Hillary, Polls and Blogs: Her Possible Blog Strategies

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Very good--as usual--discussion and analysis of Senator Hillary Clinton, her poll numbers, and the blogs at Mystery Pollster. Mark "MP" Blumenthal mentions some issues of leftblog dissatisfaction with HC and "are bloggers the people" and "who do bloggers represent" raised here at policybyblog earlier. Some key points from MP: The primaries and caucuses are still a long way off.  Second, the overwhelming majority of Democratic identifiers and especially liberal Democrats are certainly opposed to the Iraq war.  On a recent CBS News poll most Democrats say they either want to decrease the number of US troops in Iraq (36%) or withdraw altogether (40%).  Third, adults who self-identify as Democrats are not the same as the much smaller pool of Democratic primary voters, much less the even smaller number of activists and donors. We will need larger samples of Democratic primary voters to get a handle on those populations.  Fourth and finally, these results tell us nothing about Senator Clinton's skills as a...
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Bird Flu Blogging: Truth to Power

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
UPDATED: 01/09/06 Big media are not as big as we need them to be. A thousand reporters herd to the Michael Jackson trial, but not enough seek out places where really important news is breaking. The number of fulltime foreign correspondents working for so called "major networks" and newspapers has decreased in recent years [1] as has the amount of of money and resources mainstream media spends on foreign newsgathering. [2] Tom Fenton, the veteran foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun and CBS News just noted: "American news organizations [have] so depleted the ranks of hard news reporters over the years that they suddenly had to send out whatever lifestyle, fashion, and gossip types they could muster on a moment's notice." [3] The mainstream reporter, as well, often stays in capitals and major cities. Bloggers, however, can specialize, look at nooks and crannies big media don't care or don't know about, or don't have any focus on. Take Bird Flu: Those two words are getting major big media coverage and government attention. Here...
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KABC Los Angeles Interview

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Your PBB editor was just interviewed by Kim Serafin of KABC Radio Los Angeles about the Sago media controversy. Key point she made that is that in news rooms, panic sets in when some other news org is first with a story. My thought: "No member of the public cares who is first with breaking news unless it is (a) a real emergency (chemical tanker spill in town) or (b) a big investigative piece (WP on Watergate)." People do care about accuracy: who gets the facts right. That applies to blogs as well. Apparently my call for a Pulitzer for reporters and editors who did not go with false story was mentioned on Fox News Watch. Originally posted January 7, 2006 at PolicyByBlog ...
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Are Blogs an Echo Chamber?: Do Political Bloggers Only Read Blogs That They Agree With?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
[UPDATED] Frank Athens of the Washington Posts makes an accusation that one hears often cast against blogging: "[The most] troubling trait of the Internet [is that] Rather than opening minds, it can close them, thanks to echo-chamber Web sites and blogs. We like to read Web sites and blogs that we agree with and that reinforce our opinions. Aside from the few of you who practice "know your enemy" browsing, how many of you liberals read http://www.nationalreview.com/? How many of you conservatives frequent http://www.thenation.com/? His implication is that blog consumption is ideologically self-referential: liberals read Daily Kos; conservatives read powerlineblog and so on. And never the twain do meet. (See comment by Jeff Jarvis). Is this true? First, Athens' unstated premise is that "neutral platforms" like, say the Washington Post, are superior content providers because they offer an internal marketplace of different, competing ideas, each given equal weight. Well, I'm not sure how many people, left or right, truly believe that the Washington Post, or any...
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Blogs as Political Educators

