Daily Digest: 7/25/07

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TechPresident has entered the world of online video! Check out our first (experimental) foray into political video punditry here.

More Debate Post-Mortem

• It's two days after the CNN/YouTube debate and the analysis is still coming in. Adam Cohen at the New York Times has generally high praise for the event, noting that the questions had "had an authentic feel that is too often lacking in the scripted words of paid professionals," and that -- shock! -- "bringing the people into democracy is a healthy thing." He also agrees with us that the "questions could become even more real in future debates, if the organizers drop the filtering and let YouTube users pick the questions." Amen.
• Cohen's colleague at the Times, Katharine Seelye, notes that although Monday's debate drew a smaller audience than June's Democratic in New Hampshire, it drew "what CNN said was the biggest audience since measurements began in 1992 for a cable news debate of those between 18 and 34, the demographic most coveted by advertisers." Call me crazy, but it's a pretty good guess that the YouTube part was what drew young folks in.
• David Weinberger thinks the debate was a victory for citizen journalism. "We saw yet another chunk of the media's role that we can do as well, and, in some important ways, better," he wrote on the Huffington Post. It's not that we don't still need professional journalists, he says, but journalists' We do, but "even the sober, serious image of the professional journalist inculcates an attitude about politics. It becomes an argument between men in suits (with an occasional woman in a pants suit allowed in). On the other hand, when a citizen with a guitar gets to ask a question, it's silly, but it also expresses some of the joy and vitality of politics." It's about the experts letting the regular folks into the processs. "Last night we got to see what yet another political structure might look like if the experts got out of the way occasionally. And it looked pretty damn good."
• PrezVid links to John Edwards' post-debate video, in which he sat down with his laptop and took fifteen minutes to respond to viewer questions, continuing the discussion started during the debate.
• According to Viral Video Chart, John Edwards' "Hair" video has gone viral, ranking #2 on their chart of top viral videos with almost 130,000 views (below the amazing video of Filipino prisoners dancing in sync to "Thriller"). The "Snowman" video from the debate is also ranked at #16, with over 65,000 views. This is worth keeping an eye on... it could represent the long tail of the debate.
• Over at the newly-soft-launched OffTheBus,
  Jay Rosen and a host of citizen-stringers talked to some of the questioners from the debate. Getting behind the scenes to capture the motivations behind their videos, the article extends the feeling that last night's debate was different: here are real people with real issues that they need to discuss.
• TechPresident's Micah Sifry published an editorial in the New York Daily News today that offers ideas for a "Presidential debate 2.0." "Imagine if the next time there's a presidential candidates debate on TV, you could go online to vote beforehand on which questions should be asked, and the top choices from the public were included in the mix. Imagine that during the debate you also could grade the candidates' answers, and see how your peers and the rest of the public were grading them, in real time." Impossible? Sites like Digg are already doing it, and the genius-engineers at Google should be able to figure something out...
• George Bush isn't "big on YouTube debates," says press secretary Tony Snow. Surprised? Me neither. As Think Progress puts it, maybe it's because YouTube isn't "conducive to 'catapulting the propaganda.'"

The Web on the Candidates

• Last week Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communications director, attacked Bill O'Reilly for his harsh and completely misdirected comments about JetBlue's sponsorship of the Yearly Kos convention (he picked a few harsh comments from Daily Kos comment threads in order to generalize about the entire site being a "hate site"). O'Reilly brought Wolfson on the show last night and Wolfson did his best to put O'Reilly in his place. "I think it's unfortunate that in the last week or so you have cherry picked some comments on the Daily Kos site that you or I or others might find objectionable and decided to smear an entire community - hundreds of thousands of people who go to the site every day, who talk to one another, who participate vigorously in our democracy," Wolfson said. Unfortunately, Wolfson missed the opportunity to really stick it to O'Reilly; he kept repeated the above line ad nauseam, achieving less and less of his direct effect each time.

In Case You Missed It...

Alan Rosenblatt links to the Daily Show's analysis of the CNN/YouTube debate... oh wait, he can't because YouTube won't allow the Daily Show on the site. You can find it here. Do yourself a favor and watch it, it's great.

David All was at Monday night's debate, and he recorded a bunch of great footage, including interviews with Joe Trippi, Dennis Kucinich, Peter Leyden, and Mike Gravel.

Patrick Ruffini reports that Project Agape has added presidential candidate contributions to Causes, its Facebook appplication.