Tag Archive for 'blogs'

You Call that a Blog and that a Map Bobby! You Must Be Kidding

Published
by
Ed
on August 22, 2007
in 2007 la governor race, american politics, louisiana politics and republicans
. 0 Comments

I was browsing Bobby Jindal’s website this afternoon and thought I’d check out his blog. I’m always intrigued by how political candidates use campaign blogs. They can be the most banal things, but when done right can also be very informative.

The latest entry is this:

Jindal Fresh Start Tour Map

Anyone who’s signed up for Jindal’s email updates knows that he’s on, what he calls, his Fresh Start Tour. Although a little odd for a blog entry, I assumed this was an interactive map and therefore excusable as a blog entry. At least I could follow Jindal on the campaign trail. How wrong I was!

I clicked on the map and it took me to the jpeg, no explanation of where Jindal had been and why, no photos, no videos, no nothing. If you don’t believe me you can check out Jindal’s blog yourself. This is surprising considering the rest of the site is awash with news and video of Jindal’s Fresh Start Tour. The campaign has even gone so far as to post an extensive array of photos from the tour on Flickr.

What was even more shocking was that Jindal’s campaign team have posted one of these map images each day for, wait for it, the last 10 days since the tour started! There are no written posts in between despite a number of posts, supposedly from Jindal himself, in July and June.

The maps, the photos and the videos are well and good, but with some simple adjustments Jindal’s campaign team could have made them much more meaningful by combining them as a whole in an interactive map. Regular readers will know I am a huge fan of interactive maps as visual means of telling a political story. Instead, they are left with a disparate array of potentially useful tools failing to achieve their maximum impact.


In light of Google’s announcement yesterday of Really, No Seriously, Easy Google Maps, this is a pretty heinous error. Especially as a quick search reveals there are already various free tools out there for embedding Google My Maps into blogs and websites, such as that provided by Daniel Rubin and Ongopongo. Jindal’s campaign team is not exactly short of money either.

For someone like myself, a political consultant who specializes in utilizing the Internet for political campaigning, this is all very disheartening. No doubt, some wise guy will use Jindal’s substandard online operation as evidence that blogs, photos via Flickr and videos are ineffective political campaign tools. I hope this post goes some small way to explaining why that wise guy is wrong.

Iain Dale’s Criticism of British Government’s Blog Monitoring Unit Unfair

Published
by
Ed
on August 17, 2007
in british politics
. 0 Comments

I have to say I disagree strongly with Iain Dale’s criticism of the British government’s Media Monitoring Unit for extending their coverage to the blogosphere.

I can only assume Iain was in a particularly grumpy mood when he wrote this post as he’s usually such a strong advocate for the blogosphere and genuinely appears to understand its growing importance within society. As he often rails against the dismissive attitude of some politicians and journalists towards the blogosphere, including his own blog, it would seem self-defeating to criticize the government for actually reading blogs.

I am particularly mystified by this statement:

I do know that about a year ago Conservative Campaign Headquarters added blogs to the Shadow Cabinet daily media monitoring brief. I was rather horrified at the time.

As someone who spends many hours trying to persuade politicians to read political blogs, I find this extremely frustrating. If I supported the Conservative Party, I would be delighted to know blogs are included in CCHQ’s daily media briefing.

Clarence Mitchell, the MMU’s director, explains,:

There’s a whole level of debate taking place online which simply didn’t exist before and departments feel they need to be fully engaged in that.

e-Gov advocate, architect and blogger, Simon Dickson, follows up:

What’s the alternative - ignore the blogosphere? How often do I read posts complaining that the government isn’t listening to ordinary people outside the Westminster Village?

As Iain rightly points out there is a lot of rubbish written online, but amidst the rubbish there is a lot of extremely high quality and influential content. Surely, putting ideological viewpoints aside for one second, it is the job of the government’s MMU to find that high quality and influential content?

US Bloggers Consider Joining/Forming Labor Union

Published
by
Ed
on August 17, 2007
in american politics and british politics
. 1 Comment

Some labor advocates say the blogosphere deserves entry into organized labor, as e-writers increasingly face the same workforce issues as freelance writers in the print world.

Jonathan Tasini, executive director of the Labor Research Association and a former president of the National Writers Union, said on Monday that bloggers “could in fact” join the writers union.” (hattip Beltway Blogroll)

National Journal’s chief blog advocate/correspondent, Danny Glover, has the full story over at Beltway Blogroll.

I’d love to hear the British media establishment’s reaction if British bloggers ever made such a move? I suspect it would be somewhat less charitable!

I am no fan of labor unions, but it does demonstrate how much more mature the American blogosphere is compared to its British brethren.

