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Is OffTheBus Going Off Track Politically?

When Arianna Huffington and Jay Rosen announced their plan for OffTheBus early this year, I was excited by the prospect of a network of citizen journalists covering the 2008 presidential campaign. I even pondered the idea of volunteering as an OffTheBus professional mentor to the budding reporters.

The more developments I see at OffTheBus, however, the more skeptical I become about whether it can fulfill its promise of offering "a wide variety of voices and perspectives" on the 2008 campaign.

I was mildly surprised in June when Huffington and Rosen recruited their first two employees for the project and both had ties to the 2004 Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Amanda Michel is the project director for OffTheBus, and Zack Exley is its senior adviser and featured correspondent.

Both seem well-qualified for the jobs, albeit in a nontraditional way, but it struck me as unwise for Huffington and Rosen, whose personal politics are liberal, to pick not one but two liberals as their first hires. Robert Bluey of the conservative Heritage Foundation, where I serve as an adviser to the Center for Media and Public Policy, also questioned the wisdom of hiring political operatives as journalists.

Now comes the news that another liberal, veteran journalism Marc Cooper, will serve as OffTheBus' editorial coordinator and as a special correspondent at The Huffington Post.

Again, Cooper is well-qualified for the job. A press release outlined his stellar credentials: contributing editor to The Nation; columnist for LA Weekly; international and domestic political journalist for three decades; and articles, essays and interviews in publications like The Atlantic (whose parent company is my employer), Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, the Times of London and The Washington Post.

Rosen also made a strong case for why Cooper is right for this particular job: "It's rare to find someone with Marc's experience who is so open to the Web and to contributors who can come from anywhere. We couldn't pass that up."

But OffTheBus risks sending a confusing message to both its readers and potential contributors when all of the people at the top of the organization skew one direction politically. Will people of different persuasions really want to write for that kind of operation? And if they are reluctant to do so, how hard will Huffington, Rosen and Cooper work to recruit skeptics so OffTheBus doesn't go off track politically before the tour really gets started?

I still have hope for the project, especially when I see the array of volunteers OffTheBus is seeking. The volunteers, after all, are the heart of the idea, and if people across the political spectrum actually sign up for both meaty jobs like campaign finance researcher and creative ones like "wiki gardener," OffTheBus may well succeed.

But my hopes are not as high as they were six months ago.

Posted by Danny | 09:07 AM

Comments

Danny, The appearance of liberal bias at Off the Bus was discussed at length on Press Think. I was one of the people who wondered why the alliances struck didn't include some conservative voices. Jay Rosen replied that pragmatics of establish relationships and the availability of highly qualified people were the considerations that created the alignments. This seemed reasonable, but as you point out, a possibly fatal flaw.

I have been working with Off the Bus as a citizen journalist as time has permitted. My interests are truly bipartisan and in keeping with the idea of a local focus for citizens, I chose to criticize Barack Obama ("Obama's Green Screen") for his environmental stances, lack of action on a pollution threat to his constituents on Lake Michigan, and an unseemly acceptance of campaign contributions from an energy company, given his Senate committee assignments.

I was given full support by Off the Bus to report on one of liberal America's favorite sons. I will continue to try to reveal what kind of administration we are likely to get should any one of the candidates be elected.

Marilyn Ferdinand | 09.21.07 03:49 PM

Am I missing something but are the citizen journalists unpaid? And if so, has someone forgotten what it takes to get diversity of voices? Or is citizen journalism just the new way of pushing the value of writers down to zero?

lisa vives | 09.23.07 01:58 AM

We are unpaid, but having a voice is compensation for me, I assure you. I am a professional writer, by the way, but not in the same arena. Media has become so circumscribed, consolidated, and corporate-driven that blogging (also unpaid by and large) has exploded. If I had to wait for someone to hire me to get my views across, I've be writing from the Great Beyond.

Marilyn Ferdinand | 09.23.07 12:44 PM

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