www.WrensJournal.blogspot.com

The Denver Post had a news article about the Dec 5 deadline for registering to vote in the Feb 5 Colorado Caucus. This will be entered into the Denver Grassroots Rally contest for pre-December 5 media coverage:

Colorado voters face Dec. 5 caucus deadline
By: Karen Crummy, The Denver Post

Colorado voters have only two weeks left to register with a political party if they want to participate in the Feb. 5 presidential caucuses.

The registration deadline is Dec. 5.

Voters can switch parties, and unaffiliated voters, who make up about one-third of the state's electorate, can register with a party in order to take part in the caucuses.

Colorado, which usually holds its caucus in the third week of March, is now one of more than 20 states that are holding, or planning to hold, their presidential caucuses or primaries Feb. 5. Both Democratic chair Pat Waak and GOP chair Dick Wadhams wanted the caucuses moved up so Colorado would have more of a voice in the presidential nomination.

"I do believe we will see an increase in attendance at precinct caucuses," Wadhams said.

The Democrats have been "actively recruiting" voters so they are registered prior to the Dec. 5 deadline, said party spokesman Matt Sugar.

The caucuses will operate as a preference poll. It is not until the Democrats hold their state convention on May 17 in Colorado Springs and Republicans conduct their convention on May 31 in Broomfield that delegates officially select their presidential candidates.

By then, however, both the GOP and Democratic nominees will likely be known.

Karen Crummy: 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com [1]

________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.politicswest.com/2008_election/13959/colorado_voters_face_dec_5_caucus_deadline

This is the comment about the above article that I just posted online:

Thanks for mentioning the December 5 deadline for registering
for the Colorado Caucus. It will be posted on my blog www.JohnWren.com
and entered into the Denver Grassroots Rally contest for the best
pre-December 5 caucus coverage.

Why the discouraging comment "by then (Feb 5) both the GOP and
Democratic nominees will likely be known." On what do you base that
opinion? And why did you choose to put it in a news story?

Also, why isn't the December 5 deadline featured on the front page of
Denver Post Online, or at least Politics West? Few people even know
about the caucus, the one's who learn about it at our new Denver
Grassroots Rally http://cocacop.meetup.com/2 seem very interested.




From The Washington Times:
"-30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper" is worth (reading) if you care about journalism and its importance in a democratic society.

Why is the classic American big-city daily newspaper becoming such an embarrassing irrelevancy at a time when there is a desperate need for the citizenry — especially the young — to be better informed?

There is a glaring error at the root of that question. Newspapers are not merely a sacred and inviolable product that should be fashioned and sold like coffee or motor cars by brand alone. First and foremost, newspapers are a service where content matters most. What the majority of today's newspaper owners appear to forget is that the printed broadsheet newspaper is simply a convenient medium for transmitting vital information.

Colonial Americans flocked to Ben Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette because it provided the widest possible flow of dependable information, and, as added attractions, opinions based on authority and amusement based on genuine wit. Starved for information that was weeks in coming and questionable when it arrived, Franklin offered a vital service in product form. When combined with his control over the colonial postal delivery system and his ties to other newspapers along the Atlantic seaboard, Franklin (not Al Gore) can truly be said to have invented the first American Internet.

What's wrong with the classic American newspaper is that it no longer is the sole source of vital information that is authoritatively presented to the citizenry. And while the Internet of today is messy, raucous and politically bent in many aspects, it is the service an increasing number of people — including those darling youngsters — turn to each day, or rather, each hour.

"Email delivers the highest ROI by an eye-popping margin:a whopping $57.25 for every dollar spent on it in 2005." -- DMA, October, 2006