A behind the scenes look from a New York Times Blog interview of David Bohrman, the Washington bureau chief of CNN. Bohrman was the chief coordinator for the debate.
From the blog:
“We vetted people if we had any real doubt about them,” he said. CNN did this in the case of a student who said in his video that he had earned a 3.0 grade point average in high school but had not cracked a book. CNN checked with the school and learned that he did, indeed, have a 3.0 GPA. Alas, his question did not make the final cut.
The team also discovered that perhaps 20 supporters of Senator Joseph Biden had all submitted videos asking the exact same question. Mr. Cooper gently chided the Biden camp at the beginning of the debate for trying to manipulate the process.
Some celebrities from the entertainment industry submitted videos, but Mr. Bohrman would not reveal who they were. He said he nixed them, as well as those from public officials, because he wanted to keep the debate for “real” people.
The CNN/YouTube debate saw a slight drop in ratings down to 2.3 million viewers from its last debate which brought in 2.8 million according to the Associated Press.
CNN noted it did attract a young audience of 18-34 year-olds totaling 407,000 in viewer-ship and 45 million pageviews on the Web site. Though page-views don’t represent unique visitors and I did not see that number given in the article or anywhere else I looked.
Well the YouTube revolution has made it into the Main Stream Media as Chris Matthews has on Obama Girl, Hot4Hill & Giuliani Girl. Democracy will never be the same!
Seriously I am watching this right now and I have to ask, what is going on in this country? If this is what it takes to get young people to vote, is it worth it? This is really embarrassing, I feel embarrassed for Chris Matthews.
He hasn’t officially announced yet but Fred Thompson has already changed campaign managers. From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is replacing his acting campaign manager with former senator and energy secretary Spencer Abraham and Florida GOP strategist Randy Enright.
Thompson spokeswoman Linda Rozett said acting campaign manager Tom Collamore, former vice president of food and tobacco giant Altria, still will advise the campaign. Collamore has helped organize the campaign for Thompson, who has not officially jumped into the race.
