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October 31, 2007Kicking The Daily Kos Hornet's Nest
It's never a good idea in the long run to attack a blogger in hopes of gaining some edge in a political campaign. Attacking a blogger is like kicking a hornet's nest. Odds are good that you'll get stung not just by the blogger in question but by all of his or her swarming blog friends.
It's an even more foolhardy move to attack a blogger when your man is a longshot to win the race. Yet that is exactly what Oklahoma Republicans have done with a new Web site, apparently their first such "microsite," aimed at the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe.
The Cook Political Report currently ranks Inhofe's seat among the 13 that are "solidly Republican" in 2008. But the Oklahoma GOP may be inviting unwanted attention to the race with Rice's Web, a site aimed at Democratic challenger Andrew Rice.
The site attacks Rice for spending "a lifetime weaving a tangled web of left-wing political connections" -- including to the liberal blog Daily Kos. Rice's Web features the Daily Kos logo and says: "Andrew Rice is the poster child for extreme liberal organizations. He is a proud member of liberal activist site 'DailyKos' and frequently is a guest writer on the site."
Inhofe is secure enough in his seat at this point that the latest official GOP attack on Daily Kos seems unlikely to impact the race. But if Inhofe's campaign and state Republicans all of a sudden have to start swatting down a bunch of swarming bloggers, you'll know why.
Posted by Danny at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
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Ron Paul And David All
In politics and in life, people who can't win arguments often tend to get personal, indiscrimately attacking their rivals rather than sticking to the subject at hand. That's what happened this week as Republican bloggers debated the decision by RedState to ban supporters of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul from the site.
The target in this case: GOP new media consultant David All. The personal attackers: Erick Erickson of RedState; another GOP e-politics expert, Michael Turk of Kung Fu Quip; and blogger-turned-campaign-aide Lance Dutson, who is working to re-elect Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
All's cardinal sin was not toeing the GOP line as envisioned by RedState. At his techRepublican blog, All joined Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarter's in scolding RedState for banning Paul supporters.
"Generally, Republicans need to welcome Ron Paul (and all others willing to wear a Republican banner) to the debate and the discussion," All said. "If Ron Paul doesn't win the nomination, we need him to actively endorse and support the winner so that his supporters will use their energy to defeat Hillary [Clinton]."
It was a relatively mild criticism when compared with Morrissey's argument that "this doesn't hurt Paul's credibility as much as it does Redstate's." But rather than merely disagree with All about the "retarded vulture fringe" as he had with Morrissey, Erickson got personal.
He accused All of "riding our story into the media spotlight as a professional tech consultant" and of being "too enamored by the technology the Ron Paul supporters use." "I really don't want David being the tech strategist on the right the media goes to for comment if he's more dazzled by the bells and whistles than by the cause," Erickson wrote.
Turk, a competitor of All's in the e-politics world, took the attack up several notches with a post headlined "I've Lost What Little Respect For David All I Had Left."
"David is, by all accounts, a master of self-promotion," Turk wrote. "It's entirely possible that he made a conscious choice to take the contrarian position solely to further his agenda of making David everything that David can be. ... I think David is calculating and has come to the conclusion that taking these positions gets him noticed. I think that's why he took his post against RedState and circulated it to the media (as Erick alleges)."
When All responded, Turk pounced again. Among other things, he criticized All for not having embraced efforts to improve the RightRoots online fundraising site that failed miserably last year and for instead building a competing site, Slatecard.
Dutson, who still writes at Maine Web Report while serving as the Internet strategy director for Sen. Collins, rounded out the third component of the David All attack machine, and like Erickson and Turk, he had a chip on his shoulder about something All had written. Dutson voiced his irritation at All for having supported the Google search engine in a spat over a Collins advertising campaign.
"David All is providing a crass misrepresentation of the work that the rest of us are doing, he's proffering poorly deduced theories about how the right should use the Internet, and he's allowing the traditional media to paint Republicans as inept and childish when it comes to technology," Dutson wrote. "I've been fortunate enough to work with some extremely talented people in this world over the last few years, and it really bothers me that David All has become the public face of what is in reality a remarkable group of people."
He added that the GOP should not allow "self-appointed, self-serving hucksters like David to pass themselves off as leaders on the tech-right."
That was a whole lot of verbiage expended on David All -- none of which served to further the debate about whether RedState made the right call in banning anyone who supports Ron Paul.
Posted by Danny at 02:15 PM | Comments (13)
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The Center for Independent Media, which operates the blogs Colorado Confidential, Iowa Independent, Michigan Messenger and Minnesota Monitor, is expanding its operations to Washington and is looking for a couple of leaders to run the shop.
First on the list is a Washington news editor. "You will develop news, investigative and feature stories with a team of full-time reporters and part-time contract contributors," the job listing says. "You will combine the best of traditional journalism with the new paradigms of the Internet."
The Washington news editor will work with Jefferson Morley, who earlier this month decided to leave The Washington Post to become the center's national editorial director. "With Jeff's magazine experience from The Nation and New Republic, daily newspaper experience from The Washington Post, and track record as an editor of the Post's Web site, Jeff is ideally suited to help lead the way to the 21st-century newsroom," David Bennahum, the center's president and CEO, said in a statement.
The other job now being advertised for the center as a part-time (30 hours a week) managing editor. It entails training and supporting reporters, as well as recruiting new writers. The center is looking for candidates with at least two years of Washington experience in news or policy and also online news experience.
Here's a description of the outfit from the job listing: "The center's programs emphasize the importance of citizen-driven journalism as a critical founding principle of our nation, the positive role of democratically elected government in securing the common good and social welfare, and the continuing benefits of our founding culture of government by the people, for the people."
The center figured in a blog scandal last year when folks at the Minnesota Monitor clashed with Republican blogger Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed over the appropriate way to disclose financial relationships on blogs.
Posted by Danny at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)
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Note To Bloggers: Gripe And Ye Shall Receive
The liberal blog Think Progress took the Pentagon to task yesterday for playing favorites at the roundtables it has been holding with bloggers this year.
[T]he Pentagon has reserved space almost exclusively for conservatives and military bloggers. ... Despite the regular frequency of the “Blogger Roundtables,” progressive bloggers or anti-war military bloggers are rarely featured. Furthermore, small blogs like that of Fox News anchor Griff Jenkins are featured on the calls while more prominent progressive blogs are not.
Apparently the gripe was all about the folks at Think Progress angling for access to future roundtables -- and they got it. "Since publishing this post," an update said, "ThinkProgress has been in contact with the Pentagon, and they have agreed to allow us to participate in the bloggers roundtables."
That's an encouraging sign. Now if the President Bush, members of Congress and presidential candidates will heed the Pentagon's example, maybe blogger conference calls will produce less fluff and more newsworthy stuff.
They will be far more worthwhile for the bloggers and their readers when that happens.
Posted by Danny at 08:10 PM | Comments (0)
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You wouldn't think the two could possibly have anything to do with each other, but somewhere in the deep recesses of his war-obsessed mind, Matt Stoller of Open Left found a connection:
I used to think that snowflakes were six inches across since I had never seen snow and thought that snowflakes looked like the ones we cut out of construction paper [in Miami] to decorate Christmas trees. But then, I also supported the Iraq war. People are dumb sometimes.
Posted by Danny at 07:59 PM | Comments (0)
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In the 2004 election cycle, many journalists considered blogs an entertaining curiousity at best and an annoying, disruptive fad at worst. Plenty of my peers in the political reporting world actually hated blogs and slammed them at every opportunity, and they continued to do so through the next election cycle.
But in the 2008 cycle, the blog revolution has taken root in old media, as I always knew it would. The green-eyeshade gang in America's newsrooms has finally awakened to the power of the blog and realized that it's just a new, and in some ways superior, medium for delivering the news of the day. Political candidates have realized it, too.
That's why mainstream media outlets across the country now have political blogs -- and why candidates are looking for ways to get their messages into those blogs. Some of the MSM blogs -- I can't think of a more apt representation of media convergence -- are even written by old-timers who have realized that they will be left behind if they don't embrace the journalistic tools of tomorrow. To wit:
After a Des Moines Register blogger ridiculed Sen. Hillary Clinton online last spring, the New York Democrat telephoned the journalist to respond to his criticism, The Washington Post reports.Veteran reporter David Yepsen is one of many political bloggers on newspaper and magazine Web sites who have been getting attention from candidates and campaign officials. The nature of blogging, which enables constant updates, has altered the terrain of the election, pitting journalists and political strategists against one another over smaller items on shorter deadlines.
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said that when he worked on the 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry, "we were essentially at the mercy of the so-called old media. You had to struggle to get something into the paper. With the advent of these blogs, it's much easier to get your message out through accredited newspaper channels."
