February 11, 2004
Trippi 1.1
: When Joe Trippi came to ETech word seeped here and there that he'd registered a new domain for The Next Thing: ChangeForAmerica.com. I confirmed that he'd registered it but found nothing there.
Now Micah Sifry links us to the first post in the Trippi blog: This is where I intend to keep, in my own small way, my part in the changing of America and our politics going....
I am still trying to figure out what I am actually going to do with the rest of my life, so far its always been about changing or messing with something bigger than me.
The one thing I know I want to do, is continue to do my part to build a community with a mission of changing our country for the better.
So here starts a new blog.... It's more about Trippi than the movement. No one is going to change America for you. You have to work for the change you want -- and you have to get other Americans to join your cause.
Change for America is my attempt to continue to just that -- so join in, comment away, and lets continue the fight to rid our country of the Bush administration (the first step to real change). So it's about anger and change, still. I don't have much in tech support as of yet, but over time I hope this blog will be a lot better than it is today -- kind of reminds me of those days 13 months or so ago -- when there were only a few of us and we started the ugliest blog in America -- the Call to Action blog. It helped to launch something special, hopefully the Change for America Blog humble as it is will launch something special as well.
Thank you for reading and participating.
The Next American Revolution is only just beginning. And so it starts with technology.
But change for what, to what, and why?
If I were Dean and the Deaniacs, I'd be upset that Trippi is already starting a competitor before the body is even cold. There's still a very open question of what is going to happen to DeanSpace.
The movement is breaking up....
. . .
February 10, 2004
Friends and enemies
: Bill O'Reilly turns on Bush: Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said on Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America."
"What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found.
O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.
While critical of President Bush, O'Reilly said he did not think the president intentionally lied. Rather, O'Reilly blamed CIA Director George Tenet, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.... Even George Bush is Bill Clinton's fault. Wow.
. . .
Mobile hacks
: Now I'm at an Etech session on mobile hacks. I'll digest/distill/divulge to the best of my ability.
: Right now, I'm hearing a lot about telecom plan costs and speeds and I'm zoning. I'll read about the election instead. Politics is now more enlivening. Watching paint turn into lead is more enlivening.
I'm giving up on blogging this session.
. . .
Unwired
: Now at an ETech session on "untethering the social network."
: Howard Rheingold, Dr. SmartMobs, says the users take over technology and do with it what they please, not what the company providing it pleases.
: Mimi Ito on her research on kids' use of mobile phones in Japan: Most communication occurs inside an intimate group of two to five friends... As social software, it's different from the Internet because it's more personal.... Some say it's now rude to make a phone call without first sending a text message to make sure it's ok; it's the knock on the door....
There's much use of photo mail. "One common genre is the new-haircut shot."
: Joi is asking how to make mobile devices more hackable to get more social development. The devices aren't hack-friendly. The telecom networks certainly aren't hack-friendly. But open-source, open-standard, hack-creativity as we've seen on the Internet will explode development in mobile.
Joi is talking about hacking the power law, too. See the Technorati discussion below; the blogs with five links, in aggregate, have more links than the blogs with hundreds of links. Similarly, in the mobile social sphere, the links and networks and connections are all fewer.
So it's not about mocking mass media. It's about expanding communications.
: Howard uses the opportunity to share a "cheap joke" of a scene he witnessed here as one person greeted another with the question: "Are you my friend?! Yes?! No?!"
: Kevin Marks asks what it will mean when videogame boxes are connected to the Internet. Danah said there is a backchannel to the gameplay. Even here... "We're playing at the same time that we're engaging." Orkut is play, too. "You can't take it seriously." People game it because they don't take it seriously.
: A questioner and Mimi Ito see a tension in blogs and in mobile interaction between intimate, personal tone and larger-scale addressing an audience.
: Someone said this was unreadable. Admitted. This one was hard to distill. Or perhaps to digest. Or perhaps I'm just stupid.
. . .
The two-way (albeit async) New York Times
: Dan Okrent, public editor of the NY Times, has started putting up online-only responses to some of the many, many emails he gets. They call it a "journal." It's not really a forum with open discussion. It's not really a weblog. But it is another way for readers to at least talk to The Times and get answered -- all the better because it's in public. It's not fully two-way but it's a start. [via Anil]
. . .
Moving the Mouse by RSS
: At an ETech session on moving content via RSS on Disney, they say that Dave Winer and Adam Curry suggested the architecture that allows them to give users full-quality, instant-on video on the home pages of ESPN and other sites. If you go to a Disney site and want this video, you'll end up downloading a tiny ap (Windows only) that is actually an RSS aggregator that takes enclosures of the video material to cache on users' hard drives.
Nice technology, nice use, nice gestating of big-media technology in nanomedia.
: They've shipped more than 500 million videos with this technology.
: Disney is now talking about how they migrated TV production "shift logs" to Movable Type. They didn't tell anybody it was a "blog." And the staff called them geniuses. "Hmmm, what else can we steal from the blogosphere," they said. Next: They use RSS to distribute internal information via NewsGator and Outlook. "They don't even know it's not email. It just shows up and they're happy."
They're looking to replace RSS with Atom because it's more two-directional. (I don't know what that means. I report; you understand.)
: Conclusion: "RSS and weblog software are very useful to business and it doesn't have anything to do with anybody's opinions."
. . .
The American media diet
: Stuart Hughes of the BBC spent a few weeks in America and came away with this impression of American media: ... what has struck me most is the homogeneity of the coverage on offer there.
Journalists in every country I’ve ever worked in hunt in packs, chasing the same stories and pursuing the same angles. But the US media seems almost unique in the narrowness of its focus.
The daily news cycle is totally predictable. The president will make a comment some time in the late morning which will be instantly seized upon, dissected and analysed. White House spokesman Scott McClellan will try to talk up or shut down stories in his lunchtime briefing. During the course of the day Rumsfeld, Powell or another administration bigwig may throw the hacks a morsel to chew on by stepping up to the cameras and saying something mildly interesting. And so it goes on, round and round, day after day.
Insignificant events (such as Janet Jackson’s bare breast at the Superbowl or Martha Stewart’s stock portfolio) become major stories simply by their relentless amplification by the news media. Politics is covered as if it were a sporting contest or a fashion parade – Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s up? Who’s down? Every news network is looking over their shoulder at their competitors, fearful of missing a trick. The result of this introspective media circle jerk is that there’s little to differentiate any of the major networks....
. . .
eCelebrity
: So I went to get a cup of coffee at the conference and the top layer of cups was empty, so the guy in front picked up the tray to get a cup and put it back over a dwindling number of cups below. It was soon to be a game of Janga: When will the tray fall? I was about to comment on this, just to make friendly conversation, when I looked up and saw Jeff Bezos, god of the Amazon. Naw, couldn't be him, I thought. So I rudely checked out his name badge: Yup, him. By the time those thoughts cycled through, he was gone and I just looked like a dork.
