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1. Jason Zengerle’s inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s prospects as the Democratic front-runner arrived a week before she announced her candidacy (�Is �Hillary Clinton Any Good at Running for President?,� April 6�19). At the heart of the story was the question of how much Clinton’s chances rest on her capabilities as a candidate and how much on the country’s fundamentals, including the economy and demographics. Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore argued that Clinton will be a better candidate in 2016 than she was in 2008. �Even if Democrats are disappointed or even shocked by how HRC handles this or that �moment’ � she remains one of the most heavily vetted proto-candidates in American political history. Most of the mistakes she made in 2008�you know, letting Mark Penn be her top �strategist,’ spending too much money and capital in Iowa, underestimating the importance of later caucuses�are either avoidable or irrelevant this time around. And how she handled adversity in 2008 remains as relevant as ever.� Some commenters felt that Zengerle left out an important element of the equation. �The author might consider how Hillary Clinton’s gender, and the expectations that arise from it, impact her behavior,� wrote Brittany.stalsburg. Women candidates like Clinton, the commenter wrote, �must not be too nice or feminine, lest they be characterized as too soft or not serious enough. At the same time, they have to be tough and assertive, but not too much lest they come off as too aggressive or mean or callous.� Irin Carmon, a national reporter at MSNBC, saw the gender issue crop up elsewhere in the article: �A smart piece,� she tweeted, �that I think is undermined by not quoting more than one female expert.�
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2. Steve Fishman’s story on disgraced Ravens football player Ray Rice’s �redemption campaign� (�Man, They Just Don’t Know Who I Am,� April 6�19) sparked thoughtful analysis by sports observers, including Deadspin’s Greg Howard, who argued that public forgiveness of a fallen star rests less on the sincerity of his apology than on his talent. �If Rice plays next year, it won’t be because of a heroic trek through adversity, and it certainly won’t be because journalists chronicled it. If he doesn’t, it won’t be because of a failed redemption tour, or because he’s a bad person. It’ll be because he’s a bad player, or at least not good enough to be worth answering questions about; not because the league forced him out, but because he was already on his way.� Many readers agreed with commenter ItaVero’s assessment that Rice should be barred from playing in the upcoming season. �If this guy was working on a cure for cancer, we could talk about forgiving him and getting him back in the lab,� wrote ItaVero. �When it comes to running a ball down a field, I think the message sent by barring him from the sport is much more valuable than the marginal value of choosing him over any other guy.�
3. �Like the Wizard of Oz, anchors have often been fronts for those pulling the strings behind the curtain: governments and sponsors, not to mention those who actually do the work of reporting the news,� wrote Frank Rich in his article questioning the institution of the anchorman (�A Dumb Job,� April 6�19). Time.com’s daily roundup of the best ideas of the day put Rich’s assessment as No. 1: �It’s time to give up the uniquely American institution of the network anchorman.� Television professionals weighed in, including a former CBS San Francisco reporter, Hank Plante, who commented that �in three decades of TV news, I always enjoyed reporting more than anchoring, perhaps because I began as a newspaper reporter. But the game is rigged against real reporters. I once had an agent tell me that my corporate bosses would give a $100,000 raise to an anchor before they would give an extra $10,000 to a reporter.� Media Post’s Adam Buckman defended anchormen: �The ratings tell the story. While this magazine commentary is relegating news anchors and, by extension, their �old school’ network newscasts to the trash heap of mass-media history, I’m looking at the total audience figures for the three network newscasts and finding they’re not doing badly at all,� he wrote. �They’re still worth money to the networks that produce and air them. Ergo, contrary to what New York magazine might think, there is something at stake here.� Charlie Warzel, a former NBC employee, agreed, arguing that in his experience �anchors are very involved in the production and planning. Not to say that that makes them as important as the reporters, but it’s not like they’re only a well coiffed head.� Rich waded back into the debate after Pat Kiernan, the longtime morning-news anchor of NY1, tweeted, �Frank Rich says I have a �dumb job.’ Says the TV anchor job is an �inane institution.’ � Rich tweeted back: �The subject of this piece is evening news network anchors.� �Understood,� replied Kiernan. �But your commentary applies to local news as well. It’s not lost on me that I get paid to read newspapers aloud.