HuffPost Ventures Out to Discover There’s a Whole Country Between the Coasts
Sends reporters on a bus tour to learn what real Americans think
Credit where credit’s due: the HuffPost (now just HuffPost since founder Ariana Huffington parted ways) is launching a bus tour, stopping in 23 cities so their reporters (or bloggers) can find the answer to this burning question: What does it mean to be American today?
The bus tour turned mobile video studio hopes to showcase “what we share as Americans, rather than what divides us.”
A noble goal, if it’s an earnest one.
HuffPost explains further:
WHY WE ARE DOING THIS
Trust in media has bottomed out. We hope to rebuild some of that — and learn from it — by listening to the public and elevating their stories through our massive distribution network.HOW WE ARE MAKING IT HAPPEN
We will travel the old-fashioned way — via bus — to 20-plus states to hear from some of the under-heard, diverse Americans who make up the communities that form much of our nation. And by working on the ground with community leaders, nonprofits, educational institutions, local businesses and others, we’ll make sure people know we’re there to listen.Not on the bus tour? Don’t worry. We’ll be announcing ways to participate online in the coming weeks.
HuffPost is right about how little faith the general public has in its media, and they’ve certainly contributed to the decline of discourse.
Lydia Polgreen, HuffPost’s new Editor-in-chief told Politico:
“A lot of us are thinking about journalism and how journalism relates to people’s lives and this project was really a direct result of that, wanting to get out into the country and hear from people about the things that mattered most to them rather than us deciding from our office in the East Village what are the stories that are most important to Americans and hear what people have to say,” she said. “So much of journalism today is elites speaking to elites and I see the role of HuffPost as speaking for really everyone.”
I want to love this, I really do. Regular readers are familiar with my station as the resident “can’t we all just get along!” blogger here at LI. I routinely advocate for finding common ground rather than focusing on ideological differences, so I want to believe that under new leadership, HuffPost might actually be less focused on divisive posts a la this one:
But I’ve been here too long to be so easily convinced, though I’d love to be wrong. Journalists remembering what journalism is, why it is, and who they are supposed to protect and support would go a long way to Making America Great Again! as they say.
Earlier this year, Reuters had a similar, less showey, “oh hey, maybe we should start caring about actual Americans,” revelation. Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler sent a public memo to Reuters staff providing several do’s and dont’s. That list included the instruction to, “get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.”
Maybe, just maybe the press is starting to get it? A girl can dream, right?
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Comments
I bet their bus isn’t a “good, old fashioned” one.
A Loewy-designed SceniCruiser would have been wonderful!
No, but it’s decorated with the nutty flower child motif from the 1960s. They should have engaged a fleet of VW buses.
Twitchy is fast becoming a favorite.
http://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2017/07/13/advance-team-of-journalists-left-literally-shaking-after-scouting-run-for-huffpointheheartland-tour/
I wonder what @HuffPost will discover on their tour across the Midwest. Can we hashtag this and start a trend?
— basic becky (@Tiffany1985B) July 13, 2017
Report: saw a truck with a gun rack.
Literally. Shaking.
— Texas Guy (@Collinsdw) July 13, 2017
#HuffPoInTheHeartland
Tried to merge in traffic, driver motioned for us to go ahead. Patriarchy even on the highways.
— Lizzy Lou Who???? (@_wintergirl93) July 13, 2017
That random stranger told me to have a nice day. I blew my rape whistle in their face. #HuffPoInTheHeartland
— Dizzy Dee (@ihate_everyone2) July 13, 2017
LOL Hilarious!
“So much of journalism today is elites speaking to elites…”
.
Nope. It’s bigoted Leftists speaking to bigoted Leftists who all think they’re ‘elite.’
You got that right!
Let me guess… when they visit Texas their only stop will be in Austin.
My first thought when I saw “cities.
If they don’t get out in the deplorable countryside, they’re still going to have skewed results
Would we expect anything else of the Huffing Po?
Or Houston. I hope they don’t have to meet any of those scary rural people.
Maybe they will come across that giant Idaho Potato truck. That would be awesome, Huffpo, not so much.
Or the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile!
At first thought it sounds like:
“Great! They finally admitted that they are disconnected from the rest of America! ”
But I don’t know.
A long time ago, I gave up on these people.
I don’t think redemption is possible for them, so I expect that they will go from liberal town to liberal town meeting antifas and other looneys, anyone, and everyone that helps confirm their bias. They will finally end up saying that they were right all along, and they will continue to be detached from reality.
Wait and see.
I hope I’m wrong, but really, I don’t think so.
You know your first impressions are always right.
Huff Po is just blowing smoke up their own…… Elitist, Bigoted, Earholes…..
I pray every day that those poor innocent HuffPost reporters aren’t permanently harmed by what they will see. You just know that some of them are going to come away from this trip with a meat addiction. And those that avoid that sinful behavior could get caught up in those Texas dance halls where men and women actually dance together. I surely hope they avoid Texas completely because they are just not ready for viewing life amongst us deplorable rubes.