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
If one paid attention only to the most sensational postings and most acerbic bloggers, it would be easy to stereotype blogs as unleashing, from the pits of Mordor, an army of frothing, torch-wielding hobgoblins who will propel America toward a Balkan tragedy. But many blogs are political educators of the best kind: teaching a new generation of people concerned about and involved in democracy and activated to serve their country and their community. One such example is Watchblog, which describes itself as "a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party (covering everything outside the two major parties." The creators of the blog explain, "Let's face it, politics is confusing. Sometimes it's difficult to know who to believe, who to listen to and who to support. We're here to help. Posting on a regular basis are editors representing each major party. Stay informed." Each of the two major parties...
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Do Bloggers Wear Political Blinders?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
UPDATED Earlier I discussed the issue of whether bloggers wore political blinders, that is they tended to only read, quote and trust other blogs of the same political feather. By bloggers, of course, we mean both people who edit blogs, that is have their own blog and the greater number of people who read and/or comment within blogs. I argued that while this stereotype was in part true, based on my studies of my students, it was not a black and white world, of, say, conservative blogs and blog editors and readers never reading Daily Kos or MYDD. One research study on this question--which did not look at blog readers but blogs themselves--reinforces the view that partisan readership is a tendency not a chasm. A study by Lada Adamic (of HP Labs) & Natalie Glance (of Intelliseek) of posts and blogrolls of "A-List" liberal and conservative blogs between the period of August 29, 2004 and November 15, 2004 found that partisan bloggers tended...
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Google Video and Politics

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
By now I'm sure most people who are online have discovered Google Video. I know I have watched the following dozens of times: "Funny EDS Commercial - Cat Herding" Ghostly Car Ad... Do you believe in ghost???? jana gana mana......National Song of India Octopus Eats Shark Lipa Shmeltzer - Abi Meleibt! Blonde antelope Is this Deja Vu--and I do mean "vu" as in view-- all over again? In July 1999 the Pitas company started distributing software tools to build personal Web sites or "blogs." A month later Pyra Labs (now owned by google) released the program Blogger to the public which made blogs user-friendly, generally accessible, and particularly personal, as bloggers could name the sites themselves (and after themselves). Bloggers started reaching out--finding other bloggers--to attack or to ally with or just to reference or seek help from. It was accumulative knowledge building about technology, from how to type html to what to blog about. In other words, what made blogs was not just personalization but affiliations--the...
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No Man or Woman Blogs Alone?

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
A loose association of "center-right bloggers" recently jointly published, in all their blogs, an "appeal" about the House Republican leadership contest in reaction to the recent lobbying scandals. They write, in part: We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street. We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members. Among the signators are such well-known bloggers as John Hinderaker of powerlineblog, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, Ed Morrissey of CaptainsQuarters, Michelle Malkin, Mike Krempasky of RedState.org, and Bruce Carroll of GayPatriot. There are many lonely blogs out there,...
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Blogs and Endorsements

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
The Directors of RedState.com, the independent Republican-oriented political group blog, recently offered a formal endorsement of a candidate for the upcoming House Republican leadership race. They have made endorsements of other kinds in the past. Newspapers, and to a lesser extent magazines and television news programs, have for a long time formally endorsed candidates for office. Bloggers have also been openly pro-Dean or pro-Bush or pro-Clark, etc., but the formal endorsement is another sign of many bloggers professionalizing their style and content. Incidentally, there is a large but now aging body of research in mass communication studies on the "impact" of newspaper endorsements on voter attitudes and behaviors. Generally, the findings of such research are: (a) newspaper endorsements of candidates can have some influence on some voters; (b) fewer readers actually read newspaper editorials nowadays; (c) newspaper endorsements are more likely to influence campaigns than voters, in that the campaign will use major endorsements in their advertising and especially employ choice quotes...
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Washington Post “Shuts off comments”: Big Media’s Troubles in Adapting to Blogging

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
UPDATED The biggest question facing political and news workers in the years to come will be "what do I do about blogs?" Many newspapers and political campaigns will have to experiment, since nobody has yet written a definitive rule book on integrating blogs into big media and professional politics; indeed, PolicyByBlog is about that process of exploration. And blogs may evolve faster than large corporations or campaigns can adapt to them. Take the Washington Post. Like many newspapers, it has opened up blogs as yet another component of its online edition. One is edited by its ombudsman, Deborah Howell. Self-evident good idea, yes? Build new interactivity with readers, cultivate (possible) customer loyalty, be up-to-date. The Post, however, just announced that for the time being "we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely." (more…)...
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