Posted by Danny at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
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OK, admittedly this is not an objective judgment on my part, as I wrote the headline for this morning's edition of Technology Daily. But I do rather like it:
Uncle Spam: E-Mail As A Recruiting Tool
It was for a story about the federal government using e-mail as a tool to lure potential interns and job candidates from the nation's colleges. The effort includes a Web site dubbed Making The Difference, too.
Posted by Danny at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)
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Chris Dodd Really Wants The Blog Vote
Now he's writing personally addressed letters to bloggers -- well, at least to one blogger, Duncan Black of Eschaton.
In the letter, the underdog Democratic presidential candidate outlines the possibilities for defeating a bill that includes language for telecommunications companies that have helped the Bush administration wiretap terrorism suspects. Dodd, a senator from Connecticut, also promotes a page on his presidential Web site dedicated to the subject of preventing "telecom amnesty."
Dodd's emphasis on that issue over the past several days has won him kudos across the liberal blogosphere.
"I'd like to see a little more spine, frankly, on these issues," he wrote in a letter that he signed simply as Chris. "People tell us they want to lead, but a little leadership right now would certainly be welcomed on these questions. I don't want to, but I'm not afraid to do this alone. "
Posted by Danny at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)
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Christopher Dodd has hovered in the bottom tier of Democratic presidential candidates most of this year, but he is starting to look like the next Howard Dean, at least to the netroots that briefly helped Dean rise to the top of the Democratic presidential heap in the 2004 race.
"There's something brewing on the left side of the Web," Micah Sifry wrote at TechPresident, "and it just might mean good news for Chris Dodd's presidential candidacy."
A sampling of the evidence:
-- Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos: "Dodd is now the go-to guy." Ari Melber of The Nation basically seconded my point about the potential impact of top bloggers, noting, "When a politico like Moulitsas validates an underdog candidate, his readers are more likely to take a second look."
-- The Daily Kos straw poll yesterday: Dodd finished second, trailing John Edwards by 10 percent.
-- Dodd's live Web chat at Firedoglake today.
-- And Duncan Black of Eschaton did his part to trigger a fundraising Dodd mania: "[I]t's useful to use the power of my mighty blogs to nudge the candidates one way or another, if possible, and so I appreciate the 217 of you who demonstrated your support for Dodd's actions by contributing $11,861 to his campaign."
Dodd's campaign, aided by Internet expert Tim Tagaris, has been the focus of similar spurts of netroots activity during the year, but this one seems to run deeper. It is more reminiscent of what the Dean campaign experienced in June 2003.
By that October, according to then-Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi in "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Dean had risen to the top of the polls and some media outlets were all but saying the Democratic nomination was his. Talk of a vice-presidential pick had even surfaced. (Trippi, by the way, is now winning kudos for his work on the Edwards campaign.)
It's too early to say whether the netroots enthusiasm for Dodd has that much staying power -- or whether it will move offline -- but he clearly struck a chord last week with his move to block Senate action on a foreign intelligence bill. And if Dodd mania does generate a Dean-like rise at the same rate, Dodd could be in a better position than Dean because he would be piquing just as the voting starts a few months from now.
Dodd is still quite a longshot for the Democratic nomination, but he is clearly winning bloggers and thus increasing his odds at influencing "the people."
UPDATE: OK, maybe Dodd is more like Dean than I thought -- only in the flame-out sense. The "hockey stick" rise that Trippi described Dean's campaign as experiencing in 2004 remains elusive for Dodd.
Posted by Danny at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
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RedState Bans Ron Paul's 'Annoying' Fans
You might think that people who have been around the blogosphere as long as the innovators at RedState would have more sense than to ban from their blog an entire group of people based on their support of one candidate -- a Republican presidential candidate no less. But you would be wrong.
We had a summary of the story from The Politico this morning in Technology Daily:
A prominent conservative blog has placed a ban on all commentary related to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul from readers who are recent arrivals to the site. Administrators at RedState made the move because Paul's online supporters had become "annoying, time-consuming and bandwidth-wasting."People adding to the debate are welcome, RedState Managing Editor Erick Erickson said. "But they're just coming to promote [Paul]." He said he already has received hundreds of complaints about the ban, but many of his readers are happy with it.
Who cares if a bunch of RedState's readers are happy with the move. That just goes to show that too many folks who walk in the echo chambers of the blogosphere don't know a bad decision when they see one.
John Hawkins of Right Wing News said he understands RedState's frustration with Paul's fanatical online supporters but questioned the ban. Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, another conservative blogger, was more blunt.
Morrissey ironically noted that Leon Wolf, the RedState director who announced the ban against Paul's unpaid "shills," once worked as a paid employee of former GOP presidential candidate Sam Brownback. Morrissey then wrote:
[T]his doesn't hurt Paul's credibility as much as it does RedState's. While Paul's supporters tend toward the annoying and repetitive, they have less impact because we can easily engage them and counter their arguments. Banning them simply for their support for a candidate seems more like an admission that RedState lacks that ability.
Amen to that. If RedState's new policy is that it will ban diarists and commenters just for being "annoying, time-consuming and bandwidth-wasting," the directors might as well shut the blog down now. If you build a blog community around the idea of diaries and comments, then you shouldn't start blocking people because you don't like their personalities.
RedState predictably is sticking by its decision despite criticism from Morrissey. "The [Paul supporters] that have lasted six months already got grandfathered in, and the ones who can maintain will be added on an ad-hoc basis; the rest can write all the bitter screeds that they like -- somewhere else," RedState blogger Moe Lane wrote. "And we'll take our chances on whether this alienates enough people to matter."
Posted by Danny at 03:40 PM | Comments (27)
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I haven't had a roundup in a while, so here are some blog bits to start this (thankfully) rainy day:
-- A debate about whether righty bloggers are out of touch with American conservatives. (The Evangelical Outpost and Eye On '08)
-- A technical review of the Internet shutdown in Burma. (OpenNet Initiative), plus thoughts from Matt Stoller of Open Left.
-- Stoller also has an opportunity for a progressive to bash Hillary Clinton.
-- "Barack Obama's honeymoon with the liberal blogosphere is over." (The Trail)
-- A journalist's advice to bloggers: "Quit the navel-gazing and start reporting" -- perhaps like the folks who cover disasters in the Web 2.0 world.
-- Editor 2.0: The journalistic job description of tomorrow. Sounds like the Heritage Foundation is headed in that direction with its latest move at Heritage.org. Rob Bluey apparently isn't busy enough at Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy (for which I am an adviser), so now they've made him editor-in-chief of Heritage.org, too. He's looking for a No. 2 to hire.
-- Free copies for bloggers of a book about blogs and the Web. (Concurring Opinions)
-- An online video how-to guide from ConvergeSouth over the weekend.
Posted by Danny at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
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Attack Ads Against The Democratic Congress
The National Republican Congressional Committee is soliciting online contributions for an advertising contest aimed at the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the idea has won qualified praise from one Democratic blogger.
Todd Beeton of MyDD called the launch of the contest "pretty decent" and said, "This is a smart move for a committee that has no money to pay for its own ads."
But Chris Bowers at Open Left isn't convinced that the plan will work based on early entries and the paltry $500 prize.
"Admittedly, the campaign is only one day old, but I'm surprised there haven't even been more joke entries by now," Bowers said. "An inauspicious beginning, to say the least."
Posted by Danny at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
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Classic Anti-Blogger Quotes
Chris Bowers is compiling a list of them over at Open Left.
Posted by Danny at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)
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When members of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund gather in Washington for their annual meeting Monday, they will have some new reading material to keep them informed: the new Ideas for Development blog.
The blog has an all-star cast of players on the world economic scene:
-- Kemal Dervis, administrator of the U.N. Development Program;
-- Abdou Diouf, general secretary of the International Organization of La Francophonie;
-- Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank;
-- Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization;
-- Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development;
-- Jean-Michel Severino, managing director of the French Development Agency;
-- Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program.
And a press release about the blog adds: "Partnerships will enable other development specialists to take part in the debate. These guest commentators, coming from [nongovernmental organizations] ... and universities ... will guarantee a lively debate and a broad range of information."
"Our ambition is to foster a genuine and informed debate between the contributors on the one hand, and between the contributors and the public on the other," according to the site's about page. "Given their variety of their experiences, contributors have come to foster different visions of development. The debates held on the blog, which aim to be wide-ranging and free, are expected to contrast with expert discussions, too often held in small circles."
The creators of the blog show themselves to be just a wee bit out of touch with the online world, however, when they say that Ideas For Development is "contrary to most blogs" because it involves several personalities. Some of the most-traveled blogs in the political and policy worlds are group blogs. Why the creators tried to make themselves sound more innovative than they are is beyond me.
Posted by Danny at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
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My analysis last week that Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga could change the dynamics of the presidential race by formally endorsing a Democrat in the primary has stirred some debate.
My entry was only marginally about the kingmaking potential of Kos. I mentioned his influence in the Democratic Party only to buttress my argument that endorsements by branded bloggers carry much more weight in these new media days than the tired and utterly predictable endorsements by anonymous newspaper editorial boards.
