What Was the Post Thinking with Its “Salon”? This:

Among the many questions being asked about the Washington Post’s disastrous plan to charge lobbyists and executives for a private “salon” among “the powerful few”:

WTF were they thinking?

Thanks to the Post’s “Shoptalk” employee newsletter [posted on an employee alumni website not affiliated with the Post] we now have some idea. In the June 16 edition, Charles Pelman, the staffer who organized the salons, was interviewed by Shoptalk staff about his new job.

This interview came long before the Post had to backtrack and aver they had no idea what was being said about the salons. If only we’d known. . ..

The “money” quote from the interview, as it were:

What goals have you set?

We’re thinking of doing eight to eleven salons, five to six day-long briefings and one major leadership summit per year. The salons are two-hour dinners with reporters, editors, policy makers, politicians, advocacy groups and other people who have a stake in a particular topic.

How will you measure success?

Profits. We want to drop some money to the bottom line. We want to be one of the engines of growth.

Well, there you have it. WTF?

Here’s TF.

#Neda, Still Outside the Mainstream

It may appear that #Neda–the young woman whose death on the streets of Tehran was captured on a staggering amateur video–has “gone mainstream.”

Which is to say, that Big Media has recognized the role the image may be playing in driving political opinion, and is exploring it as a way to interpret the continuing protests and political activities. [I blogged on this topic yesterday.]

But no.

Where credit is due: Last night CNN repeatedly ran a version of the 37-second video, with proper warnings about its graphic content. The hosts and guests talked about the video’s potential–and apparent–role in galvanizing the protest movement both inside and outside Iran.

The fact that it has done so is beyond dispute.

But CNN stands nearly alone among U.S. mainstream media in its acknowledgment of the role the Neda video is playing in Tehran.

To check this out, I did on-site searches of three major print-heritage MSM news sites. Here’s what I found, as of 3:30 Monday, June 22 [links below are to stored searches]:

WashingtonPost.com

Stories from AP, Reuters and a single homegrown reference: An online discussion by a non-staffer

NYTimes.com

Three references in The Lede news blog, and reference deep in one print article, which says that the authenticity of the video cannot be verified [of which more in a moment]

USAToday.com

Two blog entries, plus wire stories

Let’s open up the search. Here’s what Google News tosses up on a search for “Neda”: 332 results!

But wait, there’s less.

Dig into those results and you’ll see:

• The New York Daily News appears to be alone among U.S. newspapers in offering original Neda reporting in print by its staff. The Kansas City Star and the L.A. Times have blogged on it.
• Among non-daily MSM, Time’s Robin Wright features a print article that uses Neda as a jumping off point to put the current events in historical context
• Otherwise the content comes mostly from ABC news, CNN and FoxNews, which for the most part used the Neda video as a compelling “actuality” to show over the latest news updates.
• Around the world, big media is paying more attention: the BBC and other UK outlets, some local TV stations’ websites, and wire stories from AP, Reuters and AFP.

The journalists most actively discussing the Neda phenomenon? Indie bloggers.

So why the mainstream media prudery?

It could be that, yes, the video is a fraud. I think this a very remote possibility, almost paranoid in its nature. One look at the video makes this quite clear. [One commenter on my blog entry yesterday makes this case--he suspects a "blood packet" has been applied to Neda's face--and many others are doing so around the web.]

The world is a strange and terrible place, and [as a former Washington Post newsroom employee] I am enough of a trained skeptic to see that it’s foolish to rule out the possibility entirely.

It can also be argued that the MSM should exercise its often-valuable caution and care in its reports–especially as new details about Neda’s life and images of her beautiful face emerge from obscure,  unfamiliar sources and are being used to serve the protesters’ political ends. In this view, the MSM is the prudent counterweight to the flighty speculations of the social web, refusing to fall into the hands of the revolutionaries’ spinning.

But as I argued yesterday, I suspect it’s less about that than it is about the MSM’s unwillingness to acknowledge [accept? understand?] its increasingly marginalized role in a fast-moving news environment where real-time global information sharing without MSM approval is the rule, not the exception.

I believe that a lot of the media’s “Well, we’re really not sure” chin-pulling is an affected, self-infatuated dodge–a way to avoid of the larger, paralyzing question:

What, exactly, should the mainstream media should do when a story develops so far beyond its control–or understanding?

n.b. Over at the journalism site Poynter.org, Bill Mitchell explains some of the challenges the Neda video creates for traditionally trained journalists.

