#ArpaioASU: The coverage
While still ignoring the big singing elephant in the room, I will say that I was impressed with State Press Television's coverage of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's appearance at the Cronkite School. I must confess that I watched most of the questioning on ASUtv since my laptop speakers are pretty weak sauce and the official feed had better audio, but I did keep an eye on State Press TV throughout.
I was glad to see that they had a multi-camera setup for their livestream and showed live shots of the protests outside in the minutes before the event got underway. Also, the decision to also livestream their post-event interviews was a smart one since the official ASUtv broadcast ended about as abruptly as did the event itself.
That said, I was disappointed that the State Press TV coverage wasn't promoted on the front page of StatePress.com. Although the live video coverage was talked up on Twitter, the front page is a key entry point that seems to have been overlooked in this case.
Speaking of front pages, I still don't see any coverage of the interview or its odd and abrupt ending on the front pages of azcentral.com or evtrib.com, which I think is also a fail on their parts. I think the interview itself — a high-ranking county official answering questions about a fairly wide range of topics — would have been worthy of a day-of update even without the musical ending, which onetime-if-not-current (I haven't kept up with who's been laid off and who's still around) Tribune illustrator Gabriel Utasi likens to the ongoing saga of Tiger Woods in terms of its news value.
Utasi's cartoon is entitled "Something to Report On," but it appears that neither the Tribune nor the Republic has bothered to do so just yet.
21:05 » Also, thumbs up to The State Press for tracking down a copy of exactly what it was the protesters were singing.