The Note

“While the nation continues to debate, in the wake of the presidential colonoscopy, whether to call Dick Cheney ‘44*,’ ‘43.5,’ or ‘43B,’ we head into this holiday week … .” So began the July 1 edition of The Note, a daily weblog that’s posted at the ABC News Web site’s Politics page. Yes, there’s a whiff of irreverence that you can find at other, more personal blogs the mainstream media are publishing—Eric Alterman’s excellent blog at MSNBC comes to mind—but The Note is put together by platooning reporters from the mouse network, so it doesn’t have quite the personal bias. It does seem to have a refreshingly non-servile attitude, however. And if you’ve been avoiding the U.S. commercial news orgs while surfing for political news because you’re burned out on GOP bootlicking, you may be surprised at how well The Note does at offering, and then contextualizing, a concise summary of the day’s events.