Lib Dem Blogosphere Comes of Age

Published
by
Ed
on June 20, 2007
in british politics and liberal democrats
. 3 Comments

It nearly disappeared into the ether a month ago, but over the last couple of days Lib Dem Voice has proved its worth.

I’ve been reading Lib Dem blogs almost daily for over a year now, the excellent LibDemBlogs.org.uk makes it so easy, with Lib Dem Voice as my first destination. Although several Lib Dem MPs write excellent blogs, Lynne Featherstone, John Hemming and Steve Webb to name just a few, I had never seen a Lib Dem MP post a comment on a blog other than their own. (CORRECTION: Jeremy Hargreaves has informed me Ming commented on his blog back in June. My overall point remains valid though.)

That all changed this week. On Tuesday, Lynne Featherstone posted a comment on a story about Ken Livingstone on Lib Dem Voice. As a former member of the London Assembly Lynne is uniquely placed to comment on Mayor Livingstone. Lynne’s typically adventurous foray into the blogosphere illuminated the discussion and was pleasantly surprising. It was fantastic to come across a Lib Dem MP willing to take part in the online conversation.

I was therefore even more suprised and delighted when I saw Ed Davey, Ming Campbell’s Chief of Staff and the party’s campaigns chief, was the first to comment on Stephan Tall’s LDV story, Lib Dems to join Brown cabinet?

Clearly, this was a major political story. It dominated the BBC’s political coverage all day, drawing comment on the Daily Politics, Newsnight and Nick Robinson’s blog.

Ed’s comment, made at 9:09 am, which must have been posted almost as soon as Stephen’s article appeared, is an important sign of the importance the Lib Dem hierarcy places on the blogosphere. As recently as 6 months ago, a source within the Lib Dems’ Cowley Street HQ confirmed Lib Dem MPs do not receive a review of the blogosphere as part of their media briefings. Evidently Ed or a member of his staff are checking LDV regularly.

Ed’s rapid rebuttal was sharp and to the point:

For the record, there is no prospect of any Liberal Democrat joining the Brown Government.

He was obviously extremely angry, just like many Lib Dems are, that such a story made the front page of a national newspaper.

Putting the political dimension to one side, it was great to read such a passionate response on a blog that has built a strong Lib Dem community. Similar rebuttal statements can often be found in the MSM, but it’s so much more meaningful when a senior member of the party speaks directly to the Lib Dem community. Ed did himself enormous credit with this comment and immediately set the firm tone of the party’s response to this story. The opening line of the following comment is testament to this:

Phew - long winded comment narrowly averted by Ed’s response. Well done Ed.

In the comments that followed, not one gave the story any credit. Yes, the story still received significant coverage in the MSM, but those who read Ed’s comment immediately set about defending the party. Stories titled The Guaridan Talks Rot, Morally Bankrupt Guardian shows that it is no guardian of free speech and high political values, Liberals resist headless chicken hysteria at “bums on seats” story, Do we really worry the other parties that much?, A cosy consensus, , Cabinet seats and spin and More Guardian tripe appeared on Lib Dem blogs. Even Tory blogger Iain Dale was forced to admit the story had

all the hallmarks of Labour spin.

It would be a bit of a stretch to suggest everyone who posted a story or commented on The Guardian’s erroneous reporting read Ed’s comment, but it certainly helped.

This is a significant development for the Lib Dem blogosphere and for the party. I sincerely hope that more Lib Dem MPs begin engaging with the community of Lib Dem bloggers. The community is active and vibrant, full of ideas and energy and research in the US demonstrates bloggers are some of the most influential members of society. Well done to Lynne and Ed. It’s now time for all Lib Dem MPs to get involved.

UPDATE: Steve Webb MP has now posted a comment over at LDV, Paddy turned down N.Ireland; MPs angry at ‘elderly Scots.’

Citizen journalism, isn’t it all just a waste of time?

Published
by
Ed
on June 6, 2007
in new media
. 0 Comments

The debate over the accuracy of information on the Internet came to Newsnight last night. Sadly, the BBC does not offer an embeddable media player so you have to click here to watch it.

newsnight-accuracy-online.jpg

Gavin Esler set it up very gently, but the debate between Andrew Keen, possibly the Internet’s best known contrarian, and Charles Leadbeater, a proponent of the “power of mass creativity”, was predictably lively.

In his new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture, Keen takes aim at bloggers and web evangelists accusing them of

destroying culture, ruining livelihoods and threatening to make consumers of new media regress into ‘digital narcissism’. (The Observer)

Ironic, considering Keen made his living in Silicon Valley during the hi-tech boom. Keen has now become a poster boy for dissenters and a sworn enemy of bloggers and web evangelists everywhere. For a more detailed account read David Smith’s article in the Observer.

