You Want a Floor Chart Tumblr? C-SPAN Delivers
Thursday afternoon, the Twitter universe cried out for a Tumblr collection of charts from the Senate floor. Perhaps not surprisingly, a C-SPAN employee delivered.
Bill Gray, a producer at the cable network, was tracking traffic on Twitter and saw the response after a reporter Tweeted a screenshot of the Senate floor featuring Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., appearing next to a chart of a giant bottle of the 5-Hour Energy drink.
Then, Elise Foley, a reporter for the Huffington Post, called out for the creation of a floor chart Tumblr. Gray, who had a collection of screenshots of charts already on his computer, happily obliged with senatecharts.tumblr.com.
“It’s not an active exercise to go combing for every chart possible in the archives at this point,” Gray told HOH. He has picked out some of his favorites, including the debt and deficit dragon from Iowa Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley.
Grassley also made the list for his chart of actor and comedian Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day.”
While not an official C-SPAN effort, spokesman Howard Mortman said it does highlight the depth of the company’s video library.
“People can on their own go through and find their own charts … through their own searching in the archives,” Mortman said. “The serious side of this would be showing, you know, the breadth of resources in the video library.”
Asked why the site name says Senate but the collection includes a number of gems from the House, Gray noted that it started in response to events on the Senate floor. While it still has Senate in the URL, the Tumblr is now called “Floor Charts.”