Archive: Year: 2008

Here's Barack Obama's big speech on race, boiled down by TagCrowd.com to its 50 most frequently used words: Here's the editorial responses of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, mashed together and boiled down: It would be cool if someone felt moved to do the same with, say, the top 20 blogs commenting on the speech (drawn from Memeorandum?). At a first glance, it seems as if our editorial guides can't help but view the speech as a political ploy, first and foremost. Considering how rarely politicians choose to grapple in depth with hard and divisive issues like race, it's hard to see how that is the best frame through which to view it. But that...

I wondered what the presidential candidates and other politicians were saying about the Federal Reserve's unprecedented interventions in the financial sector, including today's provision of $30 billion to guarantee JP Morgan Chase against the risks it will incur as it takes over Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar (and inherits its subprime portfolio). It's not that often, after all, that the government decides to socialize someone else's losses--I can't remember many manufacturing businesses or agricultural businesses that were deemed "too big to fail." So, while looking for their public statements from today, I also went online to follow the money trail a bit further. Here's what I've learned so far. First the candidate responses: "I'm not going to second-guess the Fed either...

Last week at ETech, one of my favorite tech conferences, three Brits convened a delightful panel on "moving theft-based activism to the global stage." The title actually made the discussion sound a bit illicit, when really all the three were talking about was how civic-minded hackers have being taking government data that ought to be in public view, and making it available to all--with transformative and beneficial effects. The question at hand was whether those of us who are doing this work at a country-level, like mySociety in the UK, or the network of folks around the Sunlight Foundation in the US (which, full disclosure, Andrew Rasiej and I consult for), might get engaged in a similar project around the...

It looks like the heightening divisions with the Democratic party over the Obama-Clinton contest are causing a split in the online progressive city known as DailyKos. Yesterday at 5pm PDT, a diarist who posts under the name Alegre put up an open letter titled "Writers Strike at DailyKos" and threw down the gauntlet: I’ve decided to go on "strike" and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash Hillary Clinton and distort her record without any fear of consequence or retribution. I will not be posting at DailyKos effective immediately. I will not help drive up traffic or page-hits as long as my candidate – a good...

I guess this is a first for a major presidential candidate. Barack Obama has gone on the Huffington Post to post some comments addressing the controversy swirling around the (retiring) pastor of his church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. There's nothing particularly new about Obama's comments, nor is his post particularly bloggy. I wonder if he'll stay around to deal with HP's wild-west commenters....

The Web on the Candidates * The always terrific Mark Glaser has a great round-up on how "semi-pro journalism teams" are covering the presidential election in innovative and more personal ways. He focused on three valuable projects: PurpleStates.tv, which has five citizen journalists on its team; MTV's Street Team '08, which has a mobile journalist in every state; and Huffington Post's Off the Bus project, which boasts a whopping 1,800 contributors. Glaser pulls no punches and talks about the pluses and minuses of this approach, but if you're looking for a great entry-point to the conversation and mid-term review of these experiments, start here. * Mike Lux at OpenLeft points to an interesting new effort by, Don Ringe, a veteran Republican media...

It seems like this was the week of dueling racial memes, with controversy swirling around videos of former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton backer, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama's church, and lots of commentary by interested bystanders. We'll get to those, but first some lighter fare. The Jack Nicholson endorsement of Hillary Clinton seems to be doing pretty well for her, with well over 120,000 views on the campaign's YouTube channel and tens of thousands elsewhere (even though it's basically just audio of a radio interview. It inspired this pastiche of movie clips (ending with Nicholson saying he approves this message), which has drawn a stunning 1.4 million views. But Nicholson's body of work is so rich, it was...

I guess it's MoveOn day here at techPres. The giant e-group has just reached into its 2004 playbook and announced an "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest for video makers. The reason? "The race isn't over, and we've got to pull out all the stops to help him across the finish line," the group says. "Every day, political insiders and pundits tell Americans what to think about the presidential race. But now, it's YOUR turn to take the megaphone. We want to run ads that are of the people, by the people, and for the people. So consider making an ad." Here's how it will work: Anyone can design a 30 second ad about Obama between now and April 1, the public...

The Web on the Candidates * Republican consultant and all-around-web-guru Todd Ziegler has a fresh post up on the topic of "Technologies that will impact the 2008 elections," and as usual the whole thing is worth reading. He mercilessly grades himself on the predictions he made a year ago, and adds a few fresh ones to the mix. I am with him on the coming impact of live video online, as well as the rising power of Twitter enabled self-organizing crowds at events (watch out Denver and Minneapolis!). * It's not the same thing as a call-girl's MySpace page, but it sure is a sign of the times that you can also see former Romney media strategist Alex Castellanos' wishlist on Amazon....

Normally, I wouldn't take note of a job description, but this one from MoveOn.org Political Action piqued my interest. (And while they haven't yet posted it on our free job-board, you can check out some other cool positions there or list your own.) They're looking for an Electoral Organizing Tools Project Manager to work "on the development of cutting edge online organizing tools." Here are some excerpts from the job description, which lays out an ambitious but not unrealistic plan for the giant e-group, and hints at some significant upgrades in its integration of technology in its field organizing. Our plan to win back the White House in November relies on mobilizing 150,000 volunteers in a massive voter contact program...