Putting the blogosphere under a magnifying glass
On Thursday afternoon, I recorded my latest guest spot on Bloggingheads with Bill Scher. I pretty strenuously object to the argument he puts forth — that America necessarily voted for a progressive approach to government last Tuesday — I certainly didn’t persuade him, but will I persuade you? I guess you’ll just have to watch and see:
What I can offer are details about the Convention Hub microsites. There will be two, one for each convention, with video and blog coverage around the clock:
More about that software another time; all I can say is that it answers the questions I’ve asked about such analysis tools.
Meanwhile, the C-SPAN Convention Hub is already drawing praise from one of C-SPAN’s (few) notable critics. The Sunlight Foundation has differed with C-SPAN before over distribution of copyrighted C-SPAN video, so they are enthusiastic about the open nature of the Convention Hubs:
The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.
As a longtime C-SPAN junkie, I couldn’t be more proud to play a small part in this project. How dependent am I on the C-SPAN network?
The good news is that it’s a supportable addiction.
And by way of conclusion, a confession: I want this searchable video for my own reasons. On Election night 2004, The Hotline worked all through the night covering the coverage, as the election tipped from Kerry winning the exit polls to Bush winning the popular vote. If you’ve seen my Facebook photo, this is where that crazy image comes from.
As usual, C-SPAN cameras were in the office for Chuck Todd and Vaughn Ververs to offer recaps, also deep into the morning hours. Sometime around 3 o’clock in the morning, I informed friends watching the coverage from back on the West Coast to look carefully: As the cameras rolled, I picked up a plastic trash bin and… well, I danced through the background.
The waltz, I think.
I entered left with vulcanized dance partner, twirling across one shoulder, behind the talking head, past the other shoulder, exiting right. To this date, it’s still my best television appearance. And I look forward to the day, much sooner now, that I can embed this on Blog P.I.
Late last week I made my third appearance on Bloggingheads.tv with Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis; we talked about the politics of Twitter, whether #dontgo is a genuine movement or not, whether Obama is underperforming or overperforming, how to understand the different types of voters, why McCain’s “Celeb” ad was a success, veepstakes and the pointlessness thereof, including my favorite theory on why McCain will choose Romney. Check it out:
I might as well get this out of the way: I am not actually about to eat the viewer. It just looks that way.
Three is a trend in journalism, but two is all Blog P.I. needs, as completely separate but nevertheless intriguing comparisons of George W. Bush with Bruce Wayne (and vice versa) have been flying all across the Internets the last few days.
Making the rounds of the political blogosphere is an op-ed by novelist Andrew Klavan from today’s Wall Street Journal titled “What Bush and Batman Have in Common”:
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
It may also be worth noting that comic book writer and artist Frank Miller, author of the graphic novels “300″ and 1986’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” upon which all non-Schumacher Batmans since have been modeled, is working on a new Batman graphic novel: “Holy Terror, Batman!” Yes, it’s Batman vs. al-Qaeda.
The second Bush-Batman juxtaposition, which I first saw on Digg yesterday, is a series of Leno-esque person-on-the-street interviews by Philadelphia sketch comedy troupe Secret Pants. The interviewer has a set of quotes that were spoken either by President Bush from 1600 Pennsylvania or Adam West from the 1960s TV show. Passersby are asked to guess which. It’s definitely worth your 3:35:
This weekend I made my second appearance on Bloggingheads.tv’s “The Week in Blog” series opposite Bill Scher. I got the call sort of last-minute, so I wasn’t nearly as prepared this time as my first appearance last month. Yet I think I came across as better prepared. Maybe that has something to do with having already done it once; maybe it has something to do with not over-thinking it for a week beforehand.
We talked about liberal and conservative reaction to District v. Heller, the relative recent success of Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here” petition, Barack Obama’s stance on nuclear energy and John McCain’s awareness of the Internet.
P.S. Coincidentally, my colleague Jon Henke filled in on Bloggingheads just last week. And yes, this does probably does mean that New Media Strategies is taking over the world, one diavlog at a time.
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.
As I am frequently given to blogging about the first thing I see in my e-mail box each morning, and commenting on the extremely limited tools on John McCain’s campaign website, here the twain meet. This morning I woke up to find John McCain, or someone using his name, had subscribed to my FriendFeed account:
FriendFeed is one of the more recent Web 2.0 services on the scene, and some believe it could be the latest next big thing. Considering the McCain campaign’s sometimes uneven online strategy, this is a step in the right direction. It’s better to send your campaign out into the places where people are than to expect them to come to you, anyway. So, I subscribed in return:
And it’s the campaign, all right — the favorited video indeed shows up on the official McCain YouTube channel as the most recently favorited video.
Better still, the favorited video was uploaded by McCain Girls, the parodic creation of left-leaning humor website 23/6. Sure, the joke may be on McCain, but the McCain campaign is willing to laugh along with the joke. The video favorited is of McCain literally laughing along with it.
Obama, of course, is on FriendFeed as well. He also has more online content piped through it: Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. McCain’s camp only lists the official blog’s RSS feed and YouTube account.
