The problem is not the calendar
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/26/2007 - 08:52(Originally published at Greater Democracy)
On a couple mailing lists I’m on, people are talking about different ways to address problems in our electoral system. There are, of course, the issues of voting integrity, but there is also an interesting discussion about changes to the primary calendar. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about this and have a different view from many of the folks on the list.
Let me suggest that we are looking at the issue the wrong way. Perhaps the issue isn't that because a few small states like Iowa and New Hampshire vote early, they get more say in whom our next president will be. The idea of spreading out the primary season across several months so that we can have more retail politics, more chances for people to shake hands with the candidates is, IMHO, a great ideal. Perhaps the problem isn't the schedule, but the way it is being manipulated by corporations and large money donors.
People look back at 2004 and complain that the race was over before most of us even got a chance to vote. They cite examples of the way the media played the Dean Scream. Well, the problem with the Dean Scream wasn't a problem with Gov. Dean or the people of Iowa. It was a problem of the large corporate controlled media. Until we address that problem, it doesn't matter whether we have all our primaries on one day or spread out over several months. The media will control the message. Focusing on Media Reform is likely to have a bigger effect on making the primary process much more open and inclusive then any juggling of the calendar will. I do agree with some of the people on the lists that juggling the calendar without addressing this issue could make the problem even worse.
The other major complaint is the role of money in the campaign process. If you don't do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, your money dries up and your campaign can't keep going. Again, is this a problem with the folks in Iowa or New Hampshire, or is it a problem with the role of money in the political process? The Dean campaign did some amazing things getting everyday people to contribute small amounts to his campaign. In the end, that didn't do the trick, but it raises a couple interesting points.
First, if we want to address the problem with primaries not being democratic enough, we need to do something about the role of money in campaigns. We need to fix the campaign finance system. This takes me back to big media. What is the biggest expense for campaigns? TV Ads! Yup, that's right, it goes back to funding those large corporate media institutions that are thwarting our democracy. If we want reform, we need to move campaigns away from the 30-second spot to something that encourages democratic participation. An interim step might be to free the airwaves and allow campaigns free airtime to get their message out. The big media corporations will fight tooth and nail against this. After all, they get billions of dollars from political advertising. So, if they won't do this, perhaps we need to pull and end run around them. That is why posting video online is so important. All of the Democratic candidates are ramping up their online video capabilities. This may have more of an effect than any changes to the schedule will have.
Then, there is the issue of people saying that they don't need to vote because it has already been pretty much decided in Iowa and New Hampshire. Yup, it's those old cynics fouling up the works again. Well, personally, I believe that my vote matters, even though I vote much later in the cycle in Connecticut. I got out and voted for Howard Dean last time. What we need to do here, again is less about catering to cynics, then it is about trying to promote civic engagement. Let's teach civics! Let's get people involved. Spreading out the primary calendar so that there can be more one on one engagement between candidates and voters probably does a better job of it than compressing everything into one day.
For me, I believe that I can be more involved, living in a state a couple hundred miles away from an early primary state with the current calendar than I could be if we had one national primary day. I can go to New Hampshire and freeze my butt off, meet some candidates and have some real conversations. If they change the schedule I can perhaps volunteer to serve appetizers at a fund raiser for people contributing $2000 each in New York City, but I'm not likely to get into any real discussions about where we need to be going as a country.
Yes, we need to change things to make sure that everyone gets to participate in the presidential primaries. I believe that Media Reform, Campaign Finance Reform and better civics education are much better tools to make this happen than moving to a national primary day.
Quick Random Stuff
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/25/2007 - 09:59I've recently been in a comment and email discussion with Pamela Weatherill, who writes a blog called the New Century Notebook. She is doing a quick and easy survey of bloggers. If you blog, please stop by and fill it out.
I was also on a conference call yesterday with Sen. Schumer, where he talked about his new book, Positively American. It sounds like a book worth reading.
Virtual foreign exchange trading
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 01/24/2007 - 10:50(Originally posted at Toomre Capital Markets.)
Every day, around $2 trillion of currencies are traded, dollars, yen, euros, as spot trades, as well as various types of derivatives, including forwards, forex swaps and options. This sort of volume makes the $200,000 traded daily on the Second Life spot exchange seem particularly small. However, with Second Life’s economy at least tripling annually, it may well be a market worth exploring in detail.
There are various things needed for an efficient market. First and foremost, you need good market data. Second Life provides some good economic data on a daily basis, but is it possible to get this data on a real time basis? Could we set up a market data feed?
At TCM, we look at how to pull together emerging innovations in the financial services industry by thinking outside of the box. Read more to find out what we’ve done so far with Second Life and how it could be used with other emerging tools.
Let the conversation begin
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/23/2007 - 11:00(Cross posted at Greater Democracy)
At the Journalism that Matters conference, JTM, in Memphis the other week, I was struck by the parallels of the second and fourth estates. For the second estate, I’m thinking of that political class that most resembles the nobility of the Ancien Regime.
