Barack Obama and Hillary ClintonBy Matt Harper

As I write this, rain is pouring down on Western New Hampshire. But this torrential downpour held off for a few hours this afternoon so that a historic union could take place in the sleepy town of Unity, New Hampshire. Of course, I'm talking about of the joint appearance of Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator/presidential hopeful Barack Obama. The two Democratic candidates ran a primary battle for close to a year and half, and with Obama recently stepping up as the presumptive Democratic nominee, there's been a fair amount of speculation as to when and how the Democratic party would unify.

Well, the answer is here: June 27, 2008, in Unity, New Hampshire. You couldn't really ask for a more blatantly symbolic spot for Hillary and Barack to take the stage together. Apart from its name, the minuscule town near the Vermont border was the place where both Democratic candidates received 107 votes apiece during the state primary in January.

As expected, the event was heavily attended and obsessively orchestrated by an army of college-age Obama volunteers. While I waited in the approximately half-mile-long line to get into the event, I was offered fresh-picked strawberries by a lady moving up and down the line, was warned by another lady that Barack was a Muslim and should be avoided at all costs, and had about 10 separate petitioners warn me that MoveOn.org is funded by George Soros, who had apparently made millions from investments in Halliburton. I could tell right away that this event had brought out a diverse crop of passionate New Englanders. Read More...

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(by Bernard Lumpkin)

SwayThey say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a chyron worth? Apparently, for Fox News, a whole lot. During an interview Wednesday with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about attacks against Michelle Obama, Fox News ran a graphic on the lower third of the screen that read, "Outraged Liberals: Stop Picking on Obama's Baby Mama!"

The comment — both crass and, for those who know anything about 21st-century slang, just plain wrong! — has set the political blogs abuzz. To those of us here in the Newsroom accustomed to using chyrons day in and day out in our on-air reporting, we thought we'd take this opportunity to draw your attention to the use (and abuse?) of this television tool.

News producers generally consider chyrons our friends. That informative text on the lower part of your screen allows us to feed you even more info — from sports scores to AP wire reports to upcoming programs — than what you're seeing and hearing on the upper two-thirds of the screen. Chyrons summarize, condense and crystallize. And in these times of short-attention spans, the quicker you can absorb the news the better. In other words, chyrons are meant to complement the story, not comment on it. Right?
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