Ñapa Valley
Quico says: One source that’s quickly becoming a must-read for me is Política de Ñapa: Hernán Lugo Galicia’s PSUV gossip blog in El Nacional. Lets be clear here: the vast majority of of the gossip about the government in opposition media is woefully thinly sourced. Much of it is, I suspect, just plain made up on the spot. Hernán (better known as “Ñapa” due to his dimminutive stature) may well be the only exception: an actual reporter with actual chavista sources who actually, you know, talks to those sources before putting pen to paper. (Or, em, keystroke to liquid crystal.)
Last week, Ñapa – who you may remember as the guy behind the infamous “report of shit” after the 2D referendum in 2007 – had the skinny on chavismo’s decision to go after Manuel Rosales, casting it as both a ploy to divide the opposition and, at the same time, to build up Rosales’s stature. In his telling, AD will never fall into line behind Rosales, and Rosales is the oppo leader the government figures would be easiest to beat in the 2012 presidential election. So building up Rosales’s street cred with the Maria Alejandra Lópezes of this world by persecuting him is win-win for chavistas. The report’s too long to translate, but be sure to check it out.
[HT: Kep]
As an aside, I need to add that while Ñapi’s reporting is great, the format El Nacional has chosen for him is Exhibit A for the oppo papers’ abject failure to come to terms with New Media. Misnamed a “blog”, it’s actually just a weekly (Thursdays) column El Nacional decided to run on its website rather than the print edition. With no links, 10 or 12 topics per “post”, stuck away in a submenu of a submenu where you would never find it if you weren’t specifically looking for it, and with none of the immediacy and continuous updating that makes a blog a blog, El Nacional shows its total naïveté about the format and wastes the chance to host a truly, transcendentally awesome blog in the process.
Newsflash, Miguel Henrique: a “blog” is more than just a sneaky way to save on newsprint! Get a clue! Let Ñapa blog!
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