I am Amanda Marcotte
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/08/2007 - 12:34Several weeks ago, the New York Times published a hit piece on bloggers that have worked for political campaigns. In one of the most amusing twists on that story, a television show in Boston took a parody on MyDD about Jerome Armstrong seriously, prompting the creation of an “I am Jerome Armstrong” group on Facebook.
As a mixture of that and the classic story of the King of Denmark wearing a Star of David during the Nazi occupation, I now proclaim, “I am Amanda Marcotte”.
For those who haven’t been following the story, recently some right wing extremists have attacked Sen. Edwards for hiring Amanda Marcotte. Amanda is a bright young blogger who has criticized right wing extremists, sometimes using language that they find offensive.
There have been rumors that the Edwards campaign would fire Amanda and she remains a top story in political circles.
Beyond simply a statement of solidarity with Amanda, I do feel a lot of personal similarities to her case, which I imagine many dedicated bloggers, especially those who end up working for campaigns, feel.
I have been attacked for things I’ve written in the past, including people trying to prevent me from getting or holding onto jobs that matter to me. I’ve been told what I can and can’t write while I worked for campaigns. I’ve had heated arguments with different campaign managers about things I’ve written.
I’ve also been in talks with the Edwards campaign about coming on board since last summer. When they hired Mathew Gross, and then Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, I had complicated feelings. I was very excited that Sen. Edwards has hired such great talent, but a little let down that they haven’t hired me yet.
So, in more ways than one, I am Amanda Marcotte. I hope I don’t get fired. I hope that many bloggers also state that they are Amanda and I hope Sen. Edwards steps up and offers a bold defense of Amanda and Melissa.
One of the best blog posts about this whole episode was written by Joe Trippi in May 2003. Back then, he was talking about the Dean campaign, but I imagine it summarizes the struggle that senior staffers in the Edwards campaign are dealing with right now.
every political campaign I have ever been in is built on a top-down military structure — there is a general at the top of the campaign — and all orders flow down — with almost no interaction. This is a disaster. This kind of structure will suffocate the storm not fuel it. Campaigns abhor chaos — and to most campaigns built on the old top-down model — that is what the net represents — chaos.
So, while I wish Sen. Edwards would say something soon, and I partly wish I was a fly on the wall wherever this is being discussed, I’m also partly glad I’m not in those discussions. They will be hard discussions and they will have a significant impact in the future direction of the Edwards campaign, as well as, I believe, many other campaigns in the 2008 cycle.
It is time to stand up for what matters, and I stand up, recognizing that the first to stand are also often the first to get shot.
(If you are Amanda, please join I am Amanda Marcotte of Facebook.)
The future of the New York Times
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/08/2007 - 11:28The creators of Epic imagine a world in the not too distant future where the New York Times has gone offline. Yet in an interview with Eytan Avriel (NewsTrust review), Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, Sulzberger talks of a day, perhaps even sooner when the New York Times publishes only online.
The article talks about losses in the newspaper industry, including “a $570 million loss because of write offs and losses at the Boston Globe. “ Yet provides the interesting observation that costs of moving to an all digital platform “aren't anywhere near what print costs” are. As cost and revenue structures change, information distribution organizations need to rethink what they are doing.
Interestingly, the vision that Sulzberger describes of the New York Times as “curators of news” is perhaps not all that different from a rosier view of what Epic presents. At Toomre Capital Markets we do our own curating of news related to financial services innovations. Yet the thing that seems to be missing from Sulzberger’s view is the role of community.
Yes, there is a community of readers, but how much do they interact? There is a community of sources that reporters use, but too often that community seems particularly small and disconnected. Interesting news and ideas emerge when different parts of community get linked together. It is part of what we try to do at TCM. It is part of the wider sets of social networking sites, and if the New York Times is going succeed, it is something they need to focus on as well.
(Cross posted at Toomre Capital Markets)
Social Network Media Gatekeeping
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/06/2007 - 12:55During a particularly difficult period in my life, a friend of mine, who was a therapist, pointed out one of my psychological defenses and went on to note the importance of our defenses. Without them, during times when life is coming at you fast, things can easily become overwhelming.
I thought of that today as I read Enric’s post on a video blogging mailing list about the recent discussion about authenticity in digital space.
