John Brummett vs. Kristin Fisher: It's on.

As I noted in a post last night, KATV’s “Choose Your News” whiz kid Kristin Fisher and Arkansas News Bureau veteran John Brummett had agreed to a friendly debate on new media and its role in news-gathering and reporting. It’s to be hosted by the good folks at the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, who continue to be nice to me despite my complete lack of journalistic ability, professionalism and sociability.

Just got word of the official time and place for The Big Event: It’s Tuesday, December 9, at the Arkansas Press Association Building in Little Rock (411 S. Victory St).

I’ll note that Ted Dancin’ at the Fayetteville Flyer weighs in on the dispute today, worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a taste:

KATV’s ‘experiment’ isn’t all that innovative in terms of being the first up to bat, but it gets serious props from us here at the Flyer for at least doing something to try and engage its audience and bring some relevance back to local news. It might not be the perfect way to engage a community around a new business model but it certainly doesn’t deserve to be blasted.

And seriously, I now hope to give this issue a rest for a few days.

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Rowr

The Lil Spark Plug That Could: Gov. Mike Beebe will name Northwest Arkansas banker and man about town Dick Trammel as the next highway commissioner, the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas’ Doug Thompson reports. Noted: Thompson’s story has two separate people referring to Trammel as a “spark plug.” “Spark plug”? What the hell is that? Is it supposed to be a compliment? Beats me.

Camera Shy: Rep. Donna Hutchinson of Bella Vista will intro a bill to toughen penalties against video voyeurs who secretly tape or photograph people and post the images online, reports the AP’s Andrew Demillo. I suggest we call it “Tina Sherman’s Law.”

Victoria’s Secrecy: If you wanted to watch CBS’s annual Victoria’s Secret lingerie show, you’re out of luck in much of Arkansas, because KTHV won’t broadcast it, the Arkansas Times reports. Memo to Max Brantley: These trashy sexy stories are supposed to be my territory, so back off. Get back to writing about the Little Rock School Board, pal.

P.S. In an earlier version of this post, I tried to include both a photo of Dick “Spark Plug” Trammel and that shot of Victoria’s Secret model Allesandra Ambrosio, but I couldn’t get them to fit together on the page, so I just went with the one photo. I sure hope I made the right choice.

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Jane English, Ann Clemmer and Allen Kerr

Newly minted state legislators Jane English, Ann Clemmer and Allen Kerr will speak to the Central Arkansas Republican Club at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 5, at the Little Rock Club in downtown Little Rock.

For reservations, contact Bonnie Davis at (501) 835-6004 or Jim Davis at (501) 352-2515 and be prepared to cough up $20 for lunch.

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Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln: Key votes on union bill

Arkansas News Bureau columnist David Sanders notes that Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor’s support for the “Employee Free Choice Act,” the union-backed “card check” bill that may be a Dem priority in the coming Congress, seems to be moderating a bit:

The usually soft-spoken junior senator angered many in the Arkansas business community last spring when he forcefully claimed that those in the state Chamber of Commerce, as well as other business leaders who lobbied him against card check, were simply doing the bidding of their leadership in Washington.

But when I interviewed Sen. Pryor last week on my television program, gone was the vitriol, which had angered so many. Instead, Pryor mollified his position. When asked if he would again line up as a co-sponsor of the legislation, he indicated he wouldn’t.

In fact, he attempted to alleviate concerns that the bill would be on the fast track that union leaders had hoped for in the new Congress. He predicted that a President Obama wouldn’t push the measure in the first six months of his administration and that he might wait until 2010 to bring it up.

And this one’s a couple of days old, but Sanders’ colleague John Brummett suggested in a Monday column that President Barack Obama would do well to hold off on pushing for the controversial labor bill for now. Brummett suggests the bill may be “too polarizing” for immediate action.

More from the Fort Smith City Wire’s Michael Tilley, who offers a more in-depth examination of what the bill would do to ease unionization efforts.