But my passing reference to Kos became the focus when Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo quoted it at the start of an interview with the man himself.
Conn Carroll, a National Journal colleague who walks in the same blog circles as me for The Hotline's Blogometer, disagreed with my analysis. He argued that Kos has all but endorsed Barack Obama (though Kos picked Christopher Dodd as "the go-to guy" over Obama yesterday) and that Daily Kos readers are "a pretty non-comformist bunch" anyway.
The latter point certainly is true. As I said this summer in a debate about the "Politics 2.0" package in Mother Jones, "There is no Boss Tweed of the blogosphere, and I don't think there ever will be." Kos' readers do and will make their own decisions about which Democratic presidential contender to support.
But that doesn't mean an endorsement from Kos couldn't change the dynamics of the race. His opinions do matter to his readers, including other prominent liberal bloggers, and those who are undecided voters in the presidential contest could well be swayed by Kos' views.
What's more, Kos has shown time and time again how effectively he can financially rally his readers behind anointed candidates. Money can change the dynamics of any political race, and if Kos all of a sudden started promoting contributions to Obama or Dodd, they could expect an online rush of funds.
The cash might not help either one of them win the Democratic nomination -- remember, Kos picked Howard Dean in 2004 and he washed out quickly -- but it could make them more competitive in a key early state. And if they scored higher than expected in, or even won, such a contest, big donors and big media might wake up to the potential of Kos' favorite son.
Blogs have the same kind of trickle up effect in politics as they do in journalism, and branded bloggers like Kos are the ones at the base of the long tail of politics. Politicians who win them as friends will have a better chance of influencing "the people."
UPDATE: As if to prove my point, Kos mentions Dodd as the go-to guy, and suddenly Dodd mania begins.
Posted by Danny at 11:37 AM | Comments (1)
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As noted in Technology Daily this morning
Some observers have been taken aback by the amount of negative campaign techniques being used by Mississippi candidates in this year's contests. AP reports that experts have credited bloggers and actively engaged interest groups with the amount of negative campaign advertisements.
Marty Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, said online activists have grown adept at catching the attention of mainstream media outlets who can broadcast their concerns to larger audiences.
"It's no different than what you did 50 years ago, leaning across the back of a truck at the country store," Wiseman said. "We just didn't have the Internet."
(My footnote: The story casts aspersions on bloggers in the lead but does not detail any negative attacks by bloggers or provide any links. In other words, it's a lame and poorly sourced story in terms of blogs -- but worth noting if only for that reason.)
Posted by Danny at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
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Who's The Most Web-Savvy Lawmaker?
Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation thinks it's Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
"The senator's new Facebook page is already buzzing with activity," Bluey said. "And he already has 20 people following him on Twitter less than a day after signing up. In today's modern world, it's encouraging to see leaders like DeMint take full advantage of these tools."
DeMint certainly would be in the running, at least on the GOP side, if there were an official inside-the-Beltway Internet contest. He was one of the party's early adopters of online video.
But what say ye folks on the Hill? Who would be crowned king and queen of Web 2.0? Go ahead, brag about your efforts in the comments section so all of us can learn who's doing what.
Posted by Danny at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
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The results of this week's special election in Massachusetts' 5th District made the news -- in case you missed it, Democrat Niki Tsongas mustered a surprisingly narrow victory over Republican Jim Ogonowski and was sworn in to office today -- but you may not have heard that earlier this month, a television station in the state kicked bloggers out of its studio at a debate between the candidates.
It happened Oct. 5. Charley Blandy and David Kravitz of Blue Mass Group initially were allowed into the NECN studio to cover the Ogonowski-Tsongas debate. But when Ogonowski's campaign asked that the bloggers be booted, NECN obliged the request.
"We were just unceremoniously hustled out of the studio because 'our organization' had 'endorsed Tsongas,'" Kravitz wrote. "... I asked whether, if The [Boston] Globe had endorsed Tsongas, they would be permitted to sit in the studio. No answer."
Presence in a studio is not necessary for debate coverage -- in fact, we journalists were in a completely separate building at the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate in July -- so the bloggers at Blue Mass Group were not silenced by the disruption. But the episode triggered a discussion about whether bloggers should be given credentials to such events and be treated like journalists.
Here's what the opposing campaigns had to say in the Lowell Sun about Blue Mass Group's bloggers being relocated:
"Supporters weren't allowed in the studio," Ogonowski spokesman Barney Keller said. "They're her supporters, and they broke the rules.""We certainly believe that Blue Mass Group should have been allowed to stay," Tsongas spokeswoman Katie Elbert retorted. "We're into including people, not excluding people."
WGBH in Boston also covered the story in a segment on "Beat The Press." And Melissa Ryan at MyDD added her views: "Are bloggers journalists? Is the question even relevant? Bloggers are media and smart politicians appreciate any local media coverage."
The discussion prompted one diarist at Blue Mass Group to ponder the future of blog (and journalistic) ethics:
Should some of us, should I, join the Society of Professional Journalists and attempt to raise the journalistic standards of blogging? ... Should Blue Mass Group, or some of the very good diarists here as individuals take that step in adopting the standards put forth in the code of ethics above? Is BMG or any other blog site prepared to ban, delete and recant unethical diaries or diarists? Will there some certification board be created to uphold the journalistic integrity of member blogs? A "Society of Ethics in Weblogs?" Are those here and elsewhere prepared to give up their right to rant in order to preserve the ideal?I think that it's coming for certain, and when it takes hold, the world of journalism will change as much as it did when the first news was broadcast over the airwaves.
Too many bloggers ridicule the idea that they even need to think about ethical practices for our emerging medium, so it was good to see at least one of them thinking out loud about the issue.
Posted by Danny at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)
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A Blog-Inspired Dose Of Democratic Debate
[Cross-posted at AirCongress]
It is no secret by now that I was unimpressed with the Democratic presidential debate that CNN and YouTube hosted this summer. I have no greater expectations for the similar one planned with Republican candidates next month.
But as of today, there is a new, Internet-inspired presidential debate in the works that I think holds out much more promise -- in no small part because it is the brainchild of people who are directing traffic at the crossroads of politics and technology.
We mentioned the effort in a brief at Technology Daily just moments ago:
The blog techPresident is inviting people to submit video questions for an upcoming online presidential debate next month that will feature both the Democratic and Republican contenders.The blog's readers will have a chance to vote on the top 10 questions, which then will be put to the candidates on Nov. 14. The candidates will have about a month to post their responses, and online readers will vote on whether the candidates really answered the questions posed to them.
The co-creators of 10Questions.com, Andrew Rasiej, Micah Sifry and David Colarusso, said having the wisdom of the crowd select the questions and give feedback on the answers finally uses the Internet as a communications hub and a two-way conversation. In a statement, they said they are optimistic that 10Questions.com will be "the first truly people-powered online presidential forum in history."
Adding e-politics heft to the idea, the forum has been endorsed by top bloggers across the political spectrum, including: Crooks & Liars, Daily Kos, Firedoglake, Hot Air, The Huffington Post, Hugh Hewitt, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, MyDD, Open Left, Pajamas Media, PrezVid, Raw Story, Patrick Ruffini, RedState, Right Wing News, techRepublican, Townhall and The Truth Laid Bear.
The New York Times editorial board and MSNBC.com also are affiliated with 10Questions.com.
The format is superior to the CNN/YouTube debates in at least three ways:
-- Internet users will pick the questions and get the chance to vote on the answers.
-- The questions will be submitted to candidates in both parties, so attempts to game the debate with gotcha questions aimed at one party or the other will be more difficult.
-- Questioners will not be limited to submitting their questions through one service. There is more to the video-sharing world than YouTube, and this way, the debate will be more about promoting the best questions than the host companies.
The one potential pitfall I see is that people can be a bit ornery on the Internet. Unless a veto of some sort is built into the system for selecting questions, we could see another question asked by a snowman, or online supporters of Ron Paul could crash the 10Questions gate by forcing Paul-friendly questions to the top.
Then again, maybe that's the point of 10Questions. If online voters, rather than CNN or YouTube, want to hear a snowman ask a question or think Ron Paul is the man, maybe that's just the dose of democracy the presidential debates need.
Posted by Danny at 04:27 PM | Comments (1)
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The House yesterday passed a bill aimed at shielding journalists and some bloggers from having to disclose their anonymous sources to the government. Technology Daily reported on the development this morning. Here's our summary of the news as reported in other publications:
The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to shield reporters from federal prosecution for refusing to divulge their news sources or information except in a few circumstances. CongressDaily (subscription required), The Washington Post, News.com and the Los Angeles Times report that the vote was 398-21.Under the bill, journalists engaged in news-gathering activities, including bloggers, still could be compelled to disclose information on sources if needed to prevent an act of terrorism. The House adopted language to let judges consider the public interest in forcing disclosure in cases involving leaks that could be harmful to national security, not just criminal cases.
