Live Debate Coverage

At least one thing I saw from last night's Blue NC Democratic gubernatorial candidate 'debate' is that these innertube-type debates are really self-generating and self-replicating. It happens in real time, in black and white (or whatever the electronic equivalent is), and then traditional media types (tip o' the hat to Laura Leslie and Ryan Beckwith) come out of the lurkosphere to participate, elaborate and pontificate. Does that have a bigger impact than a "live" debate, even one where the questioners are newspaper reporters, but their employers don't deem the event sufficiently newsworthy for next-day coverage?

I guess that's the old 'if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest' conundrum.
But I've been personally interested since I'm the putative moderator at our 6th Congressional District Democratic Candidate Debate in Asheboro this Thursday night, and I've searched online for coverage of last week's comparable debate at Guilford College, and haven't found much.
The interrogators at Guilford College were from the Greensboro News and Record and the Lexington Dispatch. The next day I found no ink-and-paper coverage in the GNR at the end of my driveway, but Mark Binker posted this quick summary at the GNR political blog "Decision 2008." And yesterday Binker added a separate note at the bottom of another GNR blog called "Inside Scoop."

I don't subscribe to the pulp version of the Lexington Dispatch, but a Google search brought up nothing on the debate, and even a direct search on their own website only produced the original press release announcement. (The Dispatch is owned by the New York Times, so maybe its motto is "all the news that fits, we print.") Ah, but after another search, here's Glen Baity's article, which still doesn't show either on Google, or their own website.

I didn't make an exhaustive search of the dozen or so pages that popped up in Google when searching "NC 6th Congressional District Democratic Debate" (especially since the middle of page 2 produced a years-old Rory Blake article). But other than several posts by the candidates here on Blue NC, the only other coverage of the Guilford College debate I found was a surprisingly-unjudgmental report by a right-wing blogger called "Piedmont Publius."

Looks like the MSM really has come to a grim pass when a Locke Puppet provides as much unbiased coverage of a political event than two daily newspapers. I just hope something more comes out of the Asheboro Courier-Tribune and The Pilot... but I'm not holding my breath or anything.