The Problem with speaking to the Average...
So I wrote rather nifty little essay yesterday, connecting the crummy US election results with the need of both the media and politics to appeal to an average of vastly different peoples.
It had a discussion of niche parties and deftly brought in the fact that Ireland has the highest per capita newspaper consumption in the world. I slipped in the fact that we have three national dailies, a daily evening paper and innumerable local and special interest (sport, provos etc) newspapers. Each one caters for a slightly different market. As we only have 4.25 million or so people in the whole country, even the largest circulation papers would be seen as serving a tiny niche market in the US.
Then, rather cleverly I thought, I drew a parallel with our range of political parties, with eight groupings represented in the Dail. This, coupled with our super-dooper voting system, means that people can really vote for someone (or a few someones) who represents what they think.
All that remained was a quick contrast with the obvious problem with a two party system in such a vast place as the US. The politicians are unable to speak to any person directly for fear of offending their neighbour, just as no American newspaper editor can risk alienating a swath of readers by allowing too much individualism to creep into the articles.
And then I was on the final lap and out the door.
But I sent it through my mail-to-blog system. And somewhere along the way it was swallowed by web-imps.
So you'll never know how good it was.
Sorry about that.
12:20:20 AM 
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