But the bill has too many restrictions to please Matt Stoller of Open Left. He said the requirement that a "substantial portion" of a blogger's livelihood come from gathering and publishing news will exclude most bloggers, including himself.
"I have no opinion as to whether shield laws are a good idea or not," Stoller said, "but it's worth noting that this law doesn't cover amateurs, consultants like me, people like Steve Clemons [of The Washington Note], diarists on [Daily Kos] or [bloggers] who derive most of their income from other sources. I don't understand why 'gathering and publishing news and information for dissemination to the public' isn't a good enough standard."
UPDATE: Add Duncan Black of Eschaton and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos, two of the left's top bloggers, to the list of skeptics about the House-passed bill. "Boo defining journalism based on whether it makes you money," Black said.
Kos was a bit more circumspect, acknowledging that there are legitimate concerns about people "availing themselves of these shield protections by merely throwing up a quick fake blog." But he said the Senate could improve the bill "by changing 'substantial financial gain' to something along the lines of 'substantial publishing history.' Or by giving authors protection only from suits arising from legitimate published materials."
What he apparently does not realize is that the Senate may be even less inclined than the House to offer legal protection to bloggers. Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that does not specifically mention bloggers.
Posted by Danny at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)
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Police tasered and shot with a beanbag gun a man who was videotaping a police search of a friend's property without a warrant. Now the man is suing the police.
This part made me laugh: "The police report helpfully explains that the force used on [Frank] Waterhouse (who was standing far off on the edge of the property) was necessary because, 'He had refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon.'"
I suppose in the Terrorist Age, where commercial airplanes, razor blades and shoes can be used as weapons, it's not outside the realm of possibilities that a videocamera could be, too, but that official explanation is pretty lame. Methinks the police just didn't want to be YouTube stars.
(Via Instapundit)
Posted by Danny at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)
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House Minority Whip Roy Blunt has redesigned the whip office's Web site, and he seized the change as an opportunity to officially join the blogosphere. The site has a new blog called Whip Journal.
"It goes without saying there’s a lot that goes on inside the halls of Congress that goes unnoticed by the American people," Blunt, R-Mo., said in the opening entry. "In some small way, I hope to shed some additional light on the important work we do here, with an eye on helping to cultivate a better understanding of the critical issues we face as a nation."
It's encouraging to see congressional leaders finally realizing that blogs are not just a passing fad, and I'd like to think that this new blog will be live up to Blunt's promise of more transparency about the legislative process. But as someone who has studied past leadership blogs, color me skeptical. Blunt's use of the phrase "small way" in describing the innovations to come seems most apt.
Political leaders by and large are too cautious to be good bloggers themselves, and with rare exceptions -- like The Gavel, run by the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- even sites not built around actual blogging by the leaders are uninformative at their best and forums for useless flackery at their worst.
That doesn't mean innovation is impossible, but Blunt's new online push appears to be a bit slow out of the gate.
For starters, it's all about him. Pelosi's office uses its blog to promote the House majority as a whole, featuring video clips of numerous members in committee and on the House floor. Blunt's multimedia library has two clips of, you guessed it, Blunt. Both are dated, one from early August and the other from June.
And the blog? Well, it launched yesterday, a day on which the House voted to extend a moratorium on Internet taxes and also, ironically enough, to grant legal protection to bloggers who use anonymous sources. But to get the blog news (and more), you'll have to go to The Gavel.
Blunt was smart to upgrade his site for the new media era. It just looks like he has a bit more to learn about how to use those tools effectively.
Posted by Danny at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
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I haven't had any time to blog here until today because I've been focused on a blog-related project at my day job as the editor of Technology Daily. The subject: the push to make permanent the moratorium on taxing Internet access that will expire Nov. 1 unless Congress acts before then.
Yesterday, the House passed a bill that would extend the moratorium another four years, but stakeholders in the Internet community still want a permanent ban. With a deadline looming and Republican leaders in Congress framing the issue as a backdoor attempt by Democrats to raise taxes down the road, this seemed like a good time to try something new at our blog, Tech Daily Dose.
In a nutshell, we are asking guest bloggers to move the debate about Internet taxes onto the Internet. We're hoping they will write blog posts and engage in debate with commenters and other bloggers as the debate moves forward over the next several days -- the idea being that our sources know more than we do and both we and our readers can become better informed by hearing what those sources have to say.
You can get more details in my introductory post and follow the debate for yourself at our "Net Tax Talk" page.
And if you have a dog in the Internet tax fight and would like to contribute to this attempt at interactive media innovation, you can e-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Posted by Danny at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
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John Aravosis of Americablog thinks that is a distinct possibility under the Bush administration's current philosophy about anti-terrorism surveillance.
Aravosis and I exchanged e-mails recently over my post about MySpace buying space for political bloggers at a MySpace online presidential debate. Aravosis was one of the bloggers.
Confused about how that may make me a target for spying? Here's Aravosis' explanation of the three degrees of separation between me and potential terrorists in Pakistan:
Any one of you who have ever e-mailed me, or chatted with me by phone, may very well have had your name included in the government's domestic spying sweep.Why? Because a good friend of mine is Pakistani-American, and she regularly chats with folks in Pakistan. And under our government's new standard, if you chat with me and I chat with someone who chats with someone in Pakistan, then the government has the right to look at the details of your communication with me.
Of course, it being a well-known fact that I keep company with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, I've probably been a surveillance target for quite a while now. Such is the burden of misinformed fame.
Posted by Danny at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)
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The Endorsement Game: Newspapers vs. Blogs
Newspaper endorsements have been a mainstay in politics for generations, but as the reach of influence of papers has waned, so has the power of their recommendations to voters.
Politicians still covet endorsements and subject themselves to grillings before editorial boards to win them because the written votes of approval make great fodder for press releases and campaign literature. But especially at the national level, media endorsements of candidates long ago lost their political punch. Honestly, do Joe Six-Pack and Jane Soccer-Mom even read them anymore?
The writing is tired, and the candidate picks are predictable. And because the endorsements are bestowed by anonymous editorial boards, as opposed to "branded" individuals, they hold little, if any, sway with voters.
In this revolutionary era of new media, however, blog endorsements can carry far more weight. Bloggers made now-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean a household name in 2004, and in the 2008 presidential race, they have had a similar albeit so far more limited "long tail" effect for Republican candidate Ron Paul. Dean screamed his way out of the running early and Paul is still in the also-ran category, but the fact that they have been noticed at all demonstrates the impact of positive blog publicity.
Blog endorsements matter because politically engaged "influentials" who shape opinions in their local communities read blogs. They also matter because leading bloggers, unlike editorial boards, are known entities. A presidential endorsement from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos could change the dynamics of the Democratic race -- which is no doubt a factor in Moulitsas' decision to stay neutral thus far this year -- and state-based bloggers have even greater potential to swing electoral votes one way or the other.
These new media endorsements matter enough that smart campaigns track them, and now Micah Sifry of techPresident is trying to do the same on a broad scale.
"If you've decided on your presidential candidate, let us know," Sifry wrote last week. "You can start by just adding a comment with your name, blog URL, link to a post with your endorsement (if any), and if you feel like it, your city and state. We'll build a directory to make it easy to find out who is supporting whom, and we'll make it in such a way that it's easy to add additional names."
This subtle, ongoing shift in the endorsement game is further evidence that live pixels, not dead trees, are the future of both politics and journalism.
Posted by Danny at 09:28 AM | Comments (2)
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Some Democratic bloggers are not happy with the stance that several congressional Democrats have taken in favor of renewing the law that governs foreign intelligence surveillance. In particular, the bloggers oppose legal immunity for telecommunications companies suspected of helping the Bush administration with such spying.
Matt Stoller of Open Left is one of the leading critics, and now he is compiling the statements of Democratic lawmakers and congressional candidates who, like him, opppose telecom immunity.
It's an interesting and informative tactic, one that bloggers across the political spectrum should emulate for all manner of issues.
Posted by Danny at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)
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Slatecard: The ActBlue Of The Right
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the online Democratic fundraising site ActBlue should be quite flattered by yesterday's birth of Slatecard, a tool designed to help activists on the right raise money for their favorite political candidates and causes.
ActBlue has been a fundraising success for Democrats long enough that bloggers on the left complain about politicians treating bloggers who raise money through the site as just ATM machines. GOP Internet activists tried to imitate ActBlue's success late in the 2006 election by creating a fundraising mechanism known as Rightroots, but they managed to raise only a token amount of money and most of their anointed candidates lost.
David All, a GOP new media consultant who co-founded Slatecard, hopes the tools in his new service will prove more beneficial.
"The goal of Slatecard was always to be much more than just a top-down, 'online shopping cart' which would likely only be used the last few months of a campaign," he wrote. "Instead, the Slatecard utility embraces effective Web 2.0 technologies and collaborative principles to provide a robust directory of candidate information which will not only be used by a financial donor, but by anyone looking for more information about a candidate’s online activity."
