Blogs

Across The Media Universe

By Hillary Profita

December 12, 2006 / 11:25 AM EST / CBS News

(AP)

Getting Inside The 2008 Vacuum: How do you suck up media attention for your presidential bid even though much of the media knows you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning? According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Openers blog, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is hoping that getting out early with the official announcement is going to do the trick. Movements of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been tracked with eagle-eye clarity on the front pages of the papers and on the evening newscasts (all three had stories last night on Obama's recent visit to New Hampshire.) But the only Democrat to officially announce has been Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Now you can add Kucinich to that list.

Outside The Mainstream, Behind Enemy Lines: The general storyline on Iraq for some time has been that it's "a grim, chaotic mess," writes Dante Chinni in the Christian Science Monitor today. But as always, the blogosphere offers an alternative. In this case, it's Bill Roggio's blog, where Roggio writes that the US is "winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas," but "losing the information war."

Roggio served in the US Army and is currently embedded (as a blogger) with Marines in Iraq. The blog "offers something not often seen in the media - stories about soldiers on the job in dangerous places." That includes stories about what soldiers and marines think about the press – some have told Roggio they feel that the media have "abandoned them."

AP Cameraman Shot Dead: Bad news from the Associated Press out of Iraq this morning – Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, an AP cameraman, was shot and killed by insurgents in Mosul. He is the third AP employee to be killed in the war. Said AP President and CEO Tom Curley: "The murder of yet another journalist underscores the particular dangers of this conflict and the sacrifices of those committed to reporting the story."