Not surprisingly, Keen came under fire from Leadbeater (Esler did a good job of remaining neutral). The two main targets of Keen’s attacks during the debate were Wikipedia and citizen journalists.

Frankly, I’m tired of folks slamming Wikipedia. It’s an easy target for the old guard. I too was a skeptic for a long time until I read the study by Nature that demonstrated Wikipedia was almost identical to the Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy. I’ve used Wikipedia several times in the last couple of years to fact check and it hasn’t let me down once yet. Given that there is far more freely available information on a typical Wikipedia page, compared to the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I know which one I will use in the future.

Keen’s claim that:

the media ecosystem that has grown up over the last 50 years is being undermined by this new flattened media, which is unreliable and often deeply corrupt

is farcical. The first words that came to mind when I heard that, Rupert Murdoch.

According to Keen citizens are mindlessly consuming information without questioning its accuracy and many do not have the ability to critically sift through the information available to them. Apparently, only the mainstream media (MSM) has the ability to do that. (If it’s not clear already, I seriously resent the fact Keen questions whether I am intelligent enough to be trusted to critically analyze a news story.)

The MSM is hardly devoid of factual inaccuracies. Take the Newsnight blog for instance.

On the same night as the Keen/Leadbeater debate aired, the following appeared in the blog’s comments:

At 12:20 AM on 06 Jun 2007, John, Stockport wrote:

A couple of factual errors:

The UK government’s advice changed a few years ago from 21/14 units per week to 3-4/2-3 units per day.

You misuse the word ‘proof’ - your (at the strong end of wines) bottle of wine is not 14% proof, it’s 14% Alcohol By Volume (ABV), slightly under 25 degrees proof.

Maybe pedantic, but in the same programme, you questioned reliability of information available from other sources (The Web).

Susan Watts, Newsnight’s Science Editor, responded:

At 12:09 PM on 06 Jun 2007, Susan Watts wrote:

CORRECTION:

Oops… in my report last night on alcohol consumption I talked about a bottle of wine of “14% proof”.
As has been pointed out to me by astute viewers clearly drinking only within sensible limits last night, I should have said “14% Alcohol By Volume (ABV)”.

Apologies…

Susan Watts

Credit to Susan Watts for responding and a fine example of the benefits of the Internet. Without such an easy method of notifying Newsnight editors and correspondents of factual errors, this particular error would have almost certainly gone unnoticed at the bottom of a BBC mailbag.

The crucial point is that the MSM also make factual errors. Thankfully, the Internet now allows them to be corrected by citizen journalists.

Is there still value in having experts reporting and commenting on stories? Of course, which is partly why political blogs such as Iain Dale’s Diary, written by a former prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC)/lobbyist/political bookshop owner and MyDD.com, created by Jerome Armstrong, an American political consultant, are of such huge interest and popularity.

The beauty of the Internet is that it has enabled many more experts to cheaply and easily publish reports and commentary. Do I believe everything that Dale and Armstrong publish? Don’t be silly! But nor do I believe everything that appears in the MSM.

There will always be a market for professional journalists. I do not subscribe to the extremist views of some web evangelicals who argue the MSM will be replaced entirely by citizen journalists using the power of the Internet. A healthy democracy needs high quality journalists poking, prodding and probing public life. There will always be a need to pay citizens to perform this role, but I think it will become increasingly hard to label them.

The line between the MSM and citizen journalism is becoming more and more blurred. As members of the MSM become more comfortable interacting with citizens online, accepting criticisms, feedback and learning how to use the Internet to enrich their stories and as more citizen journalists develop their careers, the MSM and citizen journalism will become almost indistinguishable.

That moment is still a way off and there will undoubtedly be growing pains along the way, but the process has begun and unless Keen wishes to revert to a deeply authoritarian society it must continue. (Jeff Jarvis has more on this on his blog, BuzzMachine)

Clearly, this debate touched a nerve with me. I am a passionate believer in the power of the Internet and to hear someone with an attitude like Keen, especially with his strong background in Silicon Valley, flabbergasts me. I will be returning to this topic in the coming days with posts titled Morality Online: Pankhurst vs. Pammie and How the Truth Debate Affects Online Politics.

UPDATE:
Newsnight are now featuring a couple of extracts from Keen’s book on their blog. They invite you to offer your comments. Is this an indication of Newsnight’s editorial line on this matter? Given Jeremy Paxman’s apparent disdain at the mere mention of the Newsnight blog/podcast/website it is not beyond belief. However, I always get the impression he actually understands it and accepts it, but simply views it as beyond him technologically. Perhaps one of you would like to ask him?



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