Those Lyin’ Eyes

It’s a slow news cycle these days, so I’m going to do one of those meta-posts about blogging and reporting. The Politico has a piece on NYT columnist Frank Rich’s criticism of media heavyweights David Broder (often called the “Dean of political journalists”) and Mark Halperin (who writes The Page for Time magazine and founded the uber-insider tip sheet The Note over at ABC). The jist of the piece is that Rich never leaves Manhattan so how can he write about what the coverage of races in Iowa and Manhattan. Halperin in particular says of his own on-the-ground reporting that

“I am able to talk to the candidates and their senior staff and watch the faces of Iowans….[I can] see the looks in their (the candidates’ and staffers’) eyes and the body language.”

Now, let’s step back and try to see this in a larger context. In poker, it was once widely believed that watching your opponents’ movements and demeanor — looking for “tells” in the parlance of the game — was an important part of good poker playing. It might follow then that, in a live tournament, a player who has had experience playing live poker games should have an advantage someone who plays poker online. Then in 2003, the World Series of Poker was won by a man who had only played poker online prior to the tournament.

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