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Republican Joel Dykstra is working his way around the state, as he pursues the US Senate nomination next June.This article has a few problems:
He says right now he is listening to what voters have on their minds
Dykstra says while it might seem to be a big jump from the South Dakota Legislature to the US Senate, the experiences are very similar.
Dykstra says he hopes voters realize how much access they have to their candidates and representatives.
Dykstra is competing with Sam Kephart of Spearfish for the republican nomination.
- Nowhere does it say where Dykstra is in his travels around the state. Did he stop in Madison? Chester? Anywhere in the KJAM listening area? If not, why is KJAM running the story?
- If he's listening to what voters have on their minds, what has he heard? Has he taken a look at what Lake County voters have on their minds (and will he keep that in mind when he heads back to the SD Legislature in January?)
- "Access to their candidates and representatives" -- like what? Is Dykstra referring to super-awesome campaign websites that he and Kephart have set up? (Well, no, he can't mean his own campaign website, which is currently under construction and offers no contact links at all.) Is he referring to all of his public meetings with Lake County voters (none of which meetings are mentioned specifically in this article)? Or is this just a jab at his incommunicado incumbent opponent?
- Did Dykstra actually visit with anyone at KJAM, or is this just a stock press release from the candidate?
- Most importantly, didn't KJAM run an identical blurb for Dykstra last month? I tried to search through the KJAM archives... but KJAM doesn't appear to have any. Their local news goes back (at this moment) to July 24. (But hey, web space costs money, and the good folks at KJAM have plenty to do besides massive web administration.) I Googled and Yahoo'd, and nothing came up. But I have a distinct recollection of reading a very similar article about Dykstra on the KJAM website not long after his candidacy announcement on July 5: no big details, no Lake-County-specific information, just a few vague lines. Perhaps my friends at KJAM can help me with some back records here.
I'll stop short of claiming that KJAM is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy -- after all, conspiracy theorists are kind of kooky. Reality is usually less interesting than conspiracy theorists wish it were.
Nonetheless, I remain curious, KJAM -- is today's Dykstra blurb a repeat? And if he is "working his way around the state," when will he be coming to town so Madison's brave teachers can ask Dykstra why he helped kill a big boost in education funding in the 2007 legislature. I'd also like to quiz this Zaniya Project Task Force member on his comment about how all the money we're spending on health care "still isn’t buying us the best health care in the world," [thanks to Bob Ellis, "Dykstra's Hat in the Ring for Senate," Rapid City Journal, no date posted online, but referenced as 2007.07.24 elsewhere online] and why he thinks a bureaucracy of 300+ profiteering insurance companies can manage health care more justly than a single-payer system accountable to the voters.
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Update 2007.08.03 10:12 CDT: This morning, I find the Dykstra story gone from the KJAM news page. The story that followed it, on the Minneapolis bridge collapse, is still there, without a date. I did notice that the date on the Dykstra article yesterday was 8/5/07. I wondered if maybe the old article that I seem to recall from July had just gotten reposted by accident, but it seemed odd that it would get an August date. Again, I'd love to see some mysterious conspiracy at work, but there's probably a simpler, more mundane explanation... right?
Is KJAM ONLY allowed to write stories that include the words Madison or Lake County?? Doesn't the story affect people in those areas without actually including those words in the story?
ReplyDeleteOh heck no -- KJAM can run whatever it wants, just like your friendly neighborhood blogger. They run local, state, even national news in their broadcast, and that's great. I didn't hear the broadcast version, so they might well have run the Dykstra story during the "state" portion of the newscast. The online stories are simply labeled "Local Headline News."
ReplyDeleteIt just seems odd that the article doesn't mention any specific town or event. Where is he in his tour of the state? When will he be here? Is he holding formal "listening tour" events or just stopping unannounced at coffee shops for informal chats? Is he biking around the state and visiting every county (that would be cool!)? If he's touring the state, I'd think Lake County voters would lvoe to know when he's coming so they can ask him questions, like whether he still thinks "rape and incest" are just buzzwords that can't be reliably defined.
It was the report's very vagueness that stood out and made me think I had read the same article at KJAM before. Thus, the main question: is this a repeat article or not?
Actually, I've been looking around for other articles on Dykstra. (Don't worry, KJAM -- no sign you plagiarized!) Argus, KELO, Mitchell Republic, Pierre Capitol Journal, Aberdeen American News... nothing on the Dykstra statewide listening tour, and darn little on Dykstra other than his candidacy announcement last month. Even Dykstra's fellow traveler on the right Bob Ellis doesn't mention any listening tour in his Rapid City Journal write-up. Hmmm... maybe there is a conspiracy. It's not KJAM participating in a right-wing conspiracy to promote Dykstra; it's a vast left-wing conspiracy by everyone else in South Dakota's media, flaming left-wingers suppressing any information about the Dykstra listening tour! I should've known!
ReplyDelete