Disproof of Concept: Change.org’s Ideas for Change

Change.org is a social network where people who care about a variety of causes–global warming, hunger, gay rights, animal rights, worker rights and a bewildering range of others–find kindred spirits, action groups and all sorts of information. It also accepts donations on behalf of the non-profits in its network.

As a platform to help people connect and collaborate, it’s a classic–and admirable–use of social media.

The group’s Ideas for Change campaign, however, is another story. It’s a ripe demonstration of what happens when a “wisdom of the crowds” effort is overtaken by activists whose real agenda is self-promotion, not the public interest.

Here’s how Ideas for Change works: The site invited users to suggest ideas for change [over 7,700 submissions] which were then reduced [via over 280,000 votes] to a “short” list of 90. In round two, each site visitor is allowed 10 votes to distribute among the causes he or she feels most important. The final list of Top 10 causes will be “delivered” to the Obama Administration and Congress via a press conference at the National Press Club.

I suspect you know where this is heading.

As of this writing, the top two causes on Ideas for Change are. . .to legalize marijuana and end the war on drugs. Number 13 offers what could charitably be considered a slight variant, “decriminalizing” marijuana.

To be fair, other top vote-getters involve matters more central to the public conversation: the Patriot Act, marriage equality, universal healthcare and green initiatives. [All suggestions would likely be considered "liberal" responses to the issues. Nothing wrong with that.]

But there at Number 9 stands “Save Small Business from CPSIA“–a plea to free small toymakers from the strangling yoke of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. [According to the site, the 2007 law is designed to ensure the products of large toymakers are certified free of lead, phthalates and other dangerous stuff, yet apparently captures small toymakers in its regulatory net.]

Number 9 is certainly a legitimate matter. So is the idea of decriminalizing weed.

But the thought that the tens of thousands of activists who participate in America’s civic life believe these to be among the most important issues to bring before the administration and Congress is fatuous.

I imagine the leaders of Change.org having a hard time presenting that list of issues, so redolent with pot smoke, at the National Press Club without humiliation. Yes, Mr. President, activist America has spoken, and we want our bongs back, dammit! And get the hell of small toymakers’ backs!

The explanation for this unfortunate outcome is so obvious I can hardly bring myself to type the words: A small number of activists organized their followers to vote for their cause without regard to what they really think are the most important issues facing America.

As the daily results of Digg have demonstrated over the years, opinion-aggregation sites can be gamed, and usually are. [Top Digg'd item of the last 30 days, as I write this: Digg this if your tired of power users stealing stories.] Ditto sites that review restaurants, hotels and fashion.

Applying a game-able system to serious civic matters just isn’t very wise-as the Obama Administration’s effort of an eerily similar name, Change.gov, is beginning to discover. [Change.org had its name first!]

Let’s all agree to this: There are many ways to use new media to involve citizens in the process of change. “Voting for your favorites” is not one of them.

Okay, so what can be done at this point to save Change.org from itself?

Why, game the system some more, of course!

Activists who really do care about improving the lot of this dysfunctional nation–or at least want to spare a worthy effort like Change.org public humiliation–should go to Change.org and vote in an intellectually honest manner.

Having a hard time? Look way at the bottom: “Create a permanent constituency to end genocide” needs some love. Only 37 votes so far.

Print ‘n’ Read Feature: e-Hail to the Chief

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post has been providing some of the best, most persistent coverage of the use of digital media by the presidential candidates all year.

And now he’s written a big where-we’ve-been/where-Obama-goes-from here piece. Like so much important writing about technologies, e-Hail to the Chief is a lousy read on the web. And so it is my first Print ‘n’ Read ™ feature of 2009, a distinction I assign to articles about technology so valuable they are actually worth printing out on paper and reading away from the computer.

The major theme is how hard it’s going to be for Obama to use the digital media that helped get him into office to carry out the duties of that office. [I've whacked this particular mole-head many times in this blog.]

Highlights include comments from Google’s Eric Schmidt and Al Gore about the messiness of digital democracy when people don’t like what the President is doing–and organize against the very guy they supported. [Am I the only one who didn't know Gore is a "senior adviser" to Google?]