Posted by Danny at 08:57 AM | Comments (1)
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Bottling The Power Of The Blog
Technology consultant Rob Neppell, better known by the pseudonym N.Z. Bear in the blogosphere, has launched a company whose mission is connect clients with "the power of blogs and new media." Kithbridge Inc. is based in California, but I suspect its client list eventually will reach inside the Beltway, if it doesn't already.
Neppell's online footprint already stretches virtually to Washington. His ties include:
-- Co-founder of Porkbusters, a Web site that last year scored a noteworthy legislative success in fighting special-interest earmarks in federal spending bills. The group helped expose Washington's best-kept "secret hold" on a bill to make the funding for such projects more transparent.
-- Founder of The Victory Caucus, a blog-based alliance that defends the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. That effort earned Neppell and other select war-friendly bloggers invitations to a private chat with President Bush.
-- Creator of the blog-tracking system known as The TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem.
-- "Blogger Of The Year" for 2007, as recognized at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March.
-- And adviser to the Heritage Foundation's Center for Media and Public Policy. (I am also a member of the advisory board.)
So what does Neppell's company have to offer folks in Washington who need to keep tabs on the blogosphere? Here's the short version: customized blog-tracking reports to identify important posts and analyze trends; customized blog feeds that let clients incorporate relevant posts onto their own pages; and strategic consulting about blog content and outreach to bloggers.
"If you're smart, you'll hire him!" said Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, also a media adviser at Heritage's media center.
Posted by Danny at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
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Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine think it's a bad idea for politicians to try to adopt in the blogosphere the same "false voice" they have employed in ghost-written columns and press releases for generations.
I agree. This is a new media era, Washington. Your readers expect you to behave differently than you do in old media, and you only irritate us when you send your flacks into the blogosphere on your behalf.
Posted by Danny at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)
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When MySpace and MTV hosted an interactive debate with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Sept. 27, six bloggers were there on the MySpace dime.
The social-networking site paid the travel expenses of five liberal bloggers: John Aravosis of Americablog, Chris Bowers of Open Left, Georgia Logothetis of Daily Kos, politics editor Jen Moseley of Feministing, and Jonathan Singer of MyDD. One conservative blogger, Jim Geraghty of National Review Online's The Campaign Spot, also agreed to take the trip.
"It's a plane ticket and a hotel room" and "a couple meals," said Mike Krempasky, a co-founder of the conservative blog RedState who now works at Edelman, a public relations firm that represents MySpace. He would not provide an overall tab for MySpace or specific numbers on the costs incurred by each blogger. That information also was not available on the blogs.
The participating bloggers were not required to write about the event, but Krempasky said MySpace insisted that they disclose the arrangement if they did blog. "It's in MySpace's interest to make sure folks see this as transparent," he said, adding that "I don't see anything nefarious about it as long as people are talking about it."
Krempasky said the deal between the bloggers and MySpace was not on par with the luxurious junket that 25 bloggers took to Amsterdam in February 2006 courtesy of the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions and the advertising firm Blogads.
Getting blog coverage of events poses a "great dilemma" for the PR world, Krempasky said. On the one hand, firms believe that bloggers with niche audiences are of value and their voices matter. On the other hand, few bloggers have the budgets of big media for traveling to events.
Although MySpace did not require the bloggers to write about the presidential debate, it wanted to give bloggers the opportunity for live coverage. "You want to make as much access available as possible," Krempasky said.
An unknown number of bloggers declined invitations from MySpace. Krempasky would not name them or their reasons for doing so, but he noted that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich launched his American Solutions venture the same day as the debate, and some bloggers attended it.
The three bloggers who attended the Gingrich event -- Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation, Matt Lewis of Townhall.com and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters -- paid their own way, according to Bluey. Bluey also said via e-mail that Heritage did not pay the travel expenses of Morrissey and other bloggers this week when they came to Washington for Heritage's dinner with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In the case of the MySpace debate, Krempasky defended the company's coverage of the bloggers' expenses by noting that invitations were extended across the political spectrum. He added that National Review Online's Geraghty could not be expected to say nice things about Edwards.
But why would MySpace care whether Edwards got good press or bad? The Web firm only cares about its own press -- and their bloggers gave them plenty of love.
MySpace bought goodwill from Geraghty. A former colleague of mine at the now-defunct VoxCap.com, he thanked "the good people at MySpace" in a post that jokingly downplayed any ethical concerns about him taking money from a company whose event he was covering. "If you see me posting 'MySpace is the greatest ... MySpace is the greatest.' in the coming days," he wrote, "then it represents my unvarnished opinion, or they have placed some sort of subliminal message device in my hotel room."
Daily Kos' Logothetis, meanwhile, heaped praise on MySpace for its "innovative" and "fascinating" debate format. "Simply put, it's like live-blogging in the candidate's face. Now that sounds like fun." Logothetis said she would have written about the debate regardless of whether MySpace paid her way to New Hampshire. It was a bit odd, then, that she didn't actually live-blog the debate and hasn't written anything about it since.
Geraghty, Americablog's Aravosis and MyDD's Singer actually did cover the debate on their blogs. Aravosis and Geraghty only disclosed MySpace's payment of their travel expenses in their initial posts. Singer mentioned the arrangement in all related posts, sometimes prominently.
Bowers and Moseley also disclosed the arrangement to their readers, though they did so with snarky tones.
"I have been told that I must legally disclose that MySpace is paying for my travel expenses to be here," Bowers wrote at Open Left. "So, well, MySpace is paying for my travel expenses to be here." Moseley added that "it's kind of funny to think that Rupert Murdoch [whose News Corp. owns MySpace] bought me a plane ticket. I should have some gay sex and get an abortion while I'm here."
Feministing's Moseley and Aravosis were the only MySpace-funded bloggers who actually bit the hand that fed them. "In theory, it was a great idea," Moseley said after the debate. "Get a candidate to have a conversation with actual young people, and let other young people submit questions and their reactions online, all at once. ... The problem was, as one of the other bloggers who attended mentioned, that the event really felt like the same old boring town-hall meeting candidates have been doing forever."
Aravosis may have been that blogger. "It's a neat idea," he said of the debate, "but it still feels like a regular old town meeting, with the occasional interjection of the updated polls or an [instant-messaging] question from a viewer."
But both of them ended their posts with praise for MySpace: Moseley said: "[L]et me tell you what I liked. The fact that they're trying. ... [O]verall it was fun. Got to meet some nice poeple, and I think this format has promise, it just needs some development."
And Aravosis complimented MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe. "Very interesting guy," Aravosis said. "He was really interested in the blogs, how we function, etc., and had some good advice for how we can move forward as businesses (and we are businesses, news and advocacy businesses)."
So all in all, MySpace got its money's worth. It's no wonder that Krempasky said the company plans to invite bloggers to all 11 of the other scheduled MySpace/MTV debates.
UPDATE: Attempts to curry favor with bloggers are not limited to the political realm. The Wall Street Journal reports today that a four-star restaurant in Chicago has been winning rave reviews -- from bloggers who were chosen to dine there for free.
"As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups," the newspaper said. "Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes."
Posted by Danny at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
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Guide To Networked Journalism
Cross-posted at AirCongress
I'll be attending the Networked Journalism Summit in New York next week to brainstorm with other new media innovators.
In preparation for the event, David Cohn of NewAssignment.Net has been interviewing the forum's participants by telephone and e-mail. He has created a helpful guide to the interviews, including an e-mail chat about my site, AirCongress, the online voice of Capitol Hill.
Posted by Danny at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
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National Journal's Cover Story On Blogs
Back in January 2006, I authored a cover story on "The Rise Of Blogs" for National Journal magazine. In this week's hot-off-the-presses edition of the magazine, Bara Vaida, a former senior writer for me at Technology Daily, follows up with another cover story titled "Blogging On." National Journal Editor Charlie Green has given me permission to reprint it here:
By Bara Vaida
In late July, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., tried a new approach to writing legislation. The 62-year-old majority whip logged on to a computer in his Capitol Hill office and began chatting on the Web about his plan to expand broadband services in rural America.
The standard method for writing a bill would have had Durbin and his aides calling in consumer groups, telecommunications lobbyists and technology experts to hash out the details. Instead, Durbin reached out to the editors of two online political blogs so that he could hear directly from their readers. One was the progressive Open Left, a natural place for the pugnacious liberal to turn. But the other, RedState, caused Durbin some trepidation -- he couldn’t be sure how its conservative subscribers would respond to him.
In a series of evening postings on the two blogs (videotaped by his staff to prove that the senator was indeed doing the typing), Durbin connected with academics, California hip-hop artist Baby D, free-market advocates, rural Internet users, and many others. The conversations yielded more than 500 comments.
It was an interesting national drafting session,” Durbin says. “The reality is that most people feel that unless you can hire an expensive lobbyist, you can’t get to the table to write a bill. This is a ‘small d’ democratic approach [to legislation], and I think it is a valuable approach that we ought to try more and more.”
