About District 4

Fourth District, Calaveras County, CA

Altaville | Angels Camp | Douglas Flat | Murphys | Vallecito

Working with the Media

I've been thinking about how elections are about choice. Democracy requires that voters know about alternatives that are realistic and meaningful. Of course, I am going door-to-door because personal interaction is the most basic form of communications. Nevertheless, the news media can play an important part in communicating alternatives. In the Fourth District, we have a goodly number of different types of news coverage -- several forms each of traditional printed papers, on-line web sites, radio and television.

Growing up in Kansas, I can remember the Marion Record Review (now the Marion County Record) as a daily newspaper serving a town smaller than Angels Camp. When I was about 6 years old, the paper ran a very short story about me taking my shoes off during a church service only to have my Dad put them back on me. I still like to go shoeless -- going to school in Hawaii, I went two years without owning shoes, just flipflops.

Newspapers have been an important part of my education and teaching. One of the assignments for students in my American Government classes at Columbia College is to write a "civic communications". Most choose the "Letter to the Editor" format, joining historic practitioners of the form as Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. I always make a point of reading the letters to the Editors in both the Calaveras Enterprise and the Union Democrat.

Some of my students chose to try other alternatives. One student wrote a civic song, following such songwriters as Stephen Foster who penned a campaign song for General George McClellan in 1864. One tried to write a political poem but found that like Stephen Fry, "the ode less travelled (sic)" is not easy.

Today's political authors have more media choices than ever before. Web sites (like this one) have the potential to reach literally billions of people across the Internet. Not since Gutenberg's printing press has there been such an explosive growth in ability to share ideas. However, even global publishing is only half the story. Without thoughtful readers, every message is a dead letter.

So, please, use the "Write Lee" link to close the loop.