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David Kinkade and Kristin Fisher on the KATV Daily Debrief (photo courtesy of The Tolbert Report)

Just finished the Daily Debrief with KATV’s Kristin Fisher, and I was, of course, just awesome, thanks for asking.

But I come back with a little nugget that may be of interest to those of you following the dispute between Fisher and newspaperman John Brummett as to the relative merits of new media in the news-gathering and reporting process: The local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has confirmed the two combatants for a friendly debate on the issue at their next meeting (time and location to come).

Incidentally, the dispute got a little national attention today with a link from the Romenesko media blog, a top source for media watchers.

(Thanks as ever to Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report, who grabbed the little screen capture shot of me and Fisher you see above).

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To watch, go to the “Choose Your News” page here, if you’re a fan of watching people on tiny little screens having conversations.

Don’t miss it, because they don’t archive the videos, so once it’s over, it’s over—a fact that will be terribly frustrating to future historians of The Arkansas Project.

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(Image: Wall St. Journal)

We’ve checked in occasionally on former Mike Huckabee presidential campaign manager Chip Saltsman, who steered a candidate with no money and little name recognition to a series of surprise successes in the 2008 GOP primaries and is now making a bid to be the next chair of the Republican National Committee.

Is Saltsman picking up steam in his quest?:

The former gov is full-bore behind his man.

Blogging political operative Tim Griffin reports on his meeting in Little Rock with Saltsman, who’s making the rounds of the region in his single engine plane. (Griffin also suggests that the “conventional wisdom” is with one of the other hopefuls.)

Blogger Jason Tolbert looks at Saltsman’s plan for action and likes what he sees.

The Arkansas Project doesn’t normally cover these D.C. issues too extensively, but should Saltsman take the helm at the RNC, it would certainly strengthen Huckabee’s hand as a player in party politics. Obviously. It’s a long-shot bid, but one to watch.

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MSNBC has excerpts.

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Oh, wait—never mind. We have his answer, which is that he has no intention of accepting. In a Sunday column, Brummett writes that Fisher and the rest of the new media gang—all you bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers and other assorted riffraff out there—can go hang as far as he’s concerned.

Brummett’s mighty skeptical of all this flashy technology and user-generated content, which is fair enough. People have a tendency to get a little hyped up over these amazing technological tools, so his questioning as to whether all this technology is in and of itelf a good thing is well-taken. In fact, it’s an inherently conservative gesture on Brummett’s part, though I don’t think he’d like being called that.

What’s difficult to understand is Brummett’s cranky dismissal of all these new turns. Sure, the “Choose Your News” segment that Fisher hosts on KATV may be kind of gimmicky, but a great many worthwhile innovations start out as gimmicks. And in difficult times for traditional media properties, KATV should certainly be credited for trying something new to engage viewers.

And of course, don’t tell Brummett, but this train has already left the station. For example, within minutes of reading Brummett’s column, I caught this through Google Reader: Business Week magazine runs a regular “What’s Your Story Idea?” blog feature that focuses on collecting ideas from readers on business stories they’d like to see covered.

Brummett himself has dipped a toe into the new media world in the past, experimenting with blogging back during the 2007 legislative session, and he says he’s getting ready to start up again when the Arkansas News Bureau launches its new website soon.

So why the reactionary dismissiveness against other media practitioners who, like him, are simply trying out new innovations in an effort to find the way forward in this new media terrain? It’s puzzling.

Update: Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times blog, who is incidentally an object lesson of one old newspaper dog who’s willing to learn new media tricks, offers a thoughtful response to Brummett’s grumpy outburst.

Update to the Update: Kristin Fisher responds to Brummett with a post at her blog. It’s much more impressive than my response, as she includes actual statistics, which means that she has now officially blinded me with science.

Another Update: Blake Rutherford at the Think Tank weighs in with some additional context on how the BBC is embracing viewer input to improve news coverage.

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