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Archive for the 'Hotline' Category

Building 3121 Awareness, One Impression at a Time

Published by William Beutler on July 28, 2009 in Congress, Hotline, Metapost, New Media Strategies, Social Networking, Web 2.0 and William Beutler. Closed

Note: Longtime readers may remember that I started Blog P.I. just a few months after leaving National Journal’s Hotline for New Media Strategies. This summer I have come full circle and NJ is now a client of NMS. We are helping them launch a new feature of NationalJournal.com: 3121, professional network for Capitol Hill which goes live in the fall. Consider that also my disclosure; the following is cross-posted from the 3121 product blog:

One of the more interesting projects I’ve been working on related to 3121 is the social advertising, which we launched last week concurrent with this blog. In fact, there is a chance that you are reading this blog post now after having clicked on one of these ads. And if you arrived here from Facebook or LinkedIn, then I all but guarantee it. And I know for a fact that you work on Capitol Hill.

In some ways, advertising on social networks is not much different than traditional online advertising: the creative (yes, that’s a noun) consists of text and a graphic, with a link to the page you want people to visit. But they can also identify key demographics with a much greater degree of accuracy than even Google’s Adwords (which we are also using). Members of Facebook and LinkedIn supply their own demographic information, which is great for finding just the people you want and only the people you want.

Want to reach single female college students in Boston, Massachusetts who are fans of Gossip Girl? Facebook counts more than 1,600. How about married thirtysomething men in Portland, Oregon who are fans of The Big Lebowski? More than 600 of them. The possibilities are endless.

In your case, if you do fit the Capitol Hill profile, you probably saw one of the two following ads:

As you may have guessed, Facebook also lets one zero in on just employees of the United States Congress. (How many? At least 7,500.) LinkedIn has a different system but one which is very similar: identify people who work in legislative offices, set that to Washington, DC and we hope you’re someone who is interested in 3121.

What Matt Bai Doesn’t Get About Twitter

Published by William Beutler on April 26, 2009 in Hotline, New Media Strategies, Twitter, Virginia Politics and William Beutler. 5 Comments

Matt Bai, whose book The Argument offered invaluable reporting and insight about the rise of progressive online activism this decade, has a skeptical take on Twitter in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Following a tenuous comparison to ex-Sen. Bob Graham’s infamous, meticulous journaling and a swipe at Sen. Claire McCaskill’s “chatty” tweeting habits, Bai concludes:

If Twitter doesn’t turn out to be just the latest political fad (like, say, psychographic polling, or Ron Paul), then it just may be the worst thing to happen to politics and its attending media since a couple of geniuses at CNN dreamed up “Crossfire” back in the 1980s. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t have a value to society. Its ability to spread news (as in the emergency landing of a plane in the Hudson River) or to circumvent repression (as in Moldovan youths organizing protests) has already proved transformative. But not every new mode of communication lends itself to politics, where speed and complexity rarely coexist. The capital might be a better place if it became a Twitter-free zone, a city where people spent more time talking to the guy serving the coffee and less time informing the world that the coffee had, in fact, been served.

This is in the right ballpark, but it’s still a foul ball. For one thing, as I’ve explained before, the Moldovan protests were not principally organized on Twitter, yet Bai’s mention here indicates it is likely to become a popular media myth for some time to come.

And though Blog P.I. has been recently accused of engaging in Twitter triumphalism, I’ve also made the point that Twitter is best as a way to create and communicate the existence of connections between messages and ideas rather than to communicate complete thoughts — “more medium than message,” as I’ve put it.

It’s not that Twitter does not “lend itself to politics”; it’s that Twitter does not lend itself to explanations of concepts or, typically, careful debate about such issues. Bai notes that Twitter is good for its ability to spread news, but this hyperconnectivity has as many implications as there are kinds of information that can be tweeted.

Here I must clarify my statement that Twitter is not ideal for debate, because I have seen it work. Not quite a year ago, Personal Democracy Forum co-sponsored a Twitter debate between representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns (including my future NMS colleague Liz Mair). And sometime last year — I can’t quite seem to locate it — I watched a fascinating debate about gay marriage between Michael Turk and Gregory Cole. Just this past week, Evan McMorris-Santoro at The Hotline conducted a “Twitterview” with ex-DNC chairman/VA governor candidate Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe’s replies were necessarily curtailed and so not terrifically informative, but there’s something unique about holding this kind of interview in a public setting, where anyone can comment on the discussion, even as it is occurring.

