It's Official,the web won the election for Obama

"The electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal would not have been possible without the additional empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with the Internet,"

Those were the words of Al Gore as reported by the FT this morning and as if we didn't know it,the 2008 election has become a defining moment in the relationship of the Internet and politics

It also reports the words of Joe Trippi who says that

Mr Obama had won every caucus state that mattered by moving and organising thousands of people, through methods including e-mail lobbying and volunteer recruitment via the web. This had given him his decisive lead over Mrs Clinton.

If we do go the polls next year as some of the papers are speculating,will the web have the same influence,probably not?

American media guilty of a liberal conspiracy?

How I would have loved to have had my ear against the door outside of the Boston Globe’s conference room on the morning of October 30th.
“A British paper discovered that Barack Obama’s aunt is living in squalor in a slum in South Boston.”“A British paper!?!?”
The Boston Globe, headquartered in South Boston, had the story in its back yard. Yet it was the Times Online that first broke the news that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s aunt is living illegally in the US despite being served a deportation order several years ago.

writes Evan Lips over at New Statesman
Does this the state of the American press? Evan claims that

There have been several instances where the media – confronted with relevant news regarding Barack Obama – has decided simply to remain silent.

So has there been a liberal conspiracy.Well the writer points to a number of examples that cover a range of issues and sums up with the comment

It may have been beneficial to American voters if more British news groups had covered our election.

The biggest day so far for online media

I think that it is going to be a day dominated by the American elections and the way that the media are covering it.

Over at the Online Journalism blog,Paul Bradshaw has a guest writer who says

I don’t think we ever had a live event on the web that will get so much live coverage. This means incredible amounts of information will be published over all kind of services and social networks. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wordpress, Blogger and many more

Wilbert Baan looks at using web services that have programmable interfaces and is using the twitter database to track voting intentions in the States.

Dave Lee has done a superb job in creating an online watchers guide which I for one will be using

Study of blogging in the US campaign --different strategies in the two camps

Over at the Columbia Journalism review they have been looking at the development of the Blogosphere during the US Presidential campaign,a subject that I am sure will be the headline for many dissertations in the coming months.

The study reveals a significanty difference between the two candidates

Barack Obama’s campaign reaches out to activist bloggers in order to communicate with and mobilize campaign volunteers and feed them into its online social networking site

whereas

John McCain’s campaign takes a top-down approach, using blogs—many of which it helped incubate—as an echo chamber for channeling mostly anti-Obama attacks into the mainstream media, in order to create an impression of grassroots online support

Perhaps though this may be the most telling conclusion

Many of the bloggers cross-post content on several Web sites and, in this way, raise the profile of key stories and videos on Google and YouTube. But they mostly link to each other, and while this can be a useful way for like-minded activists to network, this disconnectedness from the rest of the blogosphere “indicates it is not a particularly effective communication strategy, because these sites don’t draw much attention from established bloggers on the left or the right,”

Newspaper endorsements

How important are they?

Over the weekend the New York Times came out in favour of Barack Obama.

Editor and Publisher have been doing a great job in following which paper has been endorsing which candidate and this morning reports

The Obama lead in editorial endorsements this year turned into a landslide, even a rout today, as dozens of additional papers backed him, compared to the relative handful for McCain

In fact says the piece

Obama still leads by almost 3-1 in all editorial endorsements. Updated with the latest from today his lead stands at 180 to 75.

Maybe though the most embarrassing is the news that the Anchorage Daily News paper of the home state of Sarah Palin has come out in favour of the Democrats

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Information Overload?

I wrote yesterday about the role of the New Media in the US elections and how important it has been for candidates to embrace the new technologies.

Well maybe there is another side to this.The phrase information overload.

Writing on the Biving's report Joe Crump finds himself overwelmed by the amounts of coverage of the Palin-Biden debate on Thursday night.He ponders

Because of my overuse of technology, I felt that it became difficult for me to form uninfluenced opinions. Other friends and colleagues have different opinions on the issue, but I feel that technology may serve only to distract from the actual debate.