For the past forty years, political discourse has been dominated by broadcast politics, the art of the sound byte. Starting somewhere between 2000 and 2004, the interest started to change these dynamics. Jock Gill has suggested we are moving into an era of post-broadcast politics, and Nathan Wilcox has refined this to talk about networked politics.
Whatever we call it, political discourse is moving from a broadcast monologue to a dialogue or perhaps even a multilogue where even lateral communications is encouraged. At JTM, I wondered aloud if we are seeing something similar happen in the fourth estate. No longer are the readers and viewers of the press satisfied to simply be told what local editors or the most trusted man in America thinks is important. We want to talk back. We want to engage in a conversation.
In 2004, Gov. Dean was noted for saying, “The biggest lie people like me tell people like you is that if you vote for me, I’ll solve all your problems. The truth is, You have the power.” Perhaps readers and viewers are looking for the same sort of transformation in the Fourth Estate. We can go to our conferences on Media Reform where one new organization or another tries to position itself as the group that will solve all our media problems, but perhaps what we are looking for is an editor or anchor to acknowledge that we have the power and to work with us in making the best use of that power.
Many people attribute the printing press as the tool that brought about fundamental changes to the First Estate. Will the Internet bring these changes to the Second and Fourth Estates? Will a leader in the Fourth Estate rise up and tell us we have the power of media reform and help us make the best use of that power?
Bridging Media Reform
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/21/2007 - 12:18There have been two parallel conferences in Memphis dealing with media reform. One was the Journalism that Matters conference. (See Ilona's write-up about this event.) This was a small group made up mostly of print journalists and academics struggling with changes in the economic models affecting the news industry and how journalism can survive, and to use the language of one attendee, be deserving of its first amendment rights. The other was around three thousand grassroots activists. I was fortunate to attend sessions from both conferences and have been thinking a lot about what goes on from here.
The stodgy old print journalists used open space techniques to promote conversation, and while I as one of the few representatives of new digital media may have been perceived as a threat or interloper by some, we had great discussions. The conference ended with people sitting around in a circle talking about next steps. What sort of innovations will be brought back to the newsrooms across our country?
The facilitator of the sessions had commented about open space techniques being used for large conferences as well. Some may be skeptical of whether this could be used at a conference as large as the National Conference on Media Reform, it is an interesting idea to ponder, because the media reform folks, struck me as much more traditional. There were the standard keynotes. Sen. Sanders delivered what in other circles might be called a good ‘red meat’ speech to fire people up. Although, here, it might better be referred to as a well seasoned tofu. There were the panels, mostly white men sitting up front, broadcasting to the audience, with the token woman or black, and the token Q&A at the end of the session.
Don’t get me wrong. There were some great presentations and I don’t think the conference was trying to simply meet quotas of people of color and women. There were also some great discussions, many of which took place over coffee between sessions. I was simply struck by the contrast between the traditional people exploring new ways of communicating and the reformers staying with fairly old methods.
Perhaps it was because of being included in the Journalism that Matters conference that I was thinking more about bridging between different groups, of being a bumblebee carrying pollen from one group to the next that I attended sessions that were not in areas I spend a lot of time thinking about.
I’m glad I did, because the two session I like best were “There is No Media Justice Without Women: Models for Feminist Media Action” and “Make the Music with Your Mouth Kid: Hip-Hop Activism for Media Justice” I was disappointed that more of the ivy league educated young straight white men were not at these sessions, because I do believe that the most exciting media reform is coming out of these sessions.
At the feminist session, my mind wandered back to classes in feminism I took in the seventies. There was a sense of the importance of looking at the underlying structures, which I wish more people were doing. There was a discussion about the importance of telling our stories, stories of real life, not filtered through the eyes of editors telling us what they think is important.
The Hip-Hop session built nicely on the feminist session and I have a few clips from it up on Blip.TV. Links that I brought with me from the sessions include Hip-Hop lives here, the Texas Media Empowerment Project, Third World Majority (Culture is a Weapon), Women in Media and News and Reclaim the Media. If you want to see exciting media reform happening, go visit these sites.
Sunday morning, I went to a session on a topic I’ve been following closely, “Civics on Steroids: Turning Average Citizens into Media Reform Activists”. Bob McCannon Rob Williams from the Action Coalition on Media Education (ACME) gave a shortened version of their shtick on media education. If you ever get a chance to here them speak, don’t miss it. And if you want to really reform the media, ACME is a great starting point.
The conference ended with Van Jones delivering a rousing keynote calling people to action. He pointed out that Martin Luther King, Jr. was known for saying “I have a dream”, not for saying “I have a complaint”. There is plenty to complain about with our media today, but conferences like Journalism that Matters and the National Conference on Media Reform can be venues to find powerful ways to bring about meaningful media reform.
