School of Communication Professor Robert Lehrman finished seventh in The Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit” writing competition after failing to receive enough votes last Friday to continue.
Four potential pundits are still competing for the title and opportunity to write a weekly column and blog entries for The Post. This week, the final four must answer questions from readers about themselves, their blog posts and why they should win the contest. On Thursday, readers will vote on which contestant should advance.
Lehrman said that the contest taught him a lot about blogging and instilled in him a deep respect for reporters who not only write daily columns, but also blog.
“To do two op-eds a day for four days took every bit of energy that I had,” Lehrman said.
Roughly 1,400 people applied to the contest, but Lehrman secured a spot in the top 50 with his entrance piece, “Pakistan — more than a miner problem,” in which he wrote about the differences in the level of interest exhibited by the media and the public for different incidents around the world.
Senior in the School of Public Affairs Jordan Boyd and SOC professor Rick Rockwell also competed in the first round.
Success in the competition largely depends on acquiring votes from readers of washingtonpost.com, an aspect of the judging process about which both Lehrman and Rockwell said they had concerns.
Rockwell, who described himself as “old-school,” does not have a Facebook page and just recently started using Twitter.
“Those people who have literally hundreds or thousands of followers in social networks are probably doing much better in the contest,” he said.
Lehrman came in seventh because of the voting, which he said was heavily influenced by Facebook.
“I think it’s ridiculous to have totals counting because it shouldn’t be about who has the biggest number of Facebook friends,” he said.
In his final post, “I love you back!” Lehrman openly criticized the contest’s voting method.
“How in the world could the Post say, as one editor has, that personal network is not ‘essential’?” Lehrman asked. “It is. I'll bet that of the 8,000 or so votes of the top five, maybe a few hundred were people we didn't know, who clicked in, read through what we wrote, and made a decision.”
Although he is an adjunct professor and teaches only one class per semester, Lehrman received support from AU students and teachers.
“I’m not on campus. Most of the teachers I don’t know, but within the School of Communications there was a lot of support,” Lehrman said. “I felt part of the AU community in a way that was really nice.”
llandau@theeagleonline.com