Twitter Search is necessary but not sufficient for presenting the full scope of discussion for readers arriving after the live event. Better tools for organizing and displaying these conversations on blogs are needed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is where the Twitter API is headed next. Already there are editorial services like McMorris-Santoro’s Word on the Tweet and Danny Glover’s Hill Tweet News. Another interesting question is whether 140-character tweets are too short to be made sense of by mostly algorithm-driven aggregators like Gabe Rivera’s Memeorandum (and Techmeme). Hashtags combined with Slashdot-style meta moderation may be key to making such a service realistically work.

The point here is that it can. Bai and others see Twitter’s 140-character limitation without giving consideration to the unlimited possibilities for development of the platform. And here I’ll risk borrowing from one of the hoariest clichés in business and technology to say: you have to think outside the tweet.

Given the choice between “Crossfire” and Twitter, I know which one I’d pick.

N.B. I will say this for Matt Bai: at least he made an honest effort to understand Twitter for what it is, unlike this inane interview/column by (who else but) Maureen Dowd, wherein Twitter’s Biz Stone comes off a thoughtful fellow under MoDo’s faux-withering interrogation. If you subject yourself to reading it, I recommend as antidote Nancy Friedman’s parody, “Ms. Dowd Interviews the Inventor of the Telephone.”

The Hotline’s Tweetometer

Published by William Beutler on February 26, 2009 in Congress, Hotline, Startups, Twitter and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Before I started working for The Hotline (and before they had a web presence to speak of) the original Beltway tip sheet had a catch phrase: “The word on the street is ours.” This week it looks like they’re going back to the well as they roll out a new feature, because it is called:

Word on the Tweet is a logical extension of On Call’s sister publication and my former vocation, The Blogometer. When we started in the winter of 2005, the blogosphere had just recently gone mainstream, largely thanks to its impact on the 2004 presidential campaign. Here in the winter of 2009, it’s the Twitterverse which has only just hit the big time.

And this is an even easier call for Hotline to decide on covering: The Blogometer covers the blogosphere as an amateur/activist extension of the Beltway media, but no member of Congress has time to sit down and write a blog. Twitter is different: after all, no less a politician than the president of the United States is an admitted BlackBerry addict.

And where most members would formerly have staffers maintain their Twitter account — if they had one at all — more and more are following the lead of Texas Rep. John Culberson and actually tweeting themselves. This participation by actual sitting congresscritters could be a great deal more entertainment, as writer Evan McMorris-Santoro hints in this disclaimer:

Note: all tweets are reproduced exactly as they appeared, grammar/spelling warts and all.

Exactly as it should be. For the announcement video starring McMorris-Santoro and my old boss John Mercurio, click here:

How I Spent Inauguration Day

Published by William Beutler on January 25, 2009 in Barack Obama, District Politics, George W. Bush, Hotline, Television, Twitter, White House '08 and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Four years ago when I was writing for The Hotline, I both had to work on Inauguration Day and also got out early to try attending the event itself. This year I did neither, thanks to no longer having to write against a daily deadline (while this post may be a few days late, that doesn’t mean it is in fact “late”) and my experience of getting caught in a massive, immovable crowd several blocks from the Mall and never even came close to seeing or hearing anything more memorable than a bunch of International ANSWER people waving homemade “BUSH = HITLER” signs.

Though I had successive waves of friends in town this year both to cover the crazy scene around the Inauguration Weekend and to participate in it, I myself decided to play the part of a jaded Washingtonian familiar with big crowds on the Mall and especially in the Metro, and took up a comfortable spot in front of my 65″ DLP and behind my 17″ MBP open to TweetDeck. Here are two representative shots, and the reason this post even exists.

     

This is the part where I think I am supposed to say something inspiring about the interconnectedness that results from the speed and ingenuity of modern technology, and how this has been said for a long time but with Twitter going mainstream and digital/HD television becoming the norm now the difference of degree almost itself becomes a difference of kind, well, I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to describe this as intricately as I would like. But you can give it your best shot in the comments.

