Strategic vs. evaluative news coverage

Can you tell that I’m stuck in my writing? It seems to me that the days in which I post multiple entries to this weblog can be directly correlated to how “stuck” I’m feeling in my writing project. I pause from writing, go surf the web, and discover fun things to comment on — thereby feeling industrious, when what I’m actually doing is procrastinating. Oh well. This time my surfing brought me back to Rebecca’s Pocket. Today she has an interesting entry on the shift from “evaluative” news coverage (that is, news coverage that evaluates policy issues) to “strategic” news coverage (that is, news coverage that focuses on political strategy, rather than the issues the strategy is being used upon). She also reminds us of an earlier entry she had written focusing on major trends in journalism. Both are important reading as we head into one of the most important presidential election processes in decades.