I know that’s not all they’re doing. McCain is on LinkedIn; earlier this month the campaign made clever use of the surprisingly resilient socnet, asking a question of the site’s memebers and receiving more than 3,000 responses.
I’m a bit surprised that McCain’s camp appears not to be using Flickr. Surely someone is taking pictures; during the Fred Thompson campaign we kept the Flickr account updated constantly with photographs taken by Thompson family friend Jim Rydell. (We released all photos under a Creative Commons license, thus providing quality photos of Thompson that supporters could use.)
McCain doesn’t appear to be using Twitter at either likely account (here or here), though supporters are giving the campaign a presence (here and here) on the increasingly zeitgeisty socnet. McCain’s camp did create an account on Digg, but they haven’t used the account since late last year.
Maybe all of this is not crucial, but the more social networks a campaign uses, the likelier it is they will reach people they would not have otherwise. Democrats will do all they can to portray McCain as old and out of touch, so presenting him well him to the young and with-it denizens of these online communities should take on added importance. Meanwhile, fundraising seems to be improving a bit, so maybe Pat Hynes will get a few extra hands to take care of these things.
Not to turn Blog P.I. into a catalog of things I did last weekend, but on Saturday I sat on a panel at the Phillips Foundation’s fall retreat for recipients of its journalism fellowships (about which more below). My co-panelists were Jose Vargas from the Washington Post, Amy Schatz from the Wall Street Journal, and Abbi Tatton from CNN. I was a replacement fill-in, which is why I was the lone non-journalist — but hey, I was a licensed journalist not too long ago, so, close enough for (the discussion of) government work.
The subject was how technology is changing politics — a mandate broad enough to take it in almost any direction. And if anything, I was the wet blanket of the panel. My opening comments focused on how the Internet is changing politics in ways not unique compared to previous technologies, techniques and politics. I didn’t get all the details out on Saturday, but the argument went something like:
Television : Nixon/Kennedy Debate :: YouTube/Internet video : “Macaca”
Direct mail/voter files : Richard Viguerie’s first claim to fame :: E-mail lists/subscribers : Why John Kerry matters in 2008
Radio and blogging both gave candidates ways to bypass established media channels and speak directly to supporters and voters. Television and online video can reframe the public’s perception of political events. Direct mail then as e-mail now communicate around the media as well as solicit campaign funds from an (ideally) opt-in crowd.
Panels such as these are at their best when the most interesting comments come from the audience. One theme that emerged in discussion was how even print journalists are being asked to produce short video (and audio) segments for the Internet when reporting from the road. To some extent, each of my fellow panelists had witnessed or dealt with this issue. It’s an interesting and even logical development, as online ad revenues rise compared to the dead tree edition. One also has to also wonder how thin it stretches their already-dwindling reportorial resources. At least in the Morissettean sense, it’s ironic that the migration of news content to the web coincides with layoffs owing to competition from the web.
My friend Robert Bluey, also present, volunteered that his alma mater, Ithaca College, is now offering a course it calls “Backpack Journalism.” He explains in an interesting post at his own blog:
Students are given a backpack with a MacBook, video camera, digital camera, a recording device and other instruments to produce a story. After receiving their assignments, the students are dispatched to cover the story using multiple media.
I find this new kind of journalism fascinating. However, I also sympathize with working journalists who are primarily writers, who may now find themselves needing to acquire new skills to adapt to a changing industry. My co-panelists are among the lucky ones — I suspect they’ll learn new tricks more quickly than some of their older colleagues.
One of whom might be Michael Scully, former journalist, journalism professor and blogger (but not the writer from The Simpsons). I tend to share his fears about what “backpack journalism” will mean in some (many, most?) newsrooms:
If Backpack Journalism is about sending ONE person out into the field to report a story, than Backpack Journalism is a travesty. It’s an accountant’s dream but an editor’s nightmare. Accountants love it because you’re sending one person out into the field to produce the work of three people; it’s an editor’s nightmare because the quality of the work is diminished.
I submit that the true business model for New Media must be to send THREE people out into the field. Let one report, one produce, one shoot. Each skill is very important, each skill is very different, each skill has a professional value.
On the other hand, someone who could do all three well would be highly sought-after and accordingly compensated. If the job description caught on, it would presumably spur different kinds of students to enter journalism in the first place. Myself, I actually applied to film school out of high school, but instead pursued print journalism in-state, as I that proved more realistic. But if becoming a “backpack journalist” was an option at Allen Hall, I’d at least have given it the old college try. Heck, I might have even finished my Journalism double-major.
And you know, I bet we can fit this into a hastily-assembled anti-triumphalist SAT problem like the ones above:
Note: As I promised above, a bit more about the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship Program. They are presently seeking applicants for 2008. If you’re inclined toward constitutional democracy and classically liberal economics, and have less than ten years of journalism experience, then you (yes, you!) could land $50,000 to $75,000 to write on a topic of your choosing. Details here. Tell ‘em Blog P.I. sent you.
