moveable type on the Site because Wordpress doesn't support dates before 1901.
MT also does not have a free license.
When the servers are migrated to apache2, we will have wordpress supported through our linux distribution's upgrade mechanism. In the past, wordpress upgrades have been a little tricky so we're avoiding them here for now.
The next server will start off with apache2 and we will have better support for wordpress.
Steve
(The server admin)
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