It is an important point to make.There are many advantages to the new media era,many opinions to be held but at the end of the day there is only so much information that an individual can take in

How many correspondents does it take (2)

Yesterday I blogged about the story of 472 BBC employees hanging on the edge of their telephones over discussions about covering the US conventions

Well today it seems that CNN have taken a more realistic approach to reporting the convention.

Bill Schneider, its political analyst was quoted as saying

There will be more than 10,000 reporters at the convention and very little real news.
But plenty of news of the contrived or press release-generated variety! How many reporters is CNN sending? (We’re sending two —hoping, of course, to find “news” among those 10,000 reporters with nothing “real” to report).

How many correspondents does it take...?

This from the Guardian's media diary and if correct what is going on at the Beeb

It was the mother of all conference calls. No fewer than 472 BBC staff were hanging on the telephone 10 days ago to discuss its coverage of the upcoming US party conventions. Yet more ammunition for those who say the BBC has lavished too much attention on the US elections already.

Guido turns his hand to media commentory when he read it too and claims he was told

by one Democratic insider that the BBC had a bigger presence at the U.S. conventions than any other domestic broadcaster - more than ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox or PBS. It was ridiculous he said because none of the main players had the time to waste speaking to viewers who weren't voters

No major difference but the Internet has made some fundemental changes to American politics

According to Gideon Rachman, talking about the US elections

it’s not very obvious that the internet has made this election qualitatively
different from all other campaigns

But there are two major differences

First, 5.5 million people have watched all 35 minutes of Obama’s
Philadelphia speech on race on YouTube. In an age when the average TV news
sound-bite is down to 12 seconds, this is extraordinary and heartening

and secondly

• the internet has transformed American campaign finance - and may have solved
  one of the biggest problems with American democracy. The problem - as we all
  know - is that elections are so expensive that candidates have to spend huge
  amounts of time raising funds; and have to warp their positions to suit the
  prejudices of wealthy donors. But Obama has already raised around $300m in small
  donations via the internet

Gideon was chairing a debate at the US embassy in London on the impact of the internet on the presidential election. You can watch it HERE

New York Times weighs into the election campaign

Well it has started.

The New York Times has choosen today to publish on its front page allegations of John McCain and improper relations(to use an old phrase) with a lobbyist more than 30 years his junior

According to the paper

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship.and it continues

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

So why publish now?

Editor and publisher reports that the Times had the story back in December

The rumors last December had died down after other reports suggested that that McCain and the unnamed woman had hired Washington lawyer/fixer Bob Bennett to strong arm the Times. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reported then that Bennett had dealt with specific issues raised in the reporting. Whatever went down, the story never ran. Until tonight

.

Interesting back in December of course McCain was far from being the Republican candidate.Enough said?

Anyway Senator McCain has called a press conference this morning in Ohio in which he refutes the claims

"I’m very disappointed in the New York Times piece. It’s not true. "

and his campaign team issued the following

It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election

Incidently 1455 comment next to the original Times piece

Political aggregator launches in the States

Taking advantage of the media clamour over the American Presidential race,the New York Times reports that

Jared Kushner, publisher of The New York Observer,is to pull together 50 Web sites, one for each state, into a political hub called Politicker.com. Each site will serve as an intensely local source for political articles, speculation and scandal,

Jared has though out his business model,he reckons that the site:

will attract an influential readership and, in turn, advertisers who want to reach those readers.

adding that

“Instead of taking out ads in five papers across the state, if you want to reach the most influential and politically active people, all you have to do is buy an ad package on the site,”

You can sign up for access to the site Politicker.com here.

Blogette for President

If John McCain does make it as the next US president,he may well thank his daughter Megham whose blog detailing life on the road campaigning with her father mixed with pop songs to help her thru the day.

Here is her take on Super Tuesday

Waking up at 5 am to go to The Today Show on Super Tuesday felt like: The Ramones' "My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)."

Riding on the plane for 5 hours to San Diego felt like: Rufus Wainwright's "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Reprise)."

Having such a rockin' Super Tuesday felt like: Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."

And finally, how I feel right now (in fact this is one of my campaign theme songs): Christina Aguilera's "Here to Stay".

