Daily Briefing - Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Share this

Paul Blumenthal is the senior writer at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan organization which uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Blumenthal focuses his attention on the intersection between influence and politics in Washington. His work has been featured by National Public Radio, PBS' Frontline, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times.

Paul Pierson is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. His most recent books are Off-Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, co-authored by Jacob Hacker, Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis and The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism. His latest book, with Jacob Hacker, is Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.

John G. Geer is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. His book In Defense of Negativity: Attacks Ads in Presidential Campaigns won the 2008 Goldsmith Book prize from Harvard University. Professor Geer is currently working on a series of projects that looks at the news media's coverage of attack advertising and how negativity may help voters make better choices.

Erika Franklin Fowler is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses in American Politics, media and politics, campaigns and elections, public opinion, and empirical methods. She also directs the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks and analyzes all political advertisements aired on television in real-time throughout the 2010 election cycle. Fowler specializes in political communication - local media and campaign advertising in particular - and her work on local news coverage of politics and policy has been published in political science, communication, law/policy, and medical journals.