NP: 60 Minutes

Kevin Drum says the blogs have been making fun of Mark Halperin's mea culpa about political coverage, and I don't doubt it. The blogosphere is curiously persistent in its collective opinions, particularly about members of the mainstream media. But Drum closes with a pretty important point:

So while it's nice to see Halperin's mea culpa, I think I'll wait to see if he actually changes the way he covers this year's campaign. And then we'll see if anyone follows suit.

Personally, I'm not sure if it's simply the style of coverage that has gotten us to the vapid state we're in currently. I think it's a combination of that and the rise of the 24-hour news networks. Reporting on the grind of a campaign stood out when there weren't as many stories about a campaign out there, but by standing out, they became the centerpiece of coverage when the media got flooded by constant information.

The bigger point being that the What It Takes-style of coverage and the 24-hour news cycle have never been a good fit, but nobody seems to know how to break the paradigm.