For Durbin it was also a process that took on a life of its own. Initially, his staff approached Matt Stoller, a 29-year-old political consultant who is a co-founder of Open Left. But when Durbin started blogging on Open Left on July 24, several conservative bloggers took to their Web sites to complain about being shut
out. They invited the senator to blog with the right, too. After some thought, Durbin agreed.
In an interview, the senator recounted how the process unfolded. “I was invited to RedState and they had to warn everyone that ‘Durbin was coming,’ that ‘We’ll have a real Democrat here -- and, calm down, he is talking about an issue.’ [But] they were good. There were a few who couldn’t resist the urge to punch me verbally, but I thought it was a good exercise.”
Durbin’s aides have been studying the comments as their bill-drafting effort continues. Meanwhile, National Public Radio, a stream of newspapers, and now National Journal have taken note of the senator’s venture into the world of blogs. [National Journal's Technology Daily covered the story as news the week it happened. -- Danny] And Durbin has garnered respect from the bloggers, even among ideological foes.
“When he wanted to reach out to the Right online, he came to RedState to do it,” says the blog’s managing editor, Erick Erickson, a 32-year-old GOP political consultant based in Georgia. “We appreciate his willingness to let us be involved in discussing the issue as he writes legislation.”
It’s unclear whether Durbin’s bill-writing-through-blogging exercise is a sign of things to come. But what is clear is that lawmakers, their staffs and other professionals in the nation’s capital are making use of blogs ... a handle describing Web sites that feature entries from individuals or groups of writers, and the back-and-forth discussion among folks responding to one another’s musings.
Liberal and conservative activists began using blogs for fundraising and political organizing during the 2004 election cycle. Now policymakers are trying to figure out how to use them to advance their goals.
Many of Washington’s practitioners of politics and public policy -- K Street’s contract lobbyists, corporate government-affairs executives, and trade association representatives -- have their hands full in keeping up with the rapid changes in technology. No sooner had lobbyists figured out how to use Web sites and e-mail for advocacy campaigns than grassroots activists and decision-makers moved on to blogging.
“The more that politicians are reading [blogs],” says lobbyist and former Rep. Robert Walker, R-Pa., chairman of Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates, “the more that lobbyists know they will be using” them, too.
No one knows precisely how many Washington lawmakers are blogging. But, according to National Journal’s Beltway Blogroll, at least 19 members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have created blogs to help them in their legislative work. In addition, Hill leaders from both political parties, and several committee chairmen, have created staff positions to reach out to the “Internet media,” and to contribute to various blogs.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., used blogs as a way to bypass traditional media and to build grassroots opposition as he led an effort to derail an immigration reform measure in the spring. Rather than issue a press release opposing the bill, DeMint’s staff coordinated conference calls and leaked information to conservative bloggers to fan citizen uproar against the bill.
“Several pretty significant blogs are becoming a direct line between elected officials here in Washington and the American people,” said DeMint in an interview with National Journal.
But as is typical with any change, K Street’s embrace of blogging has been slower. To be sure, some lobbyists are moving full-speed ahead to incorporate blogs into their campaigns and Web sites, but the more skeptical are hanging back, unsure whether blogs will turn out to be a passing fad. Only 8 percent of trade associations and corporations said they either monitor blogs, post on them or host them, while 29 percent said they have someone reading blogs, according to a March 2007 study conducted by the Policy Council, a research arm of National Journal Group. About 52 percent of associations and corporations reported that they were not doing anything with blogs.
Underscoring the skepticism is that even the firms that specialize in Internet advocacy have a hard time coming up with specific measures to gauge the influence of blogs. Further, precious few examples exist of legislation either passing or failing because of blogging activity.
“Right now,” Walker says, “I think K Street is still trying to figure out who the [blog] audience is.”
Uncontrolled
Part of the problem with “figuring out” the blogosphere -- the catchall term to describe the approximately 70 million Web sites featuring conversations about everything from romance to politics -- is determining which ones matter. One way to do that is to learn which blogs the mainstream media are reading. Another technique is to find out which sites Capitol Hill aides are following.
Search engines measure the popularity of blogs; popularity, in turn, drives media coverage, says Kevin Wallsten, a political science professor at the University of California (Berkeley). “There are these popular blogs that serve as hubs for interesting stories, and then those stories tend to get picked up broadly,” he says. “Blogs create a stir because they are read by journalists, people on the Hill, and people engaged in the political debate.”
To refine the question of readership on the Hill, the Policy Council in March surveyed 266 chiefs of staff, communications directors, legislative directors and other congressional aides on how often they read blogs. Just 7 percent said they read blogs several times a day, 22 percent said they read blogs about once a day, and another 21 percent said they read blogs about once a week. If, indeed, 50 percent of Hill aides are reading blogs regularly, lobbyists and other advocates need to pay attention. But getting the notice of blog editors and authors as a
direct route to Capitol Hill is not so easy. A lobbyist can’t do it with just a phone call.
Those who write political blogs tend to be skeptical of power, Wallsten says. “Their antagonistic attitude makes them difficult to organize.” But if a lobbyist, an industry, or an advocacy organization “could get all of these
people on the blogs writing and coordinating their messages in the same direction, it would be a tremendous force,”
he says.
Many lobbyists who are accustomed to using fundraising events, dinners, one-on-one conversations and other tightly controlled tactics to show progress to clients tend to avoid the uncontrolled blogosphere.
John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, is one of the skeptics. He has used the Internet to communicate with roundtable members and to spur grassroots e-mail efforts for lobbying campaigns on taxes and other issues. Although he is considering using blogs as part of his Internet strategy, Castellani isn’t sure that blogs are of much use beyond grabbing the media’s attention.
“I see blogs as amplifiers, rather than multipliers,” he says. Blogs can act as a megaphone, in other words, but as for evidence that they help to build support among anyone other than core activists already engaged on an issue, “I think the jury is still out on that.”
Being Provocative
Some on K Street are experimenting with the blogosphere and liking the results. Marc Lampkin, a lobbyist with Quinn Gillespie & Associates, is one.
Lampkin, 43, sees blogging as a way to get media attention for his client, itself an important achievement. He was hired last spring as executive director of Strong American Schools, a $60 million lobbying and public-affairs campaign funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundations. The group’s aim is to prod Congress and the presidential candidates to embrace education reform, including improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures. As part of its Internet strategy, Strong American Schools made Lampkin, who enjoys a heated debate, a blogger.
“Being provocative is important in the culture of blogs because it is all about starting and sustaining a debate,” says Lampkin, a former Capitol Hill aide and a deputy campaign manager for President Bush. “The blogosphere is like the guys who gather around the counter at the local diner. Everyone’s got an opinion and an audience who will listen and respond.”
Rather than start its own blog, Lampkin’s group reached out to the popular left-leaning Huffington Post, which was looking to add Republican voices to its list of guest bloggers. Founder Arianna Huffington said she wanted to expand the number of topics being discussed on her site and noted that few blogs were discussing education. Huffington’s blog, which gained celebrity as an anti-Iraq war, anti-establishment site, wouldn’t seem like an obvious place to launch an online lobbying effort. Huffington said she has no qualms about having lobbyists blog on her site, however, as long as they are transparent about their motives.
“Lobbyists wanting to use blogs is another sign of the growing power of the blogosphere,” she says. “It’s also another sign of the recognition that the press release is dead. No one reads them, and it’s a real waste of energy for anyone with a cause.”
Lampkin, who states on his postings that he is a Quinn Gillespie lobbyist, began blogging on June 27. At first, he says, he was a bit apprehensive about going into the “belly of the beast,” but “I just had to make sure I had all my facts straight. If you go in with an argument, that is flawed, you are susceptible your legs cut out from under you.”
Given the conversational nature of blogs, Lampkin uses a personal tone in his posts. Although he has so far made only eight entries, one of which discussed his frustration with media coverage of education and the lack of discussion of merit pay for teachers, he has generated more than 200 comments. In one post, he encouraged people to look at a video by musician Kanye West that calls on viewers to join the “Ed in ’08” campaign to reduce dropout rates among high schoolers. West’s foundation has partnered with the education reform campaign.
In the week following Lampkin’s post, the video got 160,000 views. Whether it was Lampkin’s blogging or West’s fame that sparked the interest, Lampkin can’t say. What matters to him is that “this was a huge number of people that took the time to open it up and watch it. That ability to talk to many people at once is really powerful.”
Lampkin also points to the play that his client and the push for merit pay is getting in the mainstream media. Not long after he began blogging on The Huffington Post, the Des Moines, Iowa, news station WHO-TV called Strong American Schools and asked Lampkin to contribute to its Iowa Votes 2008 blog, which the Iowa media widely read. Lampkin hopes to capture the attention of presidential campaign aides in the key caucus state.
