You Can’t Fight Infotainment

Journalists Figure Out The Brave New World of Celebrity, Politics, and the Internet

Joe Mathews, Zócalo California editor and author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger And the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy, learned about the perils entertainment culture can hold for political journalists the hard way: When Schwarzenegger filed his papers to run for governor in the 2003 recall election, Mathews, who was covering politics for the Los Angeles Times, was knocked to the ground by an eager camera crew from Access Hollywood. They got the interview with the future Governator; he wasn’t able to get a question in edgewise.

At a panel co-presented …