Two Cents and a Thousand Words

As promised, I attended the Edwards rally today on the Mall in front of the library. It was very well attended, and I was able to see a lot of my friends there (nice to have Democratic friends, I guess). Introduced by Stephen King and Maine governor John Baldacci, he spoke surprisingly well and seemed to hit most of the talking points raised throughout the campaign. You can read about it on some of the major news outlets.

But…

…that’s the problem.

As someone interested in photography, media, and possibly some form of journalism, I looked over what will probably be the event with the widest coverage at the University for a while.

My first stop was at a USA Today [AP] article detailing the event. First of all, that picture isn’t from UMaine. Edwards took off his coat the minute he stepped on stage. Second, though the video is supposedly focusing on Edwards’s talk at the University, it includes no actual coverage from here. Third, it wasn’t a completely student audience. In fact, many faculty and community members from around Maine attended the event.

The Miami Herald’s take on the AP story fared a bit better. It seemed to include more accurate coverage of the speech’s content, especially with details like Edwards’s “the Bush administration is the first in 75 years to post a net loss of jobs.” It also accurately noted the (small) group of Bush supporters in the back of the crowd. It did not mention, however, the one student who walked through the audience holding his flip-flops in the air while slapping them together.

Those seem to be the two AP articles circulating right now. I can only hope that in time photos will find their way to the stream (as well as video).