“Blogs are another tool in the toolbox to influence the process,” he contends. “It broadens the number of voices heard on public policy.”
Building Ties
Blogs can also help to cement relationships between companies, opinion leaders, and government officials. Cisco Systems, which employs more than half a dozen lobbyists in Washington, started its own public policy blog in February 2005. “It was the easiest way to connect with others out there with similar viewpoints” and to put the Silicon Valley-based company’s ideas in front of policymakers, says John Earnhardt, Cisco’s senior manager for global media operations.
Contrasting with the chatty tone of many blog posts, Cisco’s entries are dry and policy-heavy. In their posts, the company’s lobbyists discuss computer security, patent reform, telecommunications reform, pending Federal Communications Commission actions, and other company priorities.
Although Cisco’s postings have generated fewer than a dozen comments this year, the site gets about 45,000 page views a month, and more than 136,000 users have signed up to keep track of changes on the Cisco blog, Earnhardt says. Mary Brown, Cisco’s director of technology and spectrum policy, says, “I get e-mails from bloggers and others in the policy community who have read the blog.”
Brown has blogged several times to support actions by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on telecom policy that she thought deserved a spotlight and hadn’t got attention in the mainstream media. “The FCC doesn’t have a vehicle to say, ‘Gee, look at the good job we are doing,’” Brown says. “I’m hoping my blog helps to highlight that.”
Earnhardt says that it’s too early to say what all the blogging has added up to: “Is it game-changing? I don’t think so yet. But you won’t know what will be a game-changing event necessarily. That is why you just have to keep doing it.”
It helps that blogging is an inexpensive tool. Several low-cost programs on the Internet allow anyone to create and maintain a blog. The software also makes it easy to monitor comments that may be inappropriate because of profanity, for example. The big expense, at least for Cisco, is the time it takes the company’s lobbyists to write an entry, if they are so inclined. “Some of the lobbyists like to do it more than others,” Earnhardt says.
In the nonprofit advocacy world, Environmental Defense has used blogs as a way to build bipartisan support for legislation. The group’s blogging story begins with Tucker Eskew, who served in the Bush White House and worked on the president’s 2004 re-election effort. Hardly your typical “green” activist, Eskew, who founded public-affairs firm ViaNovo, nonetheless believes that climate change is real. In 2005 he began helping the 500,000-plus-member Environmental Defense organization boost its relationships with Republicans. Eskew and the group’s leaders decided that blogging was an important tactic to advance the strategy.
Eskew blogged during the 2004 election and says he found the blogosphere “a good place to be for emerging issues, especially where there’s a gulf between public opinion and officials.” He recruited three other environmental conservatives -- Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster; the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals; and William Tucker, a conservative journalist -- to write a blog they named Terra Rossa (“Red Earth”) as a nod to the conservative states. The idea was to provide a forum for Republicans to discuss environmental issues.
“The other side of the aisle has bludgeoned people on climate change,” says Eskew, and Terra Rossa gives Republicans a place “where there can be discussion without feeling like they are being bludgeoned” into taking a position.
Environmental Defense, which spent less than $100,000 to launch the blog at the end of 2006, continues to provide financial support. The group, however, has no control over content and stays out of the conversation, says Keith Gaby, a senior communications specialist for the group. An independent Internet services firm maintains the site. The measure of success, Gaby says, is that a growing number of conservatives are talking about legislation to reduce carbon emissions and that Environmental Defense “created a forum to get the debate going in a constructive way.”
Eskew sees momentum building. He persuaded Doug Wilson, chairman of Townhall.com, a popular conservative policy blog, and retired Lt. Gen. Larry Farrell, a respected military analyst, to post on Terra Rossa. Further, The Oil Drum, a blog written by energy academics and focused on the environment, posts a link to Terra Rossa, driving up traffic. The Wall Street Journal in June described the blog as one of four worth reading on environmental issues. Eskew says that Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a member of the House Science and Technology Committee, also recently asked to blog on the site.
Whipping The Grassroots
Some business lobbyists have jumped into the blogosphere to try to activate conservative and libertarian bloggers to help stave off tax proposals in Congress. The chairs of the House and Senate tax-writing committees have proposed raising taxes on the income earned by managers of private equity firms, hedge funds and other business partnerships. Fighting the proposals are Americans for Tax Reform and other anti-tax groups, along with such traditional business groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
A hedge-fund lobbyist who was part of the chamber’s strategy sessions said that reaching out to conservative bloggers is part of the plan to foster grassroots opposition. The chamber’s message to bloggers is that the legislation is “a backdoor way to raise capital-gains taxes,” the lobbyist said.
Among the footsoldiers in the blogging world is Phil Kerpen, policy director at the free-market group Americans for Prosperity. Although he isn’t paid directly by any of the lobbyists, Kerpen says he has “coordinated” strategy with them and hopes that some will “recognize the work we are doing” by making financial donations.
Kerpen is also friendly with conservative Robert Bluey, the blogger at the Heritage Foundation and with RedState’s Erickson. With Kerpen’s encouragement, Erickson and other RedState contributors wrote about a dozen blog posts on the topic. Erickson urged his readers to call on the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, to oppose the measure. “This is an issue that Republicans can get fired up about,” Erickson says.
Grassley has gotten some 40 letters on the issue, all from Iowa constituents, but an aide said that the office is uncertain whether the blog activity sparked the comments. Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., a member of the Ways and Means Committee, created his own blog on the private equity issue to provide an easy access point for other bloggers to comment.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the financial community but have only received an occasional call from” constituents, says Reynolds’ spokesman, L.D. Platt. “We are using our blog most as an information resource on the issue rather than something to spur action.”
Others are using blogs as a membership-building tool. One is the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress. When Congress debated energy legislation in June, the center advertised on blogs to build name recognition and to let bloggers know about its efforts to promote the availability of ethanol fuel at gas stations. The think tank created a series of short videos and posted them on more than a dozen energy policy blogs, such as Green LA Girl and Life After the Oil Crash. The ads directed bloggers to click on a Web site called Clean MyRide.org. The center says it signed up 10,000 activists for its campaign and spurred 15,000 people to send e-mails to the Hill calling for legislation to expand access to flexible fuels. Total cost for the effort: $10,000.
“We were looking to reach influential people in energy policy areas, and we think it was successful, in terms of click-through rates and new e-mail addresses secured,” says Brian Komar, the center’s director of strategic outreach and alliances.
When it comes to advertising, blogs are cheap in comparison with mainstream media. The cost of placing a prominently displayed ad on all 133 of the most popular liberal blogs for four weeks runs about $100,000, says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, a company specializing in Web-site advertising. In comparison, The New York Times charges $142,083 for a one-day, full-page, black-and-white print ad. The Internet also provides the potential to track how many people react to an ad, known as the “click-through” rate. The number of people who see broadcast or print ads is harder to measure.
“Old media is passive,” Copeland says. “With new media you can have a relationship with the reader” because readers can directly respond to a Web-based ad.
For giant lobbying and PR firm Cassidy & Associates, successful use of a blog as a crisis communications tool convinced Vice Chairman and COO Gregg Hartley that the firm should do more with its blog. At the beginning of this year, Cassidy launched its blog in anticipation of a 25-part Washington Post series about Cassidy’s founder, Gerald Cassidy.
Almost all of the articles, some of which included criticism of Cassidy’s personal and professional choices, ran on the Post Web site. To drive readers to Cassidy’s side of the story, the firm paid approximately $15,000 for a week of banner ads that ran with the Post stories, directing readers to the Cassidy Web site and blog. Traffic on the firm’s site tripled. Hartley believes that making it easy for readers to immediately get Cassidy’s personal responses blunted the sting of the Post’s stories. “This showed us that this is something we should be talking about and marketing to our clients,” he says.
Hartley is working on a strategy to get the firm’s 60 registered lobbyists to post entries and to use the blog as a marketing tool to highlight the firm’s expertise in communicating with staff on Capitol Hill. “This doesn’t turn into something overnight,” says Cassidy spokesman Tom Alexander. “We have just started the process of engaging people internally.”
Let’s Not Exaggerate
For the most part, bloggers are enjoying being part of the legislative process but don’t believe they have the vaunted power that the mainstream media have suggested. The bloggers emphasize that they can’t control what excites their readers and that blogging is thus an imprecise tool for building grassroots support.
Glenn Reynolds, editor of the conservative political blog Instapundit, says he likes his role in directing people to call their lawmakers and shape public policy, but adds, “I think it’s easy to exaggerate bloggers’ importance. We have ‘influence,’ sometimes, but not real power. Blogs -- usually working together -- can put things on the agenda, but that’s not always the same as making particular things happen.”
Stoller, co-founder of Open Left, says that blogging is a way to help his readers bring about social change, “but I would not be so bold as to pretend that I am playing some sort of gatekeeper role.” Blogs, he says, are “a great organizing tool,” and he foresees a day when more lobbying could be conducted online “and not behind closed doors.”
