Thursday, August 7, 2008

Newsweek Looks at the American South- Predictable Results Follow

I had to stop by my local libray the other day and I noticed Newsweek has a front cover major news story on the American South that very much related to this years political season. By the way , I think it is still important to actually read magazines like this in physical form. I do think the internet and online versions gives us a very limited view of the tone and other other important facets of these stories. From the pictures, to how it is laid out, to the stories that become before and after a lot is missed. This story is a major ecception of that.

After I read it I was a tad annoyed with the article. Matt Towery of Southern Political Report also found it annoying. Southern Politcal Report is a "conservative" magazine but his objections come off not only as correct but non partisan. Here is his very good response.

For instance he says:
What’s unsettling about the Newsweek piece is its failure to properly recognize that that much of the population along Dickey’s sojourn — the Carolinas, Tennessee and Georgia — is concentrated largely in suburban and exurban areas. The demographic makeup of these concentrations of people are made up, sometimes overwhelmingly, by those originally from places north and west of “Dixie”; often young people, who know little about the Civil War, or about the civil rights, and care even less.
Yet many of the article’s anecdotes center on the politics or the daily lives of people in rural parts of the South, who are an increasingly insignificant part of the whole population
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Good read

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