Enric notes,
“The mistake is in thinking that networked media is about content
(scripted or not, personal or show, etc.)It's about the disappearance of media gatekeepers.”
I thought about this in terms of presidential politics. My wife was Ned Lamont’s scheduler during his U.S. Senate campaign. There is an important role for gatekeepers, especially in the political realm, and this is what led me back to my thought about psychological defenses.
Perhaps the old media gatekeepers are not disappearing. Perhaps they are being replaced by a different type of gatekeepers. After all, YouTube and the other videosharing services have their own gatekeeping rules about what can go on the site, how it can be shared, how it makes it to the front page, etc. Social networks serve as another part of the gatekeeping mechanism as popular and well liked videos rise to the top.
Are popularity and user ratings better gatekeepers than the producers, editors, and anchors in the traditional media? The fiercely democratic, as well as those interested in ideas like emergence and collective intelligence are likely to think so.
"What is authenticity in this digital space?"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/05/2007 - 20:31Matthew Bernius responds to my post, Hope is Presidential. He writes,
Aldon mentions Ask a Ninja, Hope is Emo, and Lonelygirl15 as YouTube exemplars. I’m not quite sure what the candidates can learn from these content creators, as they all are essentially “old media” examples in the new media space. All of these are professionally produced (read as scripted, acted, filmed, and edited by professionals).
I guess the first thing that jumped out at me was suggesting that Ask a Ninja or Hope is Emo are essentially “old media” examples in the new media space. What are the essential characteristics of new media or old media? Matthew seems to suggest that the issue is either the roll of professionals in the production, or the use of techniques like having a script, having good filming and having it edited.
Yet many of my video-blogging friends, or for that matter, friends that text-blog, all aspire to be paid for their work. Is there something about receiving money for one’s work that makes the work less valuable? Or, for that matter, what is wrong with having a good script, good camera shots, or good editing?
He goes on to ask “What is authenticity in this digital space?” and wonders if “it’s any different than authenticity in the so-called real world”. It is an important question to ask. My first reaction is that there probably isn’t a significant difference between authenticity in digital space then there is in the so-call real world. Does having a script make things less authentic? Was the “I have a dream speech” or the Gettysburg Address somehow less authentic because it was written out? I don’t think so.
Politicians are professional speakers. It would be foolish to expect them not to be professional speakers. Yes, we might not want a canned speech to every question we pose, but most people want a well thought out answer. Perhaps good political speaking, whether it is captured on video or not, is a bit like doing improv.
Yet I also feel that the comments about Ask a Ninja of miss the bigger picture. One of the essential characteristics of new media, to me, is the ability for anyone to do it. Anyone can put a video up on YouTube. If they have ‘professional’ skills, can write a decent script, use good camera shots, edit it, then the video is likely to get more widely viewed. Yet having professional skills isn’t necessarily correlated to being trained at a traditional school, or having a traditional job in the profession.
Getting more widely viewed gets to a second essential characteristic of new media; the viral nature of successful productions. That is where we can learn from Ask a Ninja and Hope is Emo. The professional qualities of Ninja and Emo contribute to them going viral, but it is the viral nature that matters.
Yes, talking about professional qualities may be part of the question, but the big question is, what makes a video, an idea, or a meme go viral? Why is it that Martin Luther King’s speech 44 years ago still inspires us to have dreams of a better country when so many political speeches of today inspire us to change channels?
Yes, I do have a dream, and part of it includes people using new media, no matter how professionally produced, to reach new audiences with a message of hope and inspiration dating back to the oldest of all media.
(Cross-posted at Greater Democracy)
The Libby Trial Narrative: Character Development
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/05/2007 - 08:56I continue my quest to find out what people around me would like to see from bloggers’ coverage of the Libby trial. Some people are solely focused on gaining that one nugget of information that will tie the whole story together. I will leave that to the more experienced professional journalists or a gadfly with laser like focus. Instead, right now, I’m looking more at character development.
One of the first things I wanted to think more about is what is it like inside a Federal courtroom? What is it like to be on the stand? What are the stories of the people involved? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are both retired U.S. Treasury Agents. They have spent a fair amount of time testifying at Federal trials. The stories they tell at family picnics about their work are much different than the stories you see in TV dramas.