*I was also the only panelist with a client of current interest, so it made for a few interesting moments as the subject was indeed taken in almost any direction. Hats off to the Standard’s Michael Goldfarb for trying to get me to make news.
In an attempt to demonstrate that the argument made by Adam Bonin and echoed by Not Paul Begala in the previous post is not fait accompli, and to generously devote a post to NPB’s favored candidate rather than my own, and… oh, who am I kidding? I just have a crush on the self-described “Obama Girl,” whose modeling career is likely to get at least a small boost from this soon-to-go viral video (and so should Barely Political, whence it came):
It’s grade-A YouTube cheesecake for sure, but it also helps that the R&B parody lyrics effectively deploy its political references, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that they also have that so-bad-it’s-good quality:
You’re into border security Let’s break this border between you and me
But not everyone is smitten with Obama girl. From the comments:
This video is the nail on Obama’s coffin. The Republicans will have a field day with this trash. I hope someone has the good sense to yank it. It is disrespectful and insulting to a serious candidate. Bill Clinton is still stuck with his womanizing legacy.
Well… maybe if this came from Blue State Digital, and not a video-blogging version of Wonkette. As with many a YouTube comment section, the best comments, are often the ones that make the least sense:
I hope you Omabmagirl gets kicked out of temple. Also I want this spot off youtue. This spot slanders, ombama and is a way the other contenders might get a leg up. SHAME ON OMAMAGIRL. SHAME. You have gave you your intregty to make yourself fame for yourself.
That may or may not be the case, but still you have gave you your watching to make yourself comment for this video.
Much as the rightosphere disdains Markos Moulitsas, conservative bloggers do pay attention to what he says. But if they leap on him when he’s in the wrong, they can also give him credit when he gets something right. If you know the scene, you’ve probably already seen this from dKos last week:
Videotape everything they do All it takes is one “Macaca” incident to transform a race or create one where one didn’t exist. … And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It’s about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events. … The more material we amass today, the better we’ll able to use that video to support our efforts next year.
Little Green Footballs, among the few blogs from either side to warrant its own adversarial watchdog site, considered it perhaps better advice than he knew:
Excellent advice. To which I would add, don’t forget to take screenshots of everything the Kos Kidz do.Dean Barnett — Hugh Hewitt’s right-hand man — was more complimentary and, in a trend that would be repeated, took it seriously enough to build on the idea:
First of all, to give credit where it’s due, this is an excellent idea. Because I’m not really the call-to-action type, I’ll leave it to some other enterprising right wing pundit to market a similar effort for conservative activists. We really should get busy on this because Democrats are at least as tongue-tied and prone to blunders as Republicans. Need I remind you, John Kerry is up for re-election in ’08. His race alone should keep a half-dozen Republican digital camcorders busy.Matt Margolis from GOP Bloggers (and the late Blogs for Bush) found the strategy wanting, a distraction from the ideas that win campaigns:
I’m sorry. I just don’t agree. We should be above the sick game of gotcha politics. If there’s anything we should have learned from 1994 is that Americans respond to an agenda, and Republicans shouldn’t need to sink down to Kos’s level. I’d much rather see Republicans win on ideas than see Democrats lose because of some video showing an unflattering moment they’d sooner forget.
Perhaps noble, but in a follow-up post, Barnett took the realist position:
Politics ain’t beanbag; I would prefer our candidates and operatives knew as much.
And the good work of building on the idea continued. From the non-aligned John Stoddard:
Calling for an accumulation of “gotcha” moments is a strategy about nothing, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld. It’s not about persuading or inspiring voters. It merely reminds them that we are governed by two-faced narcissistic jerks. That’s why negative campaigning’s most notable effect is to suppress voter turnout. It doesn’t make voters say, ”Aha! Now I prefer X over Y.” It makes them say, “I was going to vote for Y, but now, ew.” Kos is right. If you turn off more Republicans than Democrats, you’ve improved your chances of winning. But no matter how much video you capture, you can’t depend on coming out ahead in the gotcha race. It only works if the other side lets its guard down and lets you off the hook when you make your own blunders. In the YouTube era, that’s basically an assumption that your opponents will commit professional suicide. Good luck with that.
More good advice from the Larry Sabato of GOP online consultants, David All:
The bottom line is that any serious campaign effort - from City Council to POTUS - should have a two camera strategy — one on the opponent and one on their own guy to help add context to a “macaca” moment and “flood the zone” to deflate organic YouTube search results.
And some unavoidable longer term questions from Bivings Group’s leading voice, Todd Zeigler:
So we’re in a situation where we want candidates to be authentic but are quick to punish them when they are. And the constant presence of voters with cameras ensures that there will be plenty of these gotcha moments. It seems to me that instead of creating a more open election, we may be creating one where the candidate that is the most on message and the most robotic is rewarded. It can be argued that it wasn’t YouTube that defeated George Allen, but his own lack of discipline on the stump. The candidate that makes the least mistakes wins.
Kos may not much impress ideo-journalistic Washington, but when he talks campaign strategy politico-journalistic Washington listens.