Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

In the last week, journalists and opinionators have been talking up some variant of the question: How will blacks react if Barack Obama loses?  My response: Does it matter?

Supporters listen to Obama at a town-hall event in McKeesport, Pa. ( Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA-Corbis)

Our economy is in fetal position.  In two presidential debates–the shining examples of transparency and access that they were–both candidates avoided the word, sacrifice, like its very utterance would pox the American consumer.  The word doesn’t jive with our other national pasttime but folks in Indiana, for example, have been sacrificing for a minute now.

Compared to Indiana Joe Sixpack, at least the New York Times’ Everyman still has the normalcy of his genteel fears.  Really, when are the genteel not scared of something?  Millions of Americans have been complaining for years, of: losing their one car; making the false choice between health care for themselves or their children; declining wages; a disappearing job market, much less a disappearing job; affording college.  With the nation in triage, the NYT’s Everyman worry seems quaint by comparison.

And so does, at least as reported by Newsweek, TIME, and the Washington Post and discussed in the black blogosphere, a racialized preoccupation with an Obama loss.  This isn’t the 1960s.  While race is a factor, it’s not the underlying tension feeding the nation’s partisan rancor.  I’d venture that the only color that rational voters care about these days, is, green–especially as it relates to health care, jobs and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, recent media coverage of the “What if” question favors the more romantic narrative arc of “the children of slaves,” “firehoses and police dogs” and “rising hopes, finally.”  Cue the cliffhanging score by Spike Lee’s favorite composer Terence Blanchard, please.  Will rioting follow? Will whites be proven as racists after all?  Will blacks fall en masse into a depressive swoon never to recover again?  I can’t help but feel like a desire for drama is partially influencing how media is framing a Barack Obama loss.

And I get it.  Great story.  Great story.  But is the made-for-TV-movie “children of slaves” narrative obscuring more than it reveals?  Real life, certainly, isn’t that simple.  More than that though, based on the issues driving this election cycle and historical moment, why does black reaction to an Obama loss matter?

What are other ways for journalists to cover the “What if Obama loses?” question?

Is the “children of slaves” angle the only way to cover race while answering that question?