No, Nielsen

As someone who did a lot of HCI coursework as an undergrad, I admire Nielsen a great deal. He knows usability, and he explains it well. While I find his analysis of the Kerry and Bush newsletters interesting, I think he fails to make a point when comparing them to the Washington Post's newsletter. He writes:

Is it unfair to compare the presidential campaign newsletters with one that is professionally published by a major newspaper? I don't think so. Yes, it would be unfair to impose such a comparison on the Internet operations of someone running for mayor of Podunk. But presidential campaigns are another matter: they have budgets of more than $300 million each.

Now, he seems to think it's fair to compare campaign newsletters with the Post's newsletter based on the level of professionalism involved. I think he misses the mark completely. The creators and authors of the Post's newsletter had entirely different goals in mind than the creators/authors of the campaign newsletters. In terms of target audience, audience motivation, and timing (long term vs. short term), these are VERY different creatures. To map a set of criteria onto both to make the point that political campaigns have a long way to go is, I think, fairly silly and fails to really look at what campaign strategists are trying to do.

Privilege and Protection

Last December on PBS News Hour, media correspondent Terence Smith spoke with First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams about the way the First Amendment protects reporters and journalists from reporting their sources. The protection of the First Amendment is what allows real journalism in the first place-- if they were not assured of protection under the law, (a) journalists would be less likely to get involved with controversial investigations, and (b) anonymous sources would be less likely to divulge valuable information. The question, now, in this new media world, is whether First Amendment protection similarly applies to bloggers. What makes a journalist? In response to this question, Abrams said the following:

FLOYD ABRAMS: I was asked that today, and I said as I say here, I think a blogger ought to be protected also. It seems to me that the purpose of this privilege is to protect the people who play a function in American life.

It's not to protect reporters as such. It's to protect people who gather information and disseminate it on a widespread basis to the public. So I think eventually if there is a privilege, and that's one of the things the court's going to deal with, but if there is a privilege here, whether it's rooted in the First Amendment or what's called federal common law, I think it should apply to bloggers as well.

I generally agree with Abrams. Of course, it's worth noting that protection under the First Amendment for journalists (and others) is different from attorney-client privilege. Why? Because we license attorneys. We don't license journalists, nor should we since the ability of the media to act as a watchdog (even if they fail at this occasionally) is both significant and necessary.

The argument could be made that we should license bloggers in some way, or at least credentialize them. This would have a two-fold effect: (1) educate readers about which bloggers are reputable, and (2) give bloggers the credentials to conduct the sort of investigative work that has thus far been the claim of journalists.

That argument would be wrong, and is rooted in the assumption that journalists are somehow, whether through training or employment, more qualified than the average citizen-blogger and less likely to fudge the details or outright manufacture facts. I don't think either of these are true, and one only has to look at the past year--a year of Gannongate, Sinclair Broadcasting, Texas National Guard records, and the Downing Street memo--to realize that bloggers are both capable and willing to exercise--with integrity--real investigative work.

Tell-A-Friend!

In a moment of incredible synergy, my work at Progressive Majority and this week's readings are on the same topic: email newsletters. Yesterday we sent out a newsletter to about 30,000 of our supporters. I'll discuss in a later post some of the things I learned along the way of helping to create an eAlert, but I wanted to touch in this post on the idea of viral emails. We have a report function on our eAlert toolkit that lets us source our Internet activity and analyze how effective various action items and emails are. One thing we can look at is a "tell a friend" count by month, which looks at the number of times supporters reading our emails hit the "tell a friend" link to forward an email or web action item on to their friends.

I looked over the last year and a half, starting Jan 2004, and noticed some visible spikes: February 2004, June 2004, and December 2004/January 2005. I went back through our archived emails and was surprised by what I found, then narrowed the date range on our tell-a-friend report to confirm it. In February and June 2004, we sent emails asking our supporters to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment, and these worked incredibly well as viral emails. In Dec 2004/Jan 2005, we sent a series of emails asking our supporters to take action (meaning send a fax or write a letter) to prevent the GOP in Washington State from overturning the gubernatorial election in which Gregoire was elected. If you take a step back, it's clear that these were two hot-button issues for Democrats, especially for progressives who favor marriage equality and voting reform (IRV, etc).

The take-away? It's interesting to think that email newsletters may be more effective in rallying the ideological base than in reaching out to undecideds or issue voters. That makes sense. If I were a single-issue voter or an undecided voter, I may not open, click-through, and forward an email to my friends. But you can bet I would if I were an ideological supporter.

Thoughts?

It's About Access

Via Mobile Pipeline. I know it has nothing to do with the reading, but it's so controversial...

Texas Rep. Pet Sessions has authored the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005," a bill that would prohibit state and local governments from providing telecommunications or information services that are "substantially similar" to services provided by private companies. In other words, HR 2726 (along with a bunch of other bills being pushed by telecom companies) are trying to make free municipal wireless hot spots illegal.

Now, I happen to take offense to this type of legislation on multiple levels. First of all, while I would agree that "the right to broadband" is neither a defined nor enumerated Constitutional right, I nonetheless believe that the government should provide basic access to the tools that every American needs to make a living wage. These tools not only include public transportation and public libraries, but public access to the Internet. We have a tremendous digital divide in this nation that is only growing wider as Internet technology becomes less about playing games and more about providing people with a technical skill set that will allow them to be productive workers in an Information Age. In talking about the new media, isn't it clear that the Internet provides citizens with a valuable tool for organizing and accