Jack Kavanagh’s Rough & Tumble Deserves Top Honors
We were delighted to be named by the Washington Post’s “The Fix” as
one of the top three political web sites in California, along with Flashreport and Calitics. But there is one web site that wasn’t named that — in our opinion — is a vital resource for anyone following California politics. That’s Rough & Tumble, by Jack Kavanagh.
Jack has been pulling together the most relevant California political news on his site for years — day in and day out. He’s fair, open-minded and one of the hardest-working guys in the business.
Jack’s web site generates 18,000 to 20,000 page views a day: it’s tremendously successful and rightfully so. It’s the granddaddy of California political sites. (There are many other great sites, but Jack’s is in a class by itself.)
Calbuzz is indebted to Rough & Tumble: More people come to our site from Rough & Tumble than any other single source. We urge Chris Cillizza, who publishes “The Fix” for the Washington Post to add Rough & Tumble to his list of top California sites.
Amen to that!
It’s worth noting that all of these sites rely on reporting from California’s daily newspapers.
Actually, calbuzz does original reporting
As traditional media fades into history, its masters must strive to carry the highest journalistic ethics into new media channels. But such is not the case. The fact that traditional Post political reporters are anchored to the dying print editions, and dubious experts like Chris Cillizza are given the power to "blog" about things they know nothing about, is a red flag for the future of all real journalism. Whether it is the Sunday final or the Facebook blog, and whether it is a comprehensive investigative piece or a three sentence snippet, the Washington Post should demand the same standards of integrity and accuracy. The omission of Rough&Tumble (and frankly, the inclusion of this promising but unseasoned site), reveals the amateurish approach to new media by the Post. I can almost hear their mesozoic editors pointing to the chubby guy in the small cubicle at the back of the newsroom and saying "hey, let's get that Chris kid to write some stuff on these facebook-mytube internet-text thingies."
As someone who comments regularly on Bill Bradley’s New West Notes I find it omission strange. Flashreport and Calitics give a peek at the far left and the far right but NWN is a bracing dose of realpolitik and at the end of the day more often calls ’em as they actually happen vs. the far-end sites and their pandering.
I am a bit more up on calbuzz than seeing it as “promising but unseasoned”. Just a peek at Trounstine and Roberts’ bios refute any unseasoned quibbles. They are doing useful original reporting, which puts them way ahead of a lot of blogs…
OK, folks, a very serious reality check …
What about the Huffington Post — the biggest liberal news and commentary site in the world — and the Daily Kos, amongst others?
They are political web sites in California, the former of which features my columns. Neither of which is mentioned by Chris Cillizza, a guy I never heard of before last year, in passing. And Chris, like some other folks I can mention, is never featured on either.
Clearly the Huffington Post, one of the biggest political news web sites in the world, is one of the best political web sites in California.
The personal choices of Chris Cillizza, who wrote for a Capitol Hill insider sheet before his latest corporate gig, on his WashPost blog, are for blogs about state politics. As he makes clear on his little blog.
If you are writing a lot about Obama, Afghanistan, etc., you don’t have a blog about state politics.
As I am sure my very old friends Jerry and Phil understand …