And the Results are In...

The results are in and incumbent Jay Nixon has won a second term as Missouri’s governor beating Dave Spence by winning 54% of the vote. Since the election has concluded this will be our last blog post. Over the course of this assignment it was our mission to watch terms and rhetoric by candidates and how they could influence the media as well has comparing them to industry terms. During this time we learned about the candidates, what issues were important to them and about the influence politicians can have over the media. Overall, we feel that we learned a lot throughout our research and we hope you did too. We both have included a personal sign off to you, our readers.

Morgan:

During this assignment I had the privilege of concentrating on comparing the candidates to each other and then comparing their rhetoric to journalism. Being a journalist myself, it was very interesting to me. What surprised me the most about this blog was that I developed an understanding of not just what a politician can do to influence media and the public, but also the nuances between the candidates rhetoric. Not just their platforms, but the way that their platforms were presented. 

I found Spence to be very combative and determined to prove he was not a “career politician” like Nixon. Nixon was more reserved and concentrated not on proving he was better than Spence, but also that he had the record to prove he knows how to fix Missouri’s problems. 

In the end, I preferred Nixon’s rhetoric to Spence’s. While I agreed with some of his beliefs and values, Spence was just too attacking and in-your-face for me.  I also agreed with some of Nixon’s ideas and found his softer tone to be more appealing. I hoped that you all learned as much as I did through our research and enjoyed our posts.

Kathleen:

Welcome back to Word Watch for our final blog posting. Thank you so much for reading our blog during these past several weeks. We’ve enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

As a journalist, student and registered Democrat, I learned a lot, particularly about rhetoric. I discovered that the way politicians talk isn’t’ always intended to clear up their beliefs and values — more often than not, it is designed to hide them.

            Journalists and politics can manipulate rhetoric. They select key phrases to pain they pictures they want to display. It could be that they want to sell more papers, or make a candidate seem a certain way. Either way, this assignment has taught me a few things:

            - Always read everything critically. Communication has a purpose. The world is full of loaded language.

            - In journalism, being there is the first step. Sometimes, having a reporter there means you’re the outlet who gets to select a quote and you’re the one who gets to pick what the story was from the day. Every other outlet can take a back seat.

            -Being vague is accepted.

            -Contradictions are not as big of a deal as you would think. 

Overall, this blog barely scratched the surface. The amount of material is overwhelming and a rhetorical analysis of it all would mean drowning in words. For any future bloggers out there, it might be interesting to see how rhetorical changes after elections. It will be a whole new discourse once the dog fight is over.