I tracked down the dweeb blogger that wingnuts are touting from Rolling Stone's hit on Wendy DAVIS

He's a dweeb blogger Ben DREYFUSS, "Engagement Editor" (huh?!1), and wingnuts are saying that "EVEN (Liberal) Mother Jones" is attacking the DAVIS "desperate" attack on "a man in a wheelchair".

His 3 paragraphs that the wingnuts are playing like it's a profound exegesis are at the bottom (literally) here. It turns out that he says everything is HIS OPINION, that it's all how HE SEES the advertisement as "calling Abbott a cripple." If he were posting here at DU, I would expect several of my DUers would call DREYFUSS "comprehension impaired."

As with other recent flamers here at DU, even when DREYFUSS notes that MANY have told him it's about the HYPOCRISY not the impairment, he blithely passes on by and repeats repeats repeats that, no, it's about calling ABBOTT "a cripple." Because DREYFUSS *says* that's what it's about, what DREYFUSS *thinks* quite apart from any relation to objectivity.

Wingnuts have latched onto this snot the way they do with any slim reed.



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http://24ahead.com/c/162
[font size=5]Ben Dreyfuss of Mother Jones and journalism[/font]

I contacted [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Ben Dreyfuss[/FONT] of Mother Jones about Politico reporter Maggie Severns not including any dissenting information in the article discussed here: http://24ahead.com/n/12012 Seeking out the other side(s) of a story and including their input is a key journalism tenet. As can be seen from the reply I received, Ben Dreyfuss doesn't seem to agree.

From bendreyfuss
@24AheadDotCom [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Fuck off[/FONT]. @MaggieSeverns

From bendreyfuss
@24AheadDotCom Sir, sir, please, all do respect, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]fuck off.[/FONT]

From bendreyfuss
.@24aheaddotcom is apparently trying to get me in trouble by tweeting at people about [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]how rude I am. Good luck, bro.[/FONT] http://t.co/rYaKHSgruc


http://connectivity.cqrollcall.com/what-advocates-can-learn-from-mother-jones/

[font size=5]What Advocates Can Learn from Mother Jones’ Online Growth[/font]

.... Mother Jones’ social media presence has a distinct personality. The AARP’s done this with it’s mythical audience of one — Rhonda. In the magazine’s case, it’s mainly derived from its [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]director and agent provocateur[/FONT] Ben Dreyfuss. Through a blog hosted on Mother Jones’ website but [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]with little connection to its journalistic content[/FONT], Dreyfuss posts video, images, and stories that [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]personally interest him[/FONT] that he things his readers would like, too. This Buzzfeed-y approach is designed “to bring new audience to Mother Jones content — a younger readership, people who might not be familiar with the Mother Jones brand but could one day become subscribers, or at least regular readers.”

The [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]lighter fare[/FONT] also acts to anchor the magazine’s brand in readers’ minds, “so that when a heavily reported series or investigative story is published, there’s someone there to read it.” Its most shared stories, Dreyfuss said, is its hard news, not its “candy.”

If advocates don’t want go the blog route, cross-posting images or video from Pinterest, Vimeo, or YouTube to Facebook or Twitter can be the candy that keep your organization’s efforts in an audience’s mind, so they’ll be able to find out about the next big campaign or action item.

Thinking creatively about content that is substantive but [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]easily-digested[/FONT] also comes into play for the magazine’s website. While it did extensive reporting on the issues surrounding the Hobby Lobby contraceptives case leading up to the Supreme Court’s ruling on it this summer, it got the most shares from a simple 8-quote list from Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion. While this content is still substantive, it [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]didn’t require the kind of time or expertise that a straight-reporting piece[/FONT] would have. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]Anyone with[/FONT] some knowledge and [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]a mouse, in other words, could have done it[/FONT].

Mother Jones’ presence on Facebook also demonstrates an element of the platform that Beth Becker discussed in her recent post on ePolitics: that the service’s algorithm will reward [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]content that people will want to be seen looking at by others[/FONT]. As Dreyfuss put it, “people really like to share things that demonstrate who they are as a person. One of the things we like to do is give them the opportunity to do that.” He gave the example that “you might not live in a state that legalizes gay marriage, but you are a person who supports gay marriage, and that’s how they end up liking and sharing those things.”



http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/10/wendy-davis-greg-abbott-nasty-bad-no-good-attack-ad

[font size=5]If Wendy Davis Thinks She Can Win an Election by Pointing Out Her Opponent's Disability, She's Wrong[/font]

—By Ben Dreyfuss | Fri Oct. 10, 2014 4:39 PM EDT Engagement Editor

Wendy Davis just released an ad attacking Greg Abbott, her opponent for governor in Texas, which is, to be blunt, bullshit. It's offensive and nasty and it shouldn't exist. She's basically calling Abbott a cripple.

There are a lot of good reasons not to like Greg Abbott. The fact that he's in a wheelchair isn't one of them.

UPDATE: I want to go deeper into this than I originally did because this post has obviously touched a nerve. As a lot of you have pointed out, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]the ad makes the point that Abbott won a tort reward, but that he supports making it harder for other people to do the same[/FONT]. That is a good and decent point to make. It is [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]not, in my opinion[/FONT], what the ad is about.

This ad [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]says to me—and to a lot of other people[/FONT]—that Greg Abbott is unfit to serve because he is handicapped. The Davis campaign may not have intentionally attempted to play into people’s historic prejudice against the disabled, but that’s [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]how the ad reads to me[/FONT]. Abbott shouldn’t be off limits to criticism because he’s in a wheelchair. And this may just have been an inartful attempt at a trenchant criticism. But there are ways to make a point and ways not to make a point and this ad is not the way to make that point.

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