Stopping in cities? They’ll learn nothing. They need to stop in towns and villages and hamlets.(The last term is still used in NY, don’t know about elsewhere.) And in WV, a hollow or two.
We should embarrass them into getting out into the real America.
First they should only be allowed to travel in a broken down 1955 Chevrolet school bus – with no air conditioning.
They should be forced to talk to only Trump voters in such burgs as Toad Suck Ferry, Arkansas; Bugtussle, Oklahoma, Vegas, Texas; Great Bend, Kansas; Branson, Missouri… You get the idea.
Make them drink from the same poisoned well they’ve been dictating for the rest of us for the past few decades.
Don’t you mean a “holler”?
(hollow was the original)
A girl can dream, right?
Of course, Kemberlee. Just know the difference between ‘dream’ and ‘delusion’. 😉
I, for one, don’t for a minute think they’ll talk to any Trump voters. But, they’ll make it sound like the people they do talk to are the ‘normal working class middle-Americans’.
They’d better bring their tranquilizers and teddy bears if they’re coming here to AZ. It’s open carry land, and we know how the sight of somebody with a gun freaks out these limp-wristed pajama boys (and girls).
“23 cities”
I see a problem right there.
HuffPo is in for a rude awakening if they think that “Trust in media has bottomed out.” With what we are seeing these days, there is a lot more air under their feet yet, and they are in a race to see who can fall the fastest. SMH…
Is there a form factor involved in terminal velocity?
As if.
I’m sure that after talking to regular Americans they will, in fact, soften their tone.
“If you don’t vote Democrat this November then SCREW you!”
I can literally feel the abyss between us shrinking…
They aint going to find us unwashed in the cities …. So what it tell you that they dont even know where to look
What a load.
Wrong right out of the gate—
A lot of us are thinking about journalism and how journalism relates to people’s lives
Journalism may indeed relate to people’s lives, but that’s hardly its primary function—and that is, to relate to reality. The election showed, in the starkest terms, that the press not only has no idea what reality is, but it really hasn’t a clue in which direction to look. A bus tour to an alien land won’t help them find it.
They’re not looking for the reasons why they’re wrong. They think they’re looking for the reasons why everybody else is wrong. If they realized where the problem lies, and were interested in doing something professional about it, they’d close the East Village office and move everything out into the United States. Somewhere. Anywhere. And there’s no chance whatever that they’ll do that.
Are they taking the short bus…
Here is everything you need to know about the bias they are already applying to this little lie.
“community leaders, nonprofits, educational institutions, local businesses and others,”
Notice anything, they really mean they are looking for and listening to liberals in the middle of the country, anyone who thinks they intend to include Conservatives is a fool!
You can be assured either Hufpo will skew the interviews or some other organization will take excerpts out of context to support their progressive, anti-Trump, anti=constitutional views.
The cities HuffPo is visiting are listed at the link.
We can tell that they’re not really interested in learning anything because they are going to visit Detroit … Pittsburgh … Memphis … and New Orleans, among others.
It actually is a good idea, but their goal is not something that can be accomplished in a single tour. Where it will likely fail is in not recognizing that this will need to be an on-going, continuous effort over the next couple of decades.
We didn’t lose our faith in journalism and the press overnight. It took decades to erode their trust to the levels we find today. It will take that long for them to rebuild it. Are they dedicated enough to pursue this? I doubt it.
From what I hear living in the SF Bay area is that the only two universities in the country are UC Berkeley and Stanford, and the most important thing is which one. has the “Axe.” Nobody seems to acknowledge that some of our best universities are in the Rust Belt.
I get blank stares and a look of amazement when I tell people here that the HAL 9000 computer first became operational at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
Heck, they might even want to visit Upstate NY. No, not the NYC version of “Upstate” (North of Westchester), but really upstate – say the Adirondacks (Lake George and Lake Placid don’t count), or the Leatherstocking District, Chautauqua etc. You know, the parts of the state that have voted Red since forever
You can be sure that this won’t be an introspective look at America. They will find much in America that needs changing, and nothing in themselves.
“A girl can dream”
To splash a bucket of cold water on that, google up a HuffPo Staff picture that’s been viral – all white, all female. Likely after lecturing their audience about diversity.
It’s a good tell into just how blind and these people are. They lack the self-awareness to learn anything about themselves on this trip.
“Regular readers are familiar with my station as the resident “can’t we all just get along!” blogger here at LI. I routinely advocate for finding common ground rather than focusing on ideological differences,…”
Kimberley, a friendly suggestion:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/2016-election-demise-journalistic-standards/
I read all of your posts and enjoy them. But the days of squishiness are over. You are still struggling internally to fight a battle that has already been fought and lost, the battle to find common ground. The common ground was found by electing Trump.
Now the big war is afoot and you have to pick sides. As Michael Goodwin says in the conclusion of his essay: “Join the side you are on.” There is no other option.
They’ll hit the Whole Foods collective in all 20 states