But my favorite part comes at the end, where Vargas witnesses one of the “house meetings” that the transition team’s digital wing is organizing via the web to try to make use of the hunger for civic participation they’ve created.

It’s a somehow sad scene in which regular citizens create and capture a long list of well-worn goals–health care, energy, education, etc., etc., etc.–on a big poster at the front of the room.

The effect is a lingering sense of well-intentioned impotence. It leaves you wondering how on earth you get from that to. . .change we can believe in.

Disclosure: Vargas is a former colleague of mine at the Post.

Tropicana’s Orange State Twitter Strategy

What an incredible. . .thing New Media Strategies, a Washington, D.C. digital marketing firm, has created for Tropicana, the orange juice brand.

It’s called An Orange America.

The. . .thing displays an aggregation of Twitter updates about either John McCain or Barack Obama, visually indicating in blue or red which terms are linked more frequently to each candidate. Click on the words across the bottom, and arcs illustrate how each term is connected to others.

It’s hypnotic, in that high-nerd kind of way.

Two observations:

1. It’s an aggressively unexpected branding venture for an orange juice company. It’s all a stretch: the “We’re not red, we’re not blue, we’re 100 percent orange” slogan. . . the “squeezing” of “fresh” Tweets. . .the idea that the conceptual connections so vividly illustrated are meaningful. [What, for instance, does it mean that there is such frequent use in Obama-centric Tweets of the words "Biden" and "Pray"?]

You can just imagine the suits at PepsiCo who haven’t been in on the fun seeing this and going “WTF?????? How does this help us move more units of Low-Pulp in Q4? Minute-Maid is killing us with those in-store promotions!”

2. And yet: Viewed holistically, An Orange America conveys the impression that Tropicana is alert, progressive and in touch with emerging cultural forces–a significant shift from what you’d normally think about a mass marketer of juice products or its PepsiCo corporate overlords.

I think it’s great to see companies doing odd and wonderful things with social media.

The use of this stuff by big companies is still immature (by which I mean in early development, not juvenile. Although it’s sometimes that too).

It’s inspiring to see the sort of creative mojo behind this thing coming from a marketing agency.

I’m guessing An Orange America didn’t cost much to develop–a fast, inspired job flipped against the wall to see if it sticks. A wing, a prayer and a fast sign-off.

How any of this relates to the core mission of moving the aforementioned units of Low-Pulp OJ is a question I leave to others.

Transparent Disaster, Cont’d

Yesterday I observed that today’s election will be the first example of a transparent voting process, one exposed to the light of day by uncountable acts of “citizen journalism”–reports by members of the public of problems at the polls.

I predicted, somewhat boldly, that so many reports of malfeasance, misbehavior and mischief would surface via the social web that the entire process–and some outcomes–will be disputed for. . .a long time. Transparency cuts both ways, I argued.

“A freaking mess” is how I believe I described the likely result.

Last night, Ali Velshi of CNN baldly reported that the network had already received 30,000 reports of problems at the polls. He said the network had staff to vet the reports and follow up with election officials. Good luck with that, as they say.

Maybe none of this content will be seized upon by partisans and used to dispute election results.

Maybe the campaigns, from President to Congressional to way down the ticket, won’t be mining all this citizen-generated data to support their legal challenges.

Maybe election officials won’t be stymied by questions of what’s a legit problem and what’s not.

Maybe the political persuasion of the Secretaries of State will have no bearing on these adjudications.

And maybe Bob Barr will be elected President today.

Hey, you never know. It’s been a crazy season.

I’ll be paying attention to the action throughout the day. Meantime, I offer a few links to some of the most prominent poll-monitoring efforts. Have a problem at the polls? Report it to all of ‘em!

Election Protection: A lawyer-led, non-partisan clearinghouse of allegations of voting irregularities

Twitter #VoteReports: Live Tweets from people who have just voted, plus lots of issue/candidate spammery. Also Twiter Vote Report, which aggregates on various databases, including a map

CNN Voter Hotline to report problems; CNN citizen iReports

PBS/YouTube Video Your Vote

RedState’s blog aggregating reports of questionable voting behavior

HuffingtonPost’s “Voting Problems” content aggregation page

Current TV’s aggregation of poll problem news and project with Digg

Common Cause’s Protect the Vote phone and online report service

TVOne’s collection of viewer reports of problems at the polls

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