Huffington Post Appropriating Others’ Content is Nothing New

Published by William Beutler on December 20, 2008 in Asymmetrical Media, Attribution, Hotline, Huffington Post, Journalism, SEO, Site Traffic and William Beutler. Closed

There’s been plenty of discussion over the past couple days about Huffington Post’s habit of posting articles that consist of the first few paragraphs of someone else’s story sans commentary and then linking to the full piece. This was first raised by Whet Moser at the Chicago Reader, who noticed that HuffPost Chicago (a first attempt at thinking locally, hence its “beta” designation) was doing this to previews of local concerts. In some cases, by copying just the first few paragraphs, HuffPo had reposted the entire article. This is because, as Moser put it, “that is the whole article, dumbass” [italics in original]. For example, click through the thumbnails below to screen shots as provided by Moser:

   

This has resulted in some serious discussion at Techmeme, as it should be, but my question is: What took so long? I covered the launch of Huffington Post when I was writing the Blogometer at National Journal’s Hotline two and a half years ago, and kept a close eye on the development of the site. If you recall, the site was the subject of some some scrutiny and fun-making ahead of its launch. Huffington’s venture survived the early gibes, long enough at least to attract new ones.

Maybe six months in, I noticed that headlines on the front page linked to just the kind of pages now being critcized. I never wrote about it, but I did bring it up to my boss, who also thought it strange. While Moser has stumbled across a particularly egregulous example of the practice — and in fairness, HuffPo’s Jonah Peretti claims it was an editing mistake — they’re already pushing the envelope of what’s acceptable. And in this case, I think even Sam Zell would have a point.

Bloggers are frequently given to quoting long stretches of others’ writing, but as fair use guidelines usually require, they do so for purposes of adding commentary. HuffPo does not, which raises the question of how much Huffington Post is an authentic blog and how much it is a media company appropriating others’ credibility.

Also raising this question is the new book, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. Here’s the cover, available from Simon & Schuster:

Notice anything? Like, say, a complete lack of original blogging voices? Craig Newmark is the lone individual whose reputation was first made online, and even then his rep is not as a blogger but as the founder of Craigslist. Huffington Post built some credibility over the past few years, with myself and other informed consumers of news, by giving a bigger soapbox to lesser known talents such as Jason Linkins and Lee Stranahan. I’d say HuffPo has done them a lot of good, and they would say the same.

But then there are those like Walt Moser and Monica Kendrick, the author of the review noted above. In both circumstances, HuffPo falls short of being a democratizing force in the media. In the dichotomy between its famous and non-famous contributors, HuffPo is trying to have it both ways: they will elevate new writers, but only so far. And the same is true of its bid to provide a new way of experiencing the news: sometimes, all that means is appropriating yours.

RNC08 #1: Don’t Call it a Comeback

Published by William Beutler on August 31, 2008 in #DNC08, #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, Hotline, John McCain, Journalist Bloggers, Metapost, National Politics, New Media Strategies, RNC, Relaunches, Twitter, Web 2.0, White House '08 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

C-SPAN 2.0 Featuring New Media Strategies

If you are a frequent reader of Blog P.I., you (and thanks to the MyBlogLog widget in the sidebar, I know who some of you are) may have spent a few seconds out of the past week wondering just where I’ve been. Of course, as my last post two weeks ago made clear, I was about to spend the coming fortnight-and-a-half working on C-SPAN.org’s Convention Hubs: first DNC08 and now increasingly RNC08.

For 168+ hours now I’ve been working literally around the clock — to be more accurate, one revolution of the hour hand each solar day — finding and spotlighting blog posts from national and state-level media and political blogs, and running a Blogads campaign involving changes to the artwork and copy reflecting each evening’s developments (I like how it’s rendered on BuzzMachine best). I’ve also done C-SPAN TV twice, sitting on the back of my sport coat, focusing just beyond the camera lens, depending on the bug in my ear for cues, reporting on the latest buzz from the left- and rightosphere from the offices of New Media Strategies.

This week my role shifts, and in a dwindling few hours I’ll be flying to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention. As the NMS Blue Team returns from Denver, the Red Team will be shipping out to the metropolitan area where the Coens’ Fargo mostly took place. I travel both in my capacity as a representative of C-SPAN at the convention as well as an official, RNC-credentialed blogger, so I will do my best to share the experience with you.

This will be a new thing for Blog P.I., but a second time for me as a blogger at a GOP convo; in 2004 I was part of Hotline’s convention team in New York City, and I blogged the convention in my off-hours. Then, I took some pictures with my crummy first-ever Sprint camera phone, most of which were uploaded to a server I long since forgot to pay for. This time I’ll be blogging it here in this space, using my iPhone camera and WordPress app, available free of charge from iTunes (which by the way now is really crying out for rebranding).

