Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Daily Digest: Online Indy Press Making News, Enemies

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, September 17 2008

The Center for Independent Media's Michigan Messenger is taking some intense GOP heat after a reporter broke the news of a local Republican official's comments that they planned to use foreclosure lists to block Michiganders from voting; The Palin Truth Squad is the new response team assembled by the McCain campaign to "counter recent attacks on Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her friends and her record of accomplishment." And ThePalinTruthSquad.com is most definitely not their online home; How did Robert Greenwald go from a little known filmmaker to the force behind a great many of left-leaning video clips you'll come across on the web?; and much more.

The Web on the Candidates

  • Michigan's Web Press Showdown: The Center for Independent Media launched in 2006 with an audacious goal: building a thriving independent online news network from scratch. Now the Michigan Messenger, the Center's property in the Great Lakes state, is taking some intense GOP heat after reporter Eartha Jane Melzer broke the news of a local Republican official's comments that they planned to use foreclosure lists to block Michiganders from voting. That hot bit of reporting prompted the Obama campaign and DNC to file suit over the tactic. The quoted GOP official then railed against the site, saying "What we have here is a liberal blog funded by a liberal billionaire pushing a fabricated story." But these are "bloggers" with lawyers; the Center for Independent Media and the Michigan Messenger are standing by the story and the reporter. It's a battle worth keeping an eye on. #

  • Name of the Domain Game: The Palin Truth Squad is the new response team assembled by the McCain campaign to "counter recent attacks on Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her friends and her record of accomplishment." And ThePalinTruthSquad.com is most definitely not their online home. The parody site, mocked up to look a lot like JohnMcCain.com, was put together by blogger Neil Sinhababu. Here's a taste: "In the event that the media tells the truth about Sarah Palin, the Palin Truth Squad will either distort the truth or make such absurd attacks on Barack Obama that nobody will be able to remember what they were thinking about before." How many Palin fans do you think have spent several perplexed seconds after stumbling upon the site? #

  • Genesis of a Video Giant: How did Robert Greenwald go from a little known filmmaker to the force behind a great many of left-leaning video clips you'll come across on the web? PBS MediaShift's Simon Owens goes inside the 40-staffer Brave New Films Operation and dissects how team Greenwald turn an idea, news story, or unfortunate quote into viral video clips. It's a well-oiled web-based operation that, Simon reports, will next be put to the task of distributing "Slacker Uprising," Michael Moore's latest feature. #

The Candidates on the Web

  • The Web's Crazy for Palin: Sarah Palin has triggered an "online political earthquake," reports the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas. The number of Palin-related searches and videos we're seeing are, Jose quotes experts as saying, simply unprecedented. Of course, there's no real equivalent of Palin's instantaneous rocketing from relative obscurity to the national stage, at least in the web era. Also on the online popularity front, MIT Technology Review's David Talbot uses our charts to deduce that John McCain is catching up to Barack Obama on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. (via TechRepublican's Jordan Tuch) #

  • Obama's Text Lessons: Interest in nuts-and-bolts of the Obama campaign's vice-presidential text message gambit came and went in about the time it took to read "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be..." But echoDitto's Michael Silberman has an excellent look at the lessons learned that will be invaluable for political practitioners. #

TechCongress and Beyond

  • Website Takedown: A Colorado "blogger" is claiming responsibility for pulling down Republican Representative Marilyn Musgrave's campaign site by exploiting its social-networking features, reports the Colorado Independent, another Center for Independent Media site (see above). But we suggests that tagging him or her a "blogger" sullies the good names of bloggers everywhere. When someone starts pulling down an opponent's website, we're into black-hat hacker territory. #

In Case You Missed It...

Ari Melber asks if "McCain's BlackBerry 'joke'" can "make McCain a joke."

Micah Sifry reports on the failure of many elected officials -- including ones by the name of Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin -- to respond to Project Vote Smart surveys results in a "lip service democracy." Also from Micah: from the discovery of a tanning bed in the Alaska governor's mansion to the Michigan foreclosure story noted above, bloggers are breaking news.

News Briefs

RSS Feed thursday >

"Power Politics in the Age of Google"

TechPresident's editorial director, Micah Sifry, will be speaking this afternoon on a panel at Harvard University called "Power Politics in the Age of Google," alongside Susan Crawford, Nicco Mele, Elaine Kamarck and Alexis Ohanian. The panel will be moderated by Harvard Shorenstein Center Director Alex Jones, and will be live-streamed here. GO

House Republicans Get a Jump on the Budget

Via Politico's Mike Allen, the House Republicans are out with a video — this one attributed to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — getting the drop on President Barack Obama's next federal budget, expected Monday. GO

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

More