Still, it's neat that Bezos is here. What other CEOs should be?
: Update: I can tell he's just outside this room because I hear his famous laugh.
: Speaking of fame, Doc is going to be on CBS Sunday Morning on Feb. 29.
. . .
Infoporn
: Dave Sifry is giving a talk on the wonderful Technorati, my ego-info-heroin.
: It's now tracking 1.6 million sources -- 11k new weblogs tracked per day. Since last march, he has seen a sharp increase in new weblogs from 3k per day then.
"On average, a new weblog is being created every 7.8 seconds."
: They define churn as no posting in three months; 35 percent of weblogs starve and die thusly.
: They see more than 100,000 updates per day.
: This is beautiful: The median time now from when a post is posted to when it is in the Technorati data base is seven minutes. That makes it exponentially more powerful. That enables the conversation!
: He's praising Amazon for creating a product ID for anything anybody wants to talk about and link to; almost all the links to Amazon are direct, deep links to products. (A wise marketer would use the cosmos to reverse that flow and look at what people are saying. See earlier Tim O'Reilly notes.)
It's a beautiful thing! The page gives you not only the links back but shows you the linker who has the most authority (inbound links) and context for the link -- a positive or negative review.
I'm sitting next to David Weinberger as we watch this. "I love him," says Dave. Me, too.
: Sifry wants to make the data base part of the presentation. Coming... He's asking us all to blog that link. So we'll see how quickly they show up. The link:
http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/products.html It took three minutes for blogged links to show up on the cosmos of the cosmos.
: "We know this: It's not the most user-friendly experience today. We're working on that. But my goal was, let me give you great data."
: Sifry wants to know: "Who found Salam Pax?" Great question. A few people, his friends linked to him. Then one warblogger linked to him; then Glenn Reynolds, "then voom." It's a way to see "meme propagation."
It's a new tipping point: the giving of tips.
: "Everybody talks about the power law. F' it, I got the data!... Everybody gets the power law wrong... When you have fair access to media... by its very nature, you're going to have a curve that looks like this.... This is not necessarily a bad thing... THis is not about the top 100. I mean, kudos to you on the top 100 but BFD...." He goes down the chart and finds guys with five links. There he sees a community. He puts up another chart showing how many people have the same number of links. "There's a helluva lot more people who have inbound links and the aggregate number of inbound links even at the lower end of the curve greatly outnumber the top 100." The masses matter, man!!
: He doesn't care about Technorati as a destination site. He cares about it as a platform with data being used by others. He's putting out APIs for all his data free for non-commercial use. Developers' site: developers.technorati.com. He's listing some of the better hacks.
: To get your posts indexed faster, go here.
: What's next?
> This will lead to really powerful products reviews. (Ping Consumer Reports!)
> You can subscribe to a set of keyword and Cosmos filters that interest you (tell me whenever someone links to or comments on my company).
> Technorati will reorder your blogroll based on who's updated. You can tell a reader that a blog has just updated (rather than constantly polling them, which is stupidly inefficient. This makes Technorati the platform for what's new)
Go here to have Technorati check your blogroll (or OPML) for you.
> Vote links. This solves the big problem with assuming that links are link love. He suggests adding a tag that says vote equals minus one, zero (the default), or plus one. Thus, you can make it clear that those you hate don't get more authority. Bravo!
Note to Movable Type: This needs to be added to the user interface (I see smiley faces and fingers).
Somebody already suggests a more grayscale mode of voting (so we don't keep saying that we're a red-and-blue nation).
> Geographic search and filtering will come in time (as input of geocoding becomes automated).
: He talks about breaking news and being too busy to follow the news. And then he realized, "gee, we're tracking 1.6 million people who probably have more time than I do....[beat for punchline] in aggregate." Breaking news "is using you as my collaborative filter on the world." He made rules: at least three bloggers have to link to it and he ranks them on when they were reported. He also gives us context.
This is the GoogleNews of the future: editing by mob, not machine (and not editor).
(But this needs better design.)
He says to think of Breaking News as a blog. Current Events, on the other hand, are ranked by popularity, the articles with the most conversation going on around them.
: Jay Rosen suggests that a way to increase the credibility and attention of webloggers with journalists is to send journalists the cosmos to their articles. Great suggestion.
: Great presentation.
. . .
The echo meme
: I'm now sitting in an ad hoc press conference kind of thing with Tim O'Reilly and Rael Dornfest, the program head for ETech. As I walk in, they're discussing the left-leaning echo chamber issue from yesterday's Digital Democracy day (see posts below).
O'Reilly said that he sees absolutely no connection between this technology and the left. It will be used by all sides of all issues.
Doc Searls, who was on the conference committee, said they tried to find some conservatives to join in but had difficulty finding them.
O'Reilly conceded that conferences are put together by networks and this network of who-knows-whom happens to lean that way and thus finds those people.
Another member of the committee said that in talking to conservatives, they are "very happy with talk radio" and aren't as deseparate for new things as the liberals, thus liberals are using this stuff more.
They dealt with it directly. That's what's great about both this world and O'Reilly himself: Openness and immediacy.
: Corrected. I thought Micah Sifry was there; I uncharacteristically took notes on this on paper and I have the world's worst handwriting and the world's second-worst memory (so I can't remember who was there). Sorry.
. . .
Interet v. TV
: Ad Age reports that the Internet is continuing to blast TV usage: Of the 11.8 hours the average Internet user spends online weekly, more than half is coming from TV viewing and almost none from sleep or socialization, Mr. Cole said. The Internet caused the number of hours children 14 and under spend watching TV to decline for the first time in 1998, a trend that has continued in recent years, he said. But only in 2002 did Internet usage begin to affect time spent with print media, and then only modestly.
"Internet users watch 28% less TV than non-Internet users," Mr. Cole said, "though Internet users still spend more time watching TV than they spend on the Internet."
Growing penetration of broadband, which UCLA has found was used by 36.8% of Internet users last year, is at first blush good news for TV advertisers, because broadband users are more likely to go online in short 2- to 3-minute bursts rather than the 30 minutes common among modem users, he said. But the 2- to 3-minute bursts tend to come during TV commercial breaks, he said. "It's becoming the thing people do during the commercials." Well, this is good news for Joe Trippi and other TV haters (see ETech yesterday). But it's bad news for those who would regulate TV more (see below), for one important way to deal with this business issue is -- guess what -- consolidation.
. . .
Free speech?
: Why are we not hearing libertarians and conservatives -- supposedly all in favor of freedom and less government --screaming about the attempts to interfere with media and the threat to free speech this brings. Do we really need hearings on Janet Jackson's breast? Do we really want the government to say who can own which press? C'mon. I don't care if you don't happen to like the media you now see; do you really want goverment regulation of what you can hear and then what you can say? To the barricades, people....
. . .
Damn the editors, full speed ahead
: Ken Wheaton has decided to go around the editors and publishers and bring his novel to the people directly online.
. . .