McCain gets the most media coverage in the States

An interesting survey on Primary coverage from the Project for excellence in Journalism.


They have tracked the media coverage of the candidates in the States and conclude

With Florida winner John McCain getting about 75% more coverage than Mitt Romney, and with Mike Huckabee almost invisible, the press appeared conspicuously close to turning McCain into the presumptive nominee last week

Across both the parties up to 3rd Feb,McCain also leads with 37.4% of stories,closely followed by Barack Obama on 34% and Hillary Clinton on 32%

Some amusement for the weekend

NYT selects its democratic for 2008

The New York Times has come out in favour of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

In its editorial this morning,the paper says

The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election.

adding

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign

Replace reporters with a betting index

There has been much critisism of the BBC over the amount of people that are covering the US Primaries and of journalists getting the results wrong in New Hampshire.

But replacing them with a betting index?

This post though perhaps goes a little too far

Why should the BBC spend so much on reporting on the Democrat and Republican primaries, when it can just quote the betting prices, in the same way it mentions the FTSE 100 index? In principle, such prices should convey all available information about Clinton's, Obama's or McCain's prospects cheaply and efficiently, saving the huge cost of having a mob of reporters over there. When the Beeb is trying to cut 2500 jobs, you'd think it'd seize upon an obvious way of saving money whilst still telling viewers and listeners what they need to know.

Why journalists shouldn't take the polls too seriously

I blogged yeterday about the rsults from New Hampshire and how some papers were more prudent than others over the Democratic opinion polls.

Live science carries a post which attempts to explian why Why Presidential Polls Are Wrong

Blame bad timing and bad media practices for the surprise in the New Hampshire primary on the Democratic side, two political watchers say

For journalists a particular warning from Shawn Parry-Giles, a political communications professor at the University of Maryland

The media should stop treating polls as if they are factual information

and continues

"

Media aren't going to be self-reflexive about their poll," Parry-Giles said. "The journalists themselves just bought into the fact that [Obama] was so far ahead and it was inevitable. I was stunned by the coverage."

Journalists perhaps too early to get on the bandwagon in New Hampshire

The debate will go on long about the incorrect predictions of the media pundits in the New Hampshire primaries.Factors pointed to by commentators include people telling the pollsters that they are voting for the Black candidate put in private voting the other way and the citizens of New Hampshire simply telling the rest of the country that they can make up their own minds thank you very much.

The role of the press in all this must be scrutinised.Following the results in Iowa,the media bandwagon threw its weight behind change and Obama.On both sides of the Atlantic it must be said.Put into context Iowa was always going to be fairly unrepresentative just as New Hampshire was last night.There is a long way to go for both parties and let's hope the media return to a more objective reporting.

Brian Stelters writing in the New York Times this morning reflects on thsi very point.

Just after 11 p.m., the MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann drew comparisons between the media’s pre-primary predictions and the infamously wrong 1948 headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” in the Chicago Daily Tribune

And adds

Tom Brokaw, somewhat of an elder statesmen of television news, may have said it best on MSNBC around 11 p.m. As Mr. Olbermann’s co-anchor Chris Matthews commented on faulty New Hampshire polls, Mr. Brokaw pointed to a larger fault shared by media organizations, suggesting that journalists should “temper that temptation to constantly try to get ahead of what the voters are deciding:”

What to do when you get the story wrong.

Both the Indy and the Guardian gambled on their fornt pages on the result fronm Iowa and both got it wrong.As it must be said did most of the pundits

Perhaps on nights like this it is best to play safe and the Telegraph and the Times did with stories on cannabis re classification and the overuse of antibiotics

Tomorrow's chip wrappers

This from the New Hampshire Gazette on the Primaries under the title

Where are the snowmen of yesteryear?

Monday, January 7, 2008 — It is the eve of New Hampshire’s much-ballyhooed First in the Nation™ Presidential Primary. Forty-eight hours from now a second set of digits will be associated with the names of the leading candidates, and the hirelings of the media corporations will go thundering off to the next arena. National interest in our state will vanish as surely and as quickly as this cheerful fellow. For the record, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit at noon today. Tomorrow the mercury is predicted to rise into the low 50’s.