For the next five days or so, I expect to be taking photos and posting them with minimal presentation, reserving most of my reporting and commentary for a widget from my Twitter account, which will appear here shortly. This is basically the opposite of what Blog P.I. has been in its two years-plus existence: whereas my blogging has primarily comprised several times-weekly essay posts (such as this one) I will instead switch to frequent, quick-hit posts that will take you inside the moment (I’m pretty sure I can do this).

If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities this week, gimme a shout (see the contact page). If you know me from e-mail or the Blogometer or Blog P.I. and want to say hello, drop me a line. If you know of a party, breakfast or similar event that’s either open-invitation or you can extend one, consider me interested. Need a mug, thumb drive or baseball cap emblazoned with the C-SPAN logo? We can probably work something out.

And but so, I’ll get back to packing a week’s worth of my least-unprofessional attire and making sure I don’t leave anything behind, with the DVR playing the Oregon Ducks’ 44-10 victory over the (Huck the) Fuskies as I close up shop here and make my way to the Lesser White North.

More coming soon.

The Cult of Chuck Todd

Published by William Beutler on August 6, 2008 in Cable News, Hotline, Metapost and Website Design. 2 Comments

Hey, I’m as big a fan of Chuck Todd as anyone*, and the Viva Chuck Todd blog from Cerebral Itch is inspired:

Viva Chuck Todd blog header

Especially the e-mail interviews with his grandmother in Florida. But now this is really getting out of hand:

Chuckolytes Unite behind Chuck Todd, whatever that means.

(Click the image to visit the site.) I’m not even sure what “Chuckolyte” is supposed to mean. Is it a play on “electrolyte”? Is it supposed to sound like “chocolate”? Not that either would make any sense. Nor have the folks behind Cerebral Itch explained what it’s supposed to mean. [Update: Via the "Viva Chuck Todd Editorial Dept." in the comments, it is a play on "acolyte." Makes sense now, but a little convoluted.]

A former fellow Hotliner asked the other day what Chuck thinks of his newfound following. I haven’t asked, and I’m not going to bother him with this. This is partly because my answer was: I’m sure he’s aware of it, but I’m also sure he isn’t paying it that much attention.

I will give them this — the graphics are all pretty good, even this weird, stylized icon of the best goatee in cable news:

Chuck Todd icon

*Arguably bigger, since he gave me my first paying job in Washington.

The Gestalt of The Politico

Published by William Beutler on August 4, 2008 in Blogs vs. MSM, Hotline, Journalism and William Beutler. Closed

The Gestalt of the Politico

The Politico is produced just a couple floors below the office whence I type these words, and its staff has counted more than a few of my fellow former Hotline colleagues. Heck, I’ve got two of their promotional coffee mugs in my kitchen cupboard at home. So I take great interest in this American Journalism Review article on its first two years in existence. Here’s how it begins:

When veteran Washington Post political reporters John Harris and Jim VandeHei urged their bosses to create a Web site strictly dedicated to politics, management didn’t jump at the idea.

Less than two years later, Politico, the venture they envisioned – and left the Post to take on – is a success, and a politics-only site is “under study” at the Post, according to Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.

“The proof is in the figures,” says Harris, Politico’s editor in chief. In May, it had 3.5 million unique visitors and 25.1 million page views, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Editor & Publisher ranked Politico the 10th-most-visited newspaper site that month.

Although Harris would not reveal revenue or advertising numbers, he says Politico’s operations are already self-sustaining and the Allbritton Communications-owned publication should be profitable next year. Print advertising provides about 60 percent of its revenue, VandeHei says.

Under normal circumstances, nobody expects print ventures to be profitable in a short period of time. The last few years have been anything but normal, with newspapers in particular hemorrhaging readers and surgically removing staff writers.

Yet the Politico seems more relevant than ever. Though it is not without its flaws, perhaps this is what makes it so timely. And if it really is just a year from profitability, that’s a good sign for the news industry, right?

Not so fast, says Ezra Klein, in a post at The American Prospect:

Here you have this forward-thinking, primarily virtual venture to create a political news organization that marries old-school reporting values to the speed and the immediacy of the web and it actually works. A year-and-a-half after launch, it’s getting 3.5 million unique visitors per month and 25 million page views. And yet not only is it unprofitable, but 60 percent of its revenues come from advertising in the 27,000 circulation print version. In other words: Politico got the online readership it dreamed of, but it hasn’t come even close to figuring out how to monetize it.

