Sherry Sylvester Moves To State GOP
The Austin Chronicle reports that Sherry Sylvester has accepted a job as communications director for the Texas GOP:
Sherry Sylvester made it official this week. The former San Antonio Express-News reporter, who has spent the last couple of years online impersonating a "non-partisan Texas media monitoring project" called Texas Media Watch (underwritten by the right-wing Lone Star Foundation), has accepted the job of communications director for the Texas Republican Party. Accepting the appointment from party Chair Tina Benkiser, Sylvester said the GOP "has a winning message and a great story to tell. I am excited about working with the dynamic leadership of the majority party." Sylvester shouldn't miss a beat, since she's been happily flogging that "winning message" while pretending to analyze objectively the political coverage of the state's major dailies and finding "liberal bias" everywhere she looked. Most recently, she tied herself into post-modernist knots attempting to explain why all the state's supposedly liberal newspapers endorsed the re-election of President George W. Bush. Sylvester's explanation? The publishers made them do it. She's finally free to speak directly in the voice of her GOP paymasters....
Sylvester was sometimes prone to excess, and recently has seemed to be stretched a bit thin (too many errors in her copy for my taste of late), but her site was a useful source of media criticism in a state where, frankly, most of the big newspapers aren't very good and could use more criticism. And her list of media bias indicators remains useful, whatever one thinks of her application of said indicators.
It's not especially surprising that the Austin Chronicle's reaction to the (apparent) end of Texas Media Watch is snidely cynical. Dinosaur alt-weeklies aren't especially alternative these days, but they are infused with a cynicism that their corporate publishers apparently mistake for alt-journalism. Still, it might have been an interesting alternative angle to ring up Sylvester, and see if she would talk about her transition from political staffer for Geraldine Ferraro and David Dinkins to journalist to media watcher to GOP staffer, and what exactly has motivated what would seem to be quite a change in political philosophy.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/29/04 21:21 | Media Matters | Technorati
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
Comments
You wrote
"It's not especially surprising that the Austin Chronicle's reaction to the (apparent) end of Texas Media Watch is snidely cynical. Dinosaur alt-weeklies aren't especially alternative these days, but they are infused with a cynicism that their corporate publishers apparently mistake for alt-journalism."
It's always fun to see publications like the Austin Chronicle pontificate about projects like Texas Media Watch, when of course TMW is doing basically what the Chronicle's political coverage does, only from the other ideological side. Trying to de-legitimize the other side's arguments through ad hominem attacks in order to avoid honestly addressing their points is utterly lame, but it seems to be the only thing the left is capable of these days.
Posted by Jonathan Sadow @ 03:32 on 12/01/04
Add Comments
While it is not required, creating an account for commenting provides a number of benefits (such as comment editing and bypassing the captcha challenge). You may log in to your account here.
No flames or impolite behavior. Any questions, see the site policies. Older posts are moderated (because of spammers), so if your post does not appear immediately, that could be why.
HTML will be stripped. URLs will be transformed into hyperlinks.
[b]text[/b] will produce bold text. [i]text[/i] will produce italicized text.
Comments for this post must be approved before being published. Thank you!
BLOG
» Create Account
» Log In
DISCLAIMER
Content and design copyright © 1997-2008, Kevin Whited.
Posts represent the views of Kevin Whited (and occasional guest bloggers) only, and do not necessarily reflect the views of employers, family, friends, or significant others.