Roomba
: The founder of Roomba, Helen Greiner, is presenting now. I wasn't going to buy one of the robotic vacuums before. I am now. But that's not good news. It's an indication of the TiVo problem: It's not easy to explain everything this product does for you. It's more than a stupid, useless Aibo; it's a very smart device that doesn't just wander around a room; it senses schmutz and can go get it. More sophisticated products require more sophisticated sales.
: She shows video of military robots going through hell in simulated and now real battlefields (as well as at the World Trade Center after the attacks). Impressive.
: Forget the vacuum. I wish I could buy the stock.
: Dan Gillmor (and somebody important sitting near me) are complaining that the keynote was too much of a PR/sales pitch.
: A questioner goes after her on the "etchical constraints" and says people are upset in the IRC back-channel about the robots being used in Iraq and asks whether they would sell robots to the police to go after protestors. Scattered kneedjerk applause in this lefty crowd. "When you send the robot in you are reducing the risk to the person. This is basically an answer the suicide bomber, who doesn't care if they get killed..."
Well, is it ethical not to sell them to the military and allow soldiers to die instead?
She also says there are export restrictions (do we want these to become suicide bombers?).
. . .
What's next
: In his opening address at ETech, Tim O'Reilly said something downright profound: User contributions are critical to market dominance. He didn't say it with the deep tones that demark profundity. But it is profound. It's another way to look at the bottom-up economy, the contribution economy, the networked economy, the age of citizens' media and consumer control.
User contributions are critical to market dominance. Etch that in brass.
: He touts WordSpy, "a wonderful view of the collective mind in action." The site finds new words as they bubble up. It goes beyond Wired's jargon watch to catch the creative, collective, comedic use of the language in society. Some entries: mucus trooper (MYOO.kus troo.pur) n. An employee with a cold or the flu who insists on showing up for work.
presidentialness (prez.uh.DENT.shul.nus) n. The physical and mental qualities that make a person appear to be suitable for the job of United States president.
straight supremacist n. A person who believes that heterosexuals are innately superior to homosexuals and that the latter do not deserve equal treatment under the law. —adj.
Seabiscuit candidate (SEE.bis.kit kan.duh.dayt, -dit) n. A political candidate who comes from behind to win an election.
hathos (HAY.thohs; TH as in thin) n. Feelings of pleasure derived from hating someone or something. : Tim is appropriately excited about market research online. He found, for example, that the pricing of Google adwords on programming languages was predictive of sales (higher the cost of the ad, the greater the sales).
At an MIT Media Lab event a month ago, I noted here that IBM and MIT each found that the chatter about music in forums and blogs exactly predicts record sales, up and down, by two weeks.
Imagine what Technorati could tell smart marketers....
. . .
Vietnam
: Howard Stern said this morning that Bush's National Guard issue is putting his reelection at risk.
I'm not sure I agree.
Are the folks who fought there that much less likely to vote for him if they're conservative? And just how big is that consituency.
As for the folks who tried hard not to fight there.. well, hell, all was fair in love and peace. If he used his daddy juice to get out, then good for him; we should all have been so lucky. I lucked out with a high number (the last year they were drawn) but I was ready to do what it took: go to Canada, go to jail, use a lung-blowout to get out (it gave me only a three-year medical deferment; I was ready to whine for more).
I'm not sure we all want to dredge up our Vietnam ghosts and gremlins over this kerfluffle. So I don't think Vietnam will be the issue.
But Howard says honesty may be the issue. He says that, of course, Bush didn't want to go to the war and he used juice to get out and he should just admit it or else that will come back to dog him.
Maybe. Or maybe Kerry will be accused of negative campaigning and dredging up bad memories, if he pushes too hard.
. . .
C-c-an y-y-ou h-h-ear m-m-e n-n-ow?-?
: More on the echo chamber of the conference.
It was a good day and I'm glad I came but file this under feedback: Next year, they need to try harder to get more views (not just the left) and, more important, more perspectives (not just from the U.S.).
Pedram Moallemian of The Eyeranian, who unfortunately couldn't attend the conference, due to a scheduling snafu, says: You want to see how the digital world is causing a literal revolution around the world? invite 5 Iranian bloggers from Iran to do the "teach-in". I promise the attendants will learn plenty more. Bring a Chinese decedent who is publishing an on-line opposition magazine. Or an African activist that uses the web to learn about and spread the latest news on HIV prevention in her ailing land (the only "African" representative here was a white "American"). And read Matt Welch's sage view of the conference. On this issue:Which brings me to a minor point. Trippi especially, but also some panelists (which have also included good ol' Doc Searls, and Cam Barrett, Dan Gillmor, Halley Suitt, Mitch Ratcliff, and MoveOn.org's interesting Wes Boyd), have used quite a bit of the "we," and "us" and "you." As in, "you really made this Dean campaign possible," etc. (not a direct quote). The idea being (though I'm caricaturizing here), there's just something about Cluetrain bloggy techism, insurgent populist campaigns & left-of-center political positions that go together like peas & carrots. Maybe that's true, but I honestly suspect that it's not. One of the best moments so far came when Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman made the point that some of the more active use of his site has been by dog owners, so they can have their "pug meetups," and chihuahua festivals & whatnot. (Also, he said the fastest-growing sector now are Heritage Foundation groups.) Point is -- this groovy tech business is allowing normal folks from wherever the hell to do what they like, and what they like is not going to necessarily lead logically to what some visionary Silicon Valley folks find to be of pressing concern. Which is banal and obvious, of course, but I wasn't really expecting to blog about this stuff, so lay off!...
Not to say that this has been boring or not useful -- to the contrary. But rather that I'd like to see some real tension, some cheap insults, mild fisticuffs, things of that nature. Though we all sure hate partisanship & all, the dirtier truth is that political conflict fuels real productive interest, and forces people to answer uncomfortable questions. I want to see Jarvis mudwrestling with Larry Lessig, Richard Bennett snorting at Doc Searls, Atrios biting Andrew Sullivan's neck, Tony Pierce telling Barrett that he's the worst Cam-girl he's seen. Obviously, I have a lot of bad ideas. Right.
The technology is owned by no one.
: See also Tim Oren quoting Esther Dyson on the echo.
: More on my dinner with Pedram, Matt and others later...
. . .
Follow the money
: Ed Cone points to a Washington Post story on campaign managers' compensation that doesn't include the news from Joe Trippi's talk at ETech yesterday.
I'm still waiting for the definitive story on campaign fees.
And I still say the best thing the Dean campaign can do is release a complete accounting of the funds to set an example of transparency.
. . .
February 09, 2004
Joi's session
: The last session of the day....
: Joi notes that there have been a lot of white American males talking about blogs.
: Continuing the thread, Ethan Zuckerman of GeekCorps (tall, long-hair, white American) calls himself the session's African representative.
: Zuckerman says blogs give new perspective on already reported stories, not original reporting. To get new news, "we can't rely on citizen bloggers at this point."
: Ethan touts AllAfrica.com as an aggregator of African news. Joi is looking for a human connection (an African Salam Pax) to help him care about the news there.
: Joi touts Witness.org, which empowers people in difficult human-rights environments by giving them video cameras.
: Ethan: "What's interesting in blogs is not the a-lists. What's interesting is what filters its way up to the a-lists."
: Joi says that when you get traffic, you start becoming more careful about what you blog about because you'll get attacked (and he uses me as an example only because I'm in his line-of-sight). Not sure I agree. If that were the case, I guess I'd quit.
Joi adds later that it's now much less about hanging out for him and more about publishing.
: Ethan touts IranFilter, which does a good job of reading Persian blogs and news and bringing it to the English-speaking world.
: He touts NKZone, Rebecca McKinnon's blog on North Korea.
: Next success story: BlogAfrica.
: Ethan says talk radio has had an almost revolutionary impact on politics in Africa (just like here!).
: SmartMobs moment: Ethan says that when there was an incident of vote fraud in an election in Ghana, voters with cell phones called this into talk radio and the authorities had to investigate. Result: Low fraud.
He suggests coming up with technology to help reduce corruption (when asked for a bribe, add it to a data base of bribers).
: Joi says that when Americans want to spread democracy they mean putting it under American control. Unfair. In a more balanced audience, that would have gotten a loud moan.
: I ask Ethan what the three most important things are to encourage citizens' media in these other nations. He lists:
1. Free, high-quality web-hosting. The problem isn't just money but payment; the people he works with don't use credit cards.
2. Instruction in the local language. That is what Hoder did.
3. Local leaders who show the way.
: Ethan's working next on community radio.
: Ethan is organizing a trip to Africa in September. Takers?
: An inspiring panel....
. . .
Unlike-minded
: Tim Oren puts his finger on one of the great appeals of certain political blogs: The very human search for a home: As a centrist (by averages) I've found political bloggers who are strongly on one side or the other to be profoundly unpersuasive, whether it's Kos or the Corner. Give me an honest, open, conflicted voice, whether it be Sullivan, Totten or Roger Simon. Someone who has had their world rocked, is looking for a home, and is therefore forced to tease out the issues with a voice that does not come from one of the echo chambers. These I find (at least) engaging and capable provoking new thinking, while those waging a full frontal assault based on premises I do not share are at best irrelevant and at worst repellant.
. . .
Powering the revolution
: Here's a triple success story for Blogads:The Chandler for Cogress campaign bought probably a few grand worth of ads on blogs and has in no time raised $40,000. That's a win for Chandler (in the Dean model Trippi himself extolled this morning: let your money multiply online). It's a win for Blogads. And it's a win for blogs. Now we need to find the ways to make this explode, for it will.
. . .
MoveOn
: Wes Boyd of MoveOn is speaking and I'm struck at how soft-spoken he is, to the point of droning. You might expect an energetic firebrand. Not at all.
: Matt Welch asks him for details of his relationship with George Soros. Not much comes out.
: A questioner scolds him for not having a blog. He says, oddly, that the problem with having content on the site is that someone can come in an attack you for it. Huh?
: Boyd: "I don't know whether this medium is going to be driven toward monopoly or driven toward diversity." Oh, come on, the medium is all about diversity, diversity that can't be stopped. But, listen to that point above: MoveOn, not unlike the Dean space, isn't quite as open as it seems; it selects issues from within a like-minded sphere; it controls the process if not the outcome.
: This is another echo chamber. And that's OK; it's people united behind a common cause. But you can't act, as Boyd does, that he knows what "the people" are saying, that "the people" really care about, say, media consolidation. Wishful thinking.
: Tim O'Reilly asks about trying to get people who disagree to talk together "so we build a participatory decmoracy that isn't still one side against the other." Right question. Boyd: "You pull people in not through extreme partisan rhetoric" and instead talk like a centrist. O'Reilly calls him on it: It's not centrist. Boyd: "We feel pretty centered." That's about yoga, not politics.
It's a right line of questioning. Can one site or service bring together dialogue or does the medium do it, creating bridges across divides from one like-minded sphere to another, differently like-minded sphere?
. . .
Echo-o-o- chamber-r-r-r
: One issue at this Emergent Democracy conference is the echo chamber -- not the echo chamber of the Dean blog but the echo chamber of the conference. The stage is, a bit too appropriately, set to the left. Almost all the speakers are of the left; MoveOn is up there now. Esther Dyson raised the issue at lunch; another questioner did on the floor. They said they tried hard to get speakers from the right. It certainly would have made for a meatier conference and would have given a better picture of how these camps view and use these tools. Too damned bad.
Matt Welch in the comments below says Richard Bennett should be here. That would have been a start. I don't want to just hear like-minded people. And for that matter, I don't want to hear just Americans. This is a worldwide political phenomenon being used by different people in different ways.
. . .
Back
: Left you all for our journalism panel and then some good meaty hallway time meeting so many smart folks who hang out there.
. . .
Bloggers on stage
: Doc is running a panel on blogging. He tells a great story about getting a tour of the Dean HQ via a laptop cam and "meeting" Joe Trippi that way.
: David Weinberger says that what excites him about this so much is just how unofficial it is; it's not undersecretaries of something blogging, it's the people.
: Halley says she reads first the bloggers she least agrees with. She starts with Andrew Sullivan.
She has a good list of 10 trends of political blogging.
: The guy in front of me is playing solitaire. Different clicks for different folks.
: Dave Weinberger says it's fascinating that political blogs turned out to be as much social as informational. "They're really not about information at all. They're about group-forming." Right. Amen. (I said that some weeks ago.)
: Dave says the inefficient interaction of the comments on the Dean blog turned into an advantage: It's hard to flame someone as an asshole when their comment just scrolled up .
: Phil Wolff (Joi's picture here) asks how to keep people involved when the election is over. Doc asks what this is without an election. I shout (rudely) it's local government. Someone else (Ruby) shouts it's political action on issues. She also says, when asked by Doc, that she plans to get back to local politics when this is over because she wants to have an impact. Doc asks the audience how many people want to get more involved in local politics now. Many hands raised. Impressive.
: Dave: "If you want to see a real echo chamber, don't read the candidates' blogs, read the daily newspaper... That's the echo chamber that really worries me."
. . .
Pundits, all
: CampaignDesk.org is now compiling the most notable notes from blog pundits. A good public service.
. . .
MeetUp
: Scott Heiferman is doing a great job showing this world the weeek in MeetUp: Pugs meetup; PHP in Melbourne (with five geeky guys); Cooper Mini meetup... What should get attention is the fast-growing conservative TownHall meetups, now numbered 300. That is to say that this is just a tool, it's not a constituency. Anyone can use the tool. Dean can use it. Conservatives can use it. Everybody can use it. And I hope they all do.
: Scott says it's not just about the global village. It's local. It's getting more and more local.
: "Whether it's MeetUp.com or whatever, the cat is out of the bag. The cat is out of the bag. People know they can organize themselves."
: Scott says we're in a new political era. From the 1800s to mid 1900s, it was an era of joiners, organizers, members. From the mid 1900s until now it was the era of TV, the Beltway, PACs, direct-marketing. Now, he says (hopes) that we're entering the "era of net-powered grassroots."
: Scott says there are now MeetUps automatically generated for anyone running for governor, Congress and the Senate. (What about local?)
: He says that double-digit percentages of Americans used to get together for meetings. Now we don't. And the delicious irony is that the Internet -- the thing that was supposed to be making us antisocial -- is helping bring us out to meet again. The Internet is the ultimate social software.
" The net doesn't care if it's chihuaua's or Kerry..." Right. It's a tool for all.
: He says the key to success is to "get the hell out of the way." Right. Hand the keys to the people and see where they will drive.
. . .
Influencers influencing influencers
: The IPID.org study of online political citizens (great stuff; PDF here) finds that a very high proporation of them (us) -- 70 percent -- are "influentials."
That's why it does not matter how big this is; it's already big enough and will get bigger.
: 59 percent of Iowans used the Internet at some point to help with their decision to vote. Big enough...
: The study finds that Kerry won Internet voters. Says the PowerPoint: "Dean failed to close the deal. He steppe don his message. Just as Dean's success cascaded through the network he created, so did his failure. He got people energized, they came out to ote, but voted for someone else. Influentials have influence."
. . .
Blog art
: Hugh MacLeod is watching what's happening here; he drew a cartoon about it and scanned it in and sent it to Joi; Joi just blogged it.
. . .
Answers to the Trippi money questions
: Ed Cone asks Joe Trippi him about Trippi's compensation in the Dean campagin. "Talk to us about the whole Joe Trippi getting rich thing," Ed says. Good reporting on Ed's part.
Trippi talks about how a fundraising dinner works: You spend $350k on a room to get $1 million and it's considered a success.
He talks about spending $100,000 in Austin, Texas, to buy media and get attention and raise funds in Bush's backyard. It's an investment, he says -- better than "eating steak and potatoes at some big gala.
"On the get-rich quick scheme. I don't know what bothers me more, the implication that I'm a thief or that I'm a really bad thief.... I made about $165,000 on the Dean camapign, personally.... That's a lot of money. But that's not $7.5 or $7.2 million."
He says the LA Times story was an attack:
"How do you stop the movement dead in its track? Well, you convince people it's a Trippi get-rich-quick scheme."
He says he never had the authority for budget and spending -- a very important fact. That does deal with potential conflict of interest.
He says if he were a bad thief, he would have gotten a lot more spent on TV.
"This isn't just trying to knock me down. This is trying to knock the whole thing down. They're trying to get people to buy into this notion that it was all some get-rich-quick scheme and it wasn't."
There's news from eTech.
This should have been reported better before.
. . .
Trippi speaks
: This will be the most covered event since Janet Jackson's performance. Latops, cameras, clicking keyboards everywhere.
: "Broadcast journalism has failed us miserably," he says. There is not adequate coverage of the Patriot Act or the Digitital Millenium Copyright act except on the net.
: "The system is broke, rotted, corrupted...."
The Dean anger continues...
: Rheingold is posting like mad. Jay Rosen is taking notes on a yellow pad. He thinks first, blogs later. Dave Weinberger is also blogging like mad.
: Trippi says he's amazed that "the press who could frankly never figure out what the Dean campaign was now somehow feel qualified to define whether it was a success or not."
(Well, losing elections is one measure. A campaign is still a campaign. It's about winning....)
: There is only one tool, one medium that allows the American people to take their government back, he says, and that is the Internet.
: "This was not a dotcom crash. The Howard Dean campaign was a dotcom miracle." Agreed.
: "This is about understanding that no one is going to change America for you. You have to change America for yourself."
The anger continues...
: Trippi credits Jerome Armstrong's blog at MyDD for introducing him to the idea of MeetUp.com
: "MoveOn.org is the real pioneer of the movement."
: "The political press in this country has no clue what the Internet is... They put it in their old context.... The Internet community doesn't really in many ways understand the hard, cold realities of American politics. And that's the clash that's happening right now..."
In politics, is there an Internet community? Don't think so. It's a tool for all communities.
: The Scream: "It wasn't news. It was entertainment.. It was the heat-seeking missle getting its target.... That really was damaging, not what the governor did, but the media's portrayal of it... Now they're all apologizing."
Sorry, it was news. The people talked about it. The people determine what news is. And among everyone I know, the Scream was news. And, yes, it was the excuse many were looking for not to vote for him. This is a "hard, cold reality" of politics; people also judge character and personality.
: If Howard Dean had retired as governor, "where would the Democratic party be, where would our Democracy be today?... It's because of the blogs." He argues, strenuously, that the Dean revolution changed the election. I think we'll find he's right. Too soon to know.
: "This isn't going to stop. Broadcast politics is on the wane. The media juimped the shark first time on the war. They jumped the shark on the Dean campaign."
: "I think our democracy's really threatened right now in ways the American people haven't really grasped right now."
Again, the anger, with a dash of paranoia.
: He takes the Democrats to task for taking more big contributions than the Republicans. It's a betrayal of the Democratic party's roots, he says. The Dean campaign "turned that on its head."
: He calls 1776 "revolution 1.0."
: I love this thing, the Internet, weblog, citizens' revolution. But the hubris is thick. Too thick, I think.
: What I'd really like to hear from Trippi is What We Could Have Done Better. Maybe it's too soon for that.
: I'm flashing that all this blogging is just like the "instant analysis" broadcast pundits used to give us (until it got cooties). The difference is that this is even more instant -- it's another sound track -- and it's coming from all corners.
: "Al Gore's endorsement is not bad. I don't buy that... What happened is that alarm bells went off in every newsroom in the country and in every other campaign in the country.... That alarm said kill Howard Dean this second. Cau's of we don't kill this son of a b right now, he's going to be the nominee of the party."
My spin alarm is going off. Whoop. Whoop.
Could it be that voters don't like Gore? I voted for the guy and I don't like him.
: He tells a tear-jerker story about a woman who "sold my bike for democracy." She got $79 and sent it to the Howard Dean campaign. Insert joke about 15 percent commission here...
: He says that what they built must survive. Right. Amen. Now tell me how.
: Hmmmm. I wonder if the lazy, too-easy analysis of the press is not in tearing down the Dean Internet revolution -- and Dean -- but in prematurely building them up. Just wondering....
: "This campaign was the first campaign really owned by the American people. Now we have to build a movement owned by them."
Movements are, by definition, owned by the people.
These tools are not owned by one movement or one campaign. They will be used by anyone; that is their power.
I love what Dean created. But it's not proprietary to any ideology. And I do have problems with the chronic anger, defensiveness, and hubris.
: Just went to the BlogForAmerica comments and thought I'd see someone blogging Trippi in there. Nope.
: Much of the audience gives Trippi a standing O.
: Ed Cone now asks questions.
: Broadcast media is Trippi's big, bad guy.
: See the post above on campaign finances.
: Trippi wonders what would have happened if a campaign had run 365 grass roots candidates for Congress. He sputters: "Not in competition with the party..." But wherever there's a Democrat, this would have been competition. "It might have been dangerous," Trippi acknowledges. Well, yeah. That would have been taking over the party, indeed.
: Trippi says he miscalculated on Clark and thought he wasn't going to run; it affected his spending. He wishes he could take that one back. "I guessed wrong."
: On becoming the frontrunner: "There was a, pardon the expression, holy shit moment."
He says when he became frontrunner, people were less motivated to give money. And they didn't know how to communicate "we need your help now more than ever."
: A guy says he ran an Internet campaign for Congress in 1992 and he learned that net politics aren't local, they are global. He asks when it will get local.
Trippi says he's not sure the net is mature enough for that yet.
"The Internet community in Iowa is, for all intent and purposes -- I don't want to offend anyone -- nonexistent."
So how did the Internet, then, revolutionize the party as Trippi said above? Because influencers influenced influencers. And because it created buzz.
: Again, he repeats, "the failure is broadcast politics." Trippi, like Dave Winer, makes this the Internet vs. TV. I don't buy that. TV will always be there, along with newspapers. The Internet adds so much. It can't win that war. It shouldn't try.
: Dan Gillmor asks what it will take to get a different kind of journalism with different power and authority. Trippi cites, as we all do, the Trent Lott affair when he says that is beginning.
Trippi says Dean was the hottest thing on the INternet but he couldn't get the press to cover that story, to go to a MeetUp with a camera.
They didn't write about it until the story became money. "It's the money, stupid."
: Dan Sifry's brother asked, "Who owns BlogForAmerica.com? Who knows the list?"
Important question gets applause.
Trippi: "I don't know."
He says there is an issue to controlling the names and addresses, otherwise so many parts of the campaign will contact people that it will turn into spam.
Ed asks him to guess what happens to the blog.
Trippi says he's going to do something. (I heard at breakfast that he has a domain for it.)
He says he has "deep apprehensions" about it going to the Democratic party.
:Next up: The Institute for Politics Demoracy and the Internet presents a study of "online poltiical citizens."
. . .
The echo chamber
: I'm at the hotel restaurant at ETech with Doc, Dave, Loic, Halley, and other leading lights. That wonderful moment comes when someone (you know who you are, Doc) discovers that the wi-fi stretches into here. Laptops come out. The scene has to be captured on digital cameras. More cameras come out. Cameras take pictures of cameras taking pictures of laptop.
: And over in another booth is Joe Trippi, getting ready for his talk.
: If you weren't jealous before, you'll be jealous now: I'm sitting next to Howard Rheingold, Joi Ito, Dan Gillmor, Steven Levy, Halley Suitt, David Isenberg, and more. It's not me. It's the strip of power strips.
. . .
Notes from the road
: I overhear the guy next to me on plane -- a nice enough banker -- saying to the stewardess, "Actually, what I usually hear is that I look like Ben Affleck"....
Crappy Kate Hudson movie, Le Divorce, on the flight. It was at the European opening that Hudson infamously said that Americans disgusted her. And her movie apparently didn't wow Americans, either. Direct to Continental....
But the movie inspires the guy in the next seat. He calls his wife with an idea for their vacation: Paris! She was not similarly inspired....
San Diego is, well, seedy. Shut down tight. Nowhere to buy so much as a can of Coke downtown. Homeless sleeping at every storefront. They need Rudy Guliani....
I walk over to the ETech hotel (I'm a few blocks away) just to stretch the airline-compressed legs and I know I've arrived in geek heaven. In the hotel bar, every single patron has a laptop open. One is sleeping in a chair with laptop atop lap....
I walk back to the hotel and pass the only store or restaurant open and brightly lit downtown: A Larry Flynt Hustler store, slick and sleek, with couples going in to shop and young ladies buying the fashions. No, I didn't buy anything. Who needs porn when I can go back to the hotel and watch the Grammys?
. . .
February 08, 2004
My goals for Etech
: I'll start the list here:
1. To have a meal with Joi Ito. If you're anybody, you have.
2. To have a meal with Pedram because he promises good Persian fare.
3. To finally meet and drink with my good buddy Matt Welch.When I started blogging, Matt was the first guy to befriend and support me via link; he is my heroin dealer.
Oh, yeah, to have big thoughts, too.
. . .
Do we over-cover the Presidency? In a word: Yes
: As I natter on about presidential politics at home (imagine not being able to just click me off!), my wife frequently shakes her head and asks, Does it really matter who's President? Of course, it does, I say, starting with the courts and then reciting the rest of the standard litany. But that doesn't take long. And I soon see -- as is usually the case -- that my wife is right. It doesn't really matter all that much who is President. The system is bigger than any person.
So do we cover the Presidential race too much? Is our coverage disproportionate to the true importance and impact of the office?
Yes and yes.
Why do we do it? Well, part of it is political; we elect the individual rather than the party. Part of it is cultural; we like celebrity and we like power and the president is the biggest at both. And part of it is the fault of media; it's easy and fun to follow the pack and cover the Presidential race while the real story is harder to get.
Yesterday -- in preparation for my ETech Emerging Democracy panel -- I made two points: First, that political reporting isn't really reporting because it doesn't tell us much of anything we couldn't find out on our own. And second, that we (in media) have pointed the cameras the wrong way in covering Presidential races: The real story is not the candidates but the voters.
Today, I'll add too more observations: First, that we (in media) cover politics way, way too much -- way out of proportion to their importance in our lives and the interest of our audiences. And second, that we cover the Presidential election way out of proportion to its importance in comparison to local politics and government bureacracy, which have a far greater impact on the lives of our audiences.
: The problem, of course, is that most politics and most government below the level of President just isn't as much fun; it's not as sexy; it's not as easy to cover.
The Republican bozos in my town who spend my money like drunken Democrats -- just because they are never challenged and because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely -- have more of an impact on my life most days than most Presidents. Federal agencies and bureacracies -- the IRS, the FCC, the FTC, and on and on -- have more of an impact that their boss, the President (though, of course, their boss has an impact on them). State and county government are still generally meaningless and helplessly boring.
Now newspapers do cover these guys but the coverage is, frankly, dull -- and it's not really their fault. Politics and government are dull. That's why most people don't talk about politics the way reporters and pundits do; they have lives. And that's why reporters and pundits try so hard to sex up the presidential race.
I used to think this was just a fact of media and political life.
: But I do believe that the era of the web and weblogs and the Dean online revolution can change all that.
The real followup to the Dean lessons that I want to follow is how his use of the Internet to increase communication and connectivity can be used at other levels. I think these tools can make a gigantic difference at the local level -- in America and anywhere in the world -- where politics and government affect our lives.
So...
The Post-Dean Manifesto for Online Politics
: So let's start with a post-Dean manifesto for local government and federal agencies:
1. We should insist that all town meetings be webcast (live and recorded). I can't go to night school board meetings because -- duh -- I have kids and need to be at home. But I would watch them.
2. We should insist that our local politicians and federal congressmen have weblogs or the equivalent to inform us of their stands and actions. We should mistrust any politician who doesn't -- what are you hiding? -- and not vote for any candidate who doesn't.
3. We should expect federal and state agencies to have web sites that are as informative and easy to use as any weblog. The FCC site has tons of information but it's hard to find. So they should hire a weblogger to point to the important stuff. And they should have search that meets the standard of ease of Google. That's citizen-friendly.
4. We should expect politicians, candidates, and officials to enter into dialogues with us, the citizens, via forums and weblog links. Rather than sending us email, inefficiently, one at a time, make the discussion public and transparent.
5. We should then expect journalists to truly report and not just repeat what we can find out through all the means above. That includes telling us what our officials aren't telling us. That includes, more importantly, finding out what the citizens care about that the politicians are not addressing.
The days of one-size-fits-all journalism that had to report on the things that (they say) matter are over. If you care deeply about FCC regulations on media consolidation, you can go to the FCC's web site and to webloggers who track the FCC to find out what you need. You no longer have to hope that a reporter also shares your interest in the topic and happens to cover it and that an editor happens to publish it.
This presents new challenges and opportunities for journalists. They can free themselves of the shackles of covering the dutiful.
But first, we have to insist that our politicians and officials inform us fully.
We have the tools. Now we need to use them. And thanks to this campaign, we're learning how.
. . .
Party, hell. Get back to work!
: Om sees danger in the return to hype and parties in the land of tech. He's right. I wouldn't trust a company that has parties anymore. If they havent' learned that lesson...
. . .
Fear of...
: I'm in transit to San Diego and I have to admit that I am still a wimp (or perhaps a wise man) about flying: It freaks me now. Before September 11th, I found it merely inconvenient. Now I find it potentially terrifying. I'm not talking about clutching the gangway on the way down to the jet. I'm talking about odd symptoms that occur: sense of dread; more cardiac issues; regret at agreeing to go. Don't talk to me about odds. I'm sure the odds of getting shot in Baghdad or mugged in a bad neighborhood are less than the odds of, say, slipping to my death in the bathtub (thank God I take showers). It's not about probabilities. It's about possibilities. And the problem with terror is that now, any insane thing is possible. But I'm enjoying the free wi-fi at the Continental lounge, trying to think about that and spread my neuroses to you.
. . .
How much Trippi made
: Here's a report confirming that $7.2 million was paid to Trippi's firm. But I'm still not clear on how much was paid for advertising time and how much went to the firm for commissions and consulting. Yes, campaign managers are often paid on commission. But it clearly puts the manager in a conflict of interest (determing how much is spent on what medium when in a campaign). And the fee seems pretty rich. As soon as word of the commission got out after Trippi left the campaign, Deaniacs were pissed. "Give us our money back," was a frequent refrain in the Dean blog. Trippi says he didn't know how much he was being paid (not the sign of a good manager in any business). In this new age of transparency, this was opaque.
Looks like there's another level of campaign finance reform needed, inside the campaigns.
: A commenter quite properly took me to task for not being clear on what the $7.2 million included. It's not not very clear and so I added sentence above and I'll add this quote from the story: "The campaign paid the company about $250,000 for media production costs and another $6.7 million for media time, space and expenses. Trippi, McMahon and Squier also received $312,000 for political consulting." I don't know what bottom line went to the firm. But it's not the full $7.2 million, just to be clear.
In any case, acting as both campaign manager and media buying firm does present a conflict of interest and wise campaigners in the future will do different deals and will know where the voters' money is going (it's the same principle as knowing where the taxpayers' money is going, after all).
: Another commenter is right: What we need is for someone to do the comprehensive story on how campaigns are managed and how managers are paid and also on how much money each campaign is spending how quickly, in which media and for which expenses.
Dean made his contributors feel like common shareholders in the company he was building and it would be great if his campaign would set an example of transparency for other campaigns to follow.
. . .
February 07, 2004
Protest is American
: From the looks of things, Atrios is right about this. Let's not bring back the worst of the '60s.
. . .
The road to peace
: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer proposes a plan for peace in the Middle East: "The Middle East is at the epicenter of the greatest threat to our regional and global security at the dawn of this century: destructive jihadist terrorism with its totalitarian ideology. This brand of terrorism does not only pose a threat to the societies of the West, but also and above all to the Islamic and Arab world." ...
"In order to succeed, the European Union and the US should, in view of this major challenge to our common security, pool their capabilities, assets and projects to form a new transatlantic initiative for the Middle East." Fischer proposes expanded economic ties to the MidEast and possible a free-trade zone. He calls for bringing in Arab countries to "create a binding agreement calling for them to disarm and renounce violence." Don't we all wish. Fischer said:"We cannot counter the threat of this new totalitarianism by military means alone. Our response needs to be as all-encompassing as the threat. And this response cannot be issued by the West alone. If we were to adopt a paternalistic attitude, we would only inflict the first defeat upon ourselves. Instead we must formulate a serious offer based on genuine cooperation, an offer to work together with the states and societies of the region." The question, of course, is just how much military force will be needed. And no one knows. We'll only know if we're wrong.
: At the same conference, Rumsfeld came out shooting in defense of offense:
But he repeatedly defended the get-them-before-they-get-us doctrine in an age when terrorists are threatening to acquire and use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as "something that has to be weighed and considered by all of us" given the possible catastrophic consequences....
Conference participants this week said they sensed that tensions had eased....
In this climate, many officials here expected a tempered, if not conciliatory speech on Saturday from Mr. Rumsfeld, who is still regarded by many Germans and French, in particular, as a villain for his dismissive remarks about "old Europe." Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld, feisty and unyielding, appeared eager to put a potential adversary on the defensive as he laid out the administration's rationale for the war in the absence of any illegal Iraqi weapons.
"Think about what was going on in Iraq a year ago with people being tortured, rape rooms, mass graves, gross corruption, a country that has used chemical weapons against its own people," he said in response to a question, his voice rising, his hands chopping the air for emphasis.
He then turned the question back on the audience. "There were prominent people from representative countries in this room that opined that they really didn't think it made a hell of a lot of difference who won," he said, nearly shouting. "Shocking. Absolutely shocking."
Yes, them's fightin' words.
The good news here is that Fischer is advocating a doctrine of democratizing and modernizing the Middle East. The bad news is that we're no closer than ever on how to accomplish that.
: Go to the comments on this post and read the lengthy quote from Rumseld.
. . .
Sing crow
: FoxNews says Janet and Justin have been invited on the Grammys if they give a one-sentence apology. One wonders what the sentence is: "We are so, so, so, so, so, so f'ing sorry!" And who gets assigned to check all of Janets snaps and zippers?
