Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Alternative Vote 2000 brings the counterculture to election coverage. Plus: High Times turns 25; what happens if Amazon tanks?
Oct 22, 1999 | Every morning around 6 a.m., Frank Sennett stares into the glowing screen of his Compaq computer at his home office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. His modest goal is to highlight alternative-press coverage of the upcoming election and in the process change the course of mainstream political reporting.
Sennett is the editor of NewCity.com, which functions as a selective portal for the alternative press. He begins each day by scouring the Web sites of New City's 54 affiliates -- an impressive list of alternative newspapers and zines -- for news stories and features to link to. The site's latest addition, Alternative Vote 2000, went live last week. Like NewCity, it's a portal, but focused entirely on the upcoming election. Sennett hopes Alternative Vote will "bring an alternative press-type voice back to the national campaign coverage that we really haven't seen since Rolling Stone made an impact in the '60s and '70s."
While it's no Rolling Stone, Alternative Vote is off to a good start with its small but growing sections on Democrats, Republicans, third parties, key local races, and a hearty list of trend pieces. The stories are local, but as a consequence often delve deeper into the candidates' records. As Sennett points out: "While the stories may be very local, once you put enough of them together, you can get a really good, close-to-the-ground feel for how the campaigns are going. By the time the election comes around, we're going to have several hundred stories."
Some of the best reporting is certain to come from sharpshooting advice columnist Dan Savage, whose gonzo coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll, where Republican candidates basically paid people for their vote, went straight for the throat. "Politicians," Savage wrote, "are prostitutes, as everyone likes to point out, selling themselves and their souls to raise the buckets of money it takes to run for office. But for one day every four years in Iowa, the roles are reversed and it's the voters who are whores."
The Austin Chronicle's George W. coverage is impressive as well. For example, while the big boys and girls were hemming and hawing over George W.'s alleged cocaine use and miraculous fund-raising abilities, the Chronicle was taking a hard and thorough look at the Texas governor's environmental record.
What Savage and many other alternative press reporters do best is cut through the bullshit with honest revelations and old-fashioned investigative journalism. Although some mainstream news sources have pursued important stories, I'm certainly not the first to feel let down by the endless coverage of photo opportunities and the verbatim regurgitation of sound bites being passed off as news these days. Fortunately, Alternative Vote 2000 will be providing us with coverage that's more substantive and straightforward as the big day approaches.
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