This makes sense. After all, massively popular websites like Facebook, Digg and MySpace can’t figure out how to make money off their audiences — why should a news site? Especially why a news site that’s entirely about politics? Everyone knows that politics isn’t where the money is. Consider, for example, how James Joyner subsidizes his high-minded Outside the Beltway blog with the lower-brow Gone Hollywood.

But not so fast again, says Kevin Drum, at The Washington Monthly:

But there’s another way of looking at it: without a website, The Politico would be dead in the water. If, instead of being almost profitable, it were still hemorrhaging a few million bucks a year with break-even years away, there’s a pretty good chance Allbritton would just shut it down. …

Bottom line: Print gets you respect and big dollar advertisers. The web gets you buzz and a nice chunk of additional revenue. The future — part of it, anyway — belongs to those who can successfully combine multiple media platforms into a single profitable whole. So far, it looks like The Politico has done that.

The premise is more complicated, but fair: the whole point of The Politico was to create an online-offline (and even televised) news hybrid. The Albrittons wouldn’t have bankrolled it in the first place without a website. And I do like the takeaway: the print and web editions can be mutually reinforcing.

This works in a glorified company town like Washington, where lobbying firms and trade associations are always there to buy an ad in the hope of influencing lawmakers and their staff. If this model is replicable in Chicago or Cincinnati or Corvallis, I’m not sure how.

Plus, it’s more than a little discouraging for anyone thinking about trying to create an online-only news organization. Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo do more newsgathering than any twenty of the top political blogs on the right, but they’re still a far cry from being a true professional news organization like The Politico.

All that said, we need more Politicos. I wonder what David Simon would have to say about it.

The Battle of the Bills: Blog P.I. Does Bloggingheads.tv

Published by William Beutler on May 24, 2008 in Barack Obama, Bloggingheads.tv, Blogs vs. MSM, Debates, Hotline, John McCain, Journalism, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Lobbying, Metapost, Mickey Kaus, Netroots, New Media Strategies, Oregon, Web video, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

This past week I spent about an hour talking through a tiny iPhone bluetooth headset on Skype and staring at the built-in iSight of a MacBook Pro while talking to Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis. I did so at the invitation of Conn Carroll, who usually holds down the righthand slot on Bloggingheads.tv, while he was celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary (congrats, by the way). Bill was an upbeat, friendly debate partner, and so far it looks like the loyal Bloggingheads commentariat doesn’t want to kill me.

The show plays like a funky, freewheeling, not-ready-for-cable TV “Crossfire” with less point-scoring, featuring a recurring cast of quirky political bloggers and policy wonks. I’ve been a constant viewer/listener back to when it was just Bob and Mickey figuring it out as they went along.

I should warn, around the middle there are audio-video sync problems, so this might be a good time to subscribe to the audio-only Bloggingheads podcast in iTunes.

The New Hotlineness

Published by William Beutler on April 18, 2008 in Beltway media, Hotline, Seriously, Website Design and William Beutler. Closed

I’d been hearing the rumors for a few weeks but, finally, the new National Journal site design has had its debut. But on a Friday?

In Washington, bad news always gets released on Fridays. The idea is to bury it just as the week’s traditional news cycle is winding down — as reporters are racing to get out of, or heading out on the, town.

Is that what’s going on here? Here’s the page specific to The Hotline, so you be the judge:

The New Hotline website design on National Journal

It’s certainly much more modern than the National Journal website of old (see below right). You can’t tell from the screen shot, but there is just as much actual content on the page; it’s just been pushed below the fold. Now it resembles nothing so much as a wonkier version of Slate (which has had its own disastrous redesigns, not that I’m calling this one disastrous).

But that red is so neon it looks like it belongs on the cover of Wired, and for the moment it clashes badly with the colors of the sponsor’s advertisement.

Classic (Old) Hotline website designIt also looks odd next to the darker red, which is more representative of the colors used across the site. Indeed, click over to Congress Daily and National Journal (aka “The Magazine”) and you may think you’re losing your eyesight.

On the other hand, I count two links to my old online column/daily blog report, The Blogometer, apparently the only National Journal feature with two links on this particular page. That alone is enough to get a thumbs-up from me.

Well done, National Journal!