Mark my words that some star (Lil' Kim, for example) will expose more than Janet did. Either that, or they're doing to import the nuns who police proms to put shawls around the more nubile stars.
. . .
Is political reporting really reporting?
: I'm wondering whether political reporting is really reporting (as I get ready for an ETech Emerging Democracy panel Monday). Here's where it starts:
: Matt Stoller at BOP did a great public service by recording and posting MP3s of the stump speeches of John Edwards and John Kerry. (Edwards and Kerry here; Dean here.)
I downloaded both and listened to them in the car.
At the time said that Edwards had a killer stump speech (I wasn't that wowed; more on the speech later). With Dean toasting and Kerry leading, I was also eager to hear what he had to say and how he said it (I was, if not impressed, relieved by that I heard).
I've covered campaigns and primaries so I know how it works with the stump speech: It's repeated over and over and over. But right after listening to these speeches, I was struck how -- even weeks later -- I heard sound bites with the exact same words and cheer cues in radio reports on the campaign.
This hammered home how useless it often is to trail around after the candidates hearing the same thing day after day so you can act as if you're on top of the news when, in fact, there's no news.
This also hammered home the idea that thanks to one guy and an MP3 recorder, all of us could get on the bus. We were there.
: Is political reporting really reporting when most of the material that's reported is available to all of us on the Internet?
We can hear what the candidate says in his stump speech.
We can read the candidate's stand on his web site.
We can analyze the same polls the reporters analyze (to make bad bets on the horse race).
So what are the reporters really giving us we can't get online?
They can hear the party line in the spin zone -- but that's not useful and it's not really reporting.
: Come to think of it, political reporting isn't really reporting, for reporting is all about getting information the audience can't get. But we can get everything of note a political reporter can get from the comfort of our couches. Except one thing...
: Political reporting misses the real story. It needs to turn around and look the other way. The story isn't up on the stump; that's the obvious, easy stuff. No, the story is out in the hustings.
The real story is the voters.
What do the voters think of the candidates? (Nobody reported that story on Howard Dean worth a damn, or they would have known he wasn't the front runner when they said he was.)
What are the issues that really matter to the voters? (As opposed to the issues the candidates and pundits think matter.)
How much does the campaign really matter in voters' lives? (A lot less than any politician or pundit thinks.)
That's the real reason to be out on the road: To hear what the voters have to say, to listen.
You can get what the candidates have to say online.
And come to think of it, you can start to hear what the voters say online, too.
: We in blogs have been missing the story, too. We all paid attention to the Dean blog when the real story online is out in the blogs of the voters; it's one way (still imperfect) to hear what the people (not the pundits) are saying.
But the campaign isn't over.
Command-Post, BOP, candidates' blogs, and other blogs can give us a full, informative, and complete view what the candidates are saying.
Considering that we have access to the same information field reporters and newspaper editors have, I now don't think it's hubris to think that weblogs can beat the pros at campaign reporting -- since it's not really reporting.
But the harder story to get is what the voters are saying. Can we do a better job of that online than the pros can do in print? Let's see.
. . .
Radiog
: Chris Lydon is going to be on Minnesota public radio daily starting Monday morning. His aim is to get us all to listen to the stream and call in (and blog). Details here.
. . .
Golly gee
: The Washington Post discovers -- again -- that blogs are more than "'what-I-had-for-lunch' journals." Take away the gee-whiz-aw-shucks-golly-gee-what-do-you-know tone and at least local bloggers get attention for the power they are gaining.
. . .
February 06, 2004
Mr. Vast Wasteland
: I've never liked Newton Minow. The one-time head of the FCC is famous for calling TV a "vast wasteland" in 1961. The problem I had then was that, even though Minow opposed government censorship, he still put himself in a position to judge (and cancel licenses for) media of which he disapproved. I don't want anyone in government doing that. I want the marketplace to do that.
Well, Minow pops up again -- yes, he's still alive -- to resurrect his old harrange in the brouhaha over The Boob. He argues in the Chicago Tribune that we should bring back the National Association of Broadcasters' Code of Standards and Practices. Again, he'll argue that this isn't censorship because the companies would do it (though under the threatening disapproval of Minow's many-generations-later successor, Michael Powell).
I still don't like it and don't buy it.
The marketplace will take care of The Boob. If CBS loses money because advertisers and viewers object, they will find ways not to lose money the next time. I still say the nation is obsessing in an unnatural way on that moment; it's still just a breast, people. But if the majority doesn't want breasts then business won't give them breasts.
But the bigger point is that cable -- with its lack of a code -- has proved Minnow dead wrong.
HBO started as the network that lived to do nothing but show naked breasts. As a TV critic, I complained loudly about that -- not that I had anything against breasts (haven't changed that tune) but because they thought the occasional flash passed for mature programming when what the mature audience wanted was intelligent programming.
And what has happened since? A spectacular flowering of quality content on cable. Yes, it also has the occasional breast and f-word. So what? It also has better TV than the regulated airwaves ever have or ever could produce.
Creative freedom -- freedom from direct or indirect government imposition of standards and practices -- allowed that; the marketplace supported that.
So you're wrong, Newton Minow. Go back into your hole. TV is much better today and no thanks to you.
: Can't resist adding this note from the comments: Interesting OT aside: The SS Minnow from Gilligan's Island (which ran aground etc) was named after Newton Minow, according to the commentary on the Gilligan's Island DVD set.
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The Prime Blogger
: Bill Hobbs reports that Tony Blair may get a blog.
: And the Guardian argues that we need more wired politicians.
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Reporters, reporters, everywhere...
: Roderick Su sends me the amazing news that someone was posting live news reports to IRC from the Utah courtroom where the IBM vs. SCO case was being heard. The citizen-reporter says his Treo was not considered a recording device and so it was allowed. Here's a Yahoo discussion on it and here's a transcript. There will be no stopping people -- just people -- from reporting anything anywhere anytime.
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More the merrier
: The World Editors Forum starts a blog for newsroom execs.
: Digging into the links of this World Editors' Forum, I find some interesting things going on at their annual confab in Istanbul.
A session I'd love to join in on: Press credibility in the digital age: new attacks, new answers
The list of challengers to print newspapers is growing: cable TV, online services, mobile phones, free newspapers... and even "bloggers" on the internet. And to make matters worse, the credibility of the press is now lower than that of television in some countries. TV more serious than print? Editors must think about this unsettling paradox. In this age of digital information, are there new rules or new guidelines to establish? And this:Arab media : an emerging power
From CNN leadership in 1991 to Al Jazeera (and Al Arabiya) power in 2003... Arab television played a major role during the war in Iraq and its aftermath. But what about Arab newspapers? Do they have a major influence on public opinion? And what is the balance between professional and ideological issues within the newsrooms? Which lessons, last, from the baghdad bloggers ? Salam Pax is a scheduled speaker.
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