Heritage Foundation blogger Bluey believes that his think tank’s blog was useful in engaging readers to oppose the immigration reform bill but says that other issues haven’t met with the same level of interest. Heritage has been trying to build opposition to the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example. In an interview in early September, Bluey said that because SCHIP is a narrow topic, “it’s been hard to get other bloggers to write about it.” The SCHIP reauthorization passed both the House and Senate at the end of September with large bipartisan majorities.
So how does a lobbyist get a blogger interested in an issue? The bloggers whom National Journal spoke to all said they are open to receiving pitches from lobbyists on behalf of clients, as long as lobbyists are straightforward about the client they represent.
Instapundit’s Reynolds suggested that lobbyists search the blogosphere for the hundreds of niche blogs with small but engaged readerships. Many such policy blogs have sprouted in recent years on issues ranging from agriculture to education to stem-cell research, according to the Adfero Group, a media strategy firm that has catalogued more than 350 policy blogs.
“If a lobbyist has some bill they want to defeat or see passed, I’d be upfront about it and say, ‘Here is why I think the bill is good or bad,’ and I think bloggers would be interested,” Reynolds says. “You may not generate massive pressure, but it’s amazing what a few hundred people can do to influence policy.”
Yet, lobbyists need to proceed carefully. Using a PR firm to reach bloggers has become a common tactic, but it may not be effective. Reynolds says he gets 1,500 e-mails a day and erases anything “that looks like spam.” He seldom opens a message from someone he doesn’t know. John Aravosis, author of the progressive Americablog, complained recently that he is inundated with PR pitches that he rarely finds of interest. He suggested that PR firms buy advertising on his site if they want to reach his audience.
“There’s been a marked recent increase in the number of people asking me to write about their organization, campaign or client,” Aravosis wrote. “Note: The very best way to get me not to cover a story is to have a PR firm contact me.”
David All, a former aide to Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., and now a blogger and media strategist, advises that the best way to use blogs for advocacy isn’t to attempt to get popular bloggers, such as Aravosis, to write about an issue but rather to search out local- and state-oriented bloggers. Local media use those blogs as resources, he says, just as national media organizations do. “The best way to get to a member of Congress is through their daily paper, it’s not through The New York Times,” All says.
Seasoned lobbyist Dirk van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, is a trade association leader who is eager for K Street to figure out how to use blogs. This spring, Van Dongen lobbied in support of the sweeping immigration reform legislation and was surprised when votes dissolved in the Senate under an onslaught of calls from opponents. Since then, he has spent more time reading blogs.
“What happened with the immigration debate was hugely instructive,” van Dongen says. “You had the entire establishment power structure working to keep an immigration reform bill moving, and you had the administration and congressional leadership behind it, and yet they got blown away. Clearly, blogs can be a tremendously potent way of communicating, and you’d darn well better be paying attention to them and figuring them out.”
Posted by Danny at 08:45 AM | Comments (1)
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Danny Glover As Clarence Thomas
My deep, resonant voice would accept an offer from Hollywood:
Surrounded by friends and fellow conservatives, such as Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham, [Clarence] Thomas engaged in pleasant small talk and posed for pictures. He had an easygoing manner and deep resonant voice. Danny Glover should play him in the movie version.
It's nice to see my name attached to someone other than Hugo Chavez and to descriptions other than "fringe lunatic" -- though I might get just as much hate mail meant for actor Danny Glover were he to play Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a movie.
Posted by Danny at 07:07 AM | Comments (0)
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Can Technology Make Or Break A Candidate?
There may be a clue to the answer in this nugget from Marc Ambinder of TheAtlantic.com about the presidential campaign of Democrat Christopher Dodd.
[E]specially for a campaign run largely by veterans of Washington, he's used emerging technologies more fruitfully than just about everyone else.The campaign posted casual, behind-the-scenes videos of its headquarters, interviews with key staff members, blogged live from the spin room, created graphics with speaking times for candidates during debates, using Youtube videos to whip bills in the Senate. (The Dodd campaign is a veritable advertisement for Ustream TV).
And they were the first presidential campaign to employ plain-text, conversational e-mail styles -- an appeal for money was signed by "Chris" -- as in "Sen. Chris Dodd."
All of the innovation doesn't appear to have benefited Dodd in terms of support, however. As Ambinder noted, his value on the National Journal Political Stock Exchange is a whopping 1 cent. And Dodd isn't exactly topping the charts of the Democratic field, either in terms of fundraising or poll numbers.
Dodd's innovation ultimately may help his rivals, however. Ambinder noted that they and other Democrats seem to be emulating Dodd's technological tactics. Dodd "can take heart in knowing that his innovations and policy boldness may outlive his candidacy," Ambinder said.
Posted by Danny at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
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Armando Llorens-Sar, who goes by the pseudonym Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft, wonders why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to resurrect his complaints about his Senate confirmation battle in 1991, particularly the allegations of sexual harassment leveled by former employee Anita Hill.
"Anita Hill has been reawakened," Llorens-Sar said, pointing to today's response from Hill via The New York Times.
Llorens-Sar need not wonder any longer why Thomas would "repick this fight" because Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters has the answer: Thomas has conservative bloggers as allies now.
Heritage hosted a dinner in Thomas' honor last night, and Morrissey was among the bloggers and new media luminaries to attend. "Thomas explained that he wished we'd been around in 1991, that we could have made sure that the facts of the case came to light," Morrissey said. "We could have worked around the mainstream media narrative, he told us, and stated several times that he was very impressed with the work we did."
What they weren't able to do in 1991, they are doing now. Morrissey, for instance, quickly jumped to Thomas' defense after seeing Hill's column in the Times.
"After waiting 16 years to tell his side of the story, Hill accuses Thomas of throwing unsubstantiated allegations at her," Morrissey said. "... I recall that it was Hill who went to the Judiciary Committee with a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears in 1991."
Thomas also is the subject of glowings posts from other bloggers who were at the Heritage shindig: La Shawn Barber; Robert Bluey and Rebecca Hagelin of Heritage; Erick Erickson of RedState; James Joyner of Outside The Beltway; Richard Miniter of Pajamas Media; Paul Mirengoff of Power Line; and Kate O'Beirne of The Corner.
Of course, the flip side is that the liberal blogosphere can attack Thomas with perhaps more ferocity than he faced in 1991. Oliver Willis certainly is doing his part, headlining blog posts with jabs about "pubic hair" and Thomas being "pathetic."
And the rest of us? Well, we get to sit back and enjoy the fireworks of history being replayed on our computer screens.
Posted by Danny at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
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Leon Wolf, a blogger at RedState who earlier this year went to work as the e-campaign director for Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback has called it quits. His explanation:
I simply do not have the available time that is necessary to do the job properly. I am currently finishing my last year of law school, and am additionally working a significant number of hours for a law firm, and I also need time to spend with my family. I have, during previous times in my life, thought that I was "busy," but only in the last two months have I come to understand what "busy" truly means.Additionally, I am hampered by not being able to either be located somewhere that is relevant to the campaign (either at HQ or in one of the early battleground states), and have not been able to follow the Senator around and report on what is going on. In light of all this, the campaign and I have agreed that it is time to move on.
Wolf still thinks Brownback would make a great president, though, and thinks he is "both likeable and genuine," unlike many politicians. "I believe in his message, his character, and his vision for America," Wolf wrote.
Posted by Danny at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
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Diplomats And Bureaucrats In The Blogosphere
When diplomats and federal procurement folks join the blogosphere, you can rest assured that blogging is no longer just a fad -- and that's exactly what happened last week.
The State Department launched a blog called Dipnote in advance of a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. "With Dipnote," wrote Sean McCormack, the assistant secretary of State for public affairs, "we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world."
In addition to McCormack, the primary bloggers are his special assistant, Masharika Prejean, and Foreign Service member Frederick Jones.
Other State Department officials who have posted entries are: Noel Clay, a press officer in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad; Karen Hughes, the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs; Digital Media Director Heath Kern; Lauren Landis, the senior director of the Sudan programs group; Tara Rigler, a deputy press attache in New Delhi, India; and Kristin Siverberg, the assistant secretary of international organization affairs.
Gov Gab, the new blog at the General Services Administration, is a group effort, too, but the "Meet The Bloggers" page only offers first names: Jake, Marybeth, Nancy, Sam, Sommer. Each is assigned blogging duties on a different day of the week, and Colleen is the substitute blogger.
The early topics have included an electic mix: apartment hunting, passport rules, lost luggage, Web photos and a pitch for incandescent light bulbs.
Both Dipnote and Gov Gab are noteworthy for their use of photographs, graphics and even video. While the executive branch has been a bit slow to embrace the blogosphere -- the administration innovations in the last couple of months include new blogs at the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments -- it's encouraging to see that they are at least attempting to stay current in the new media world rather than just building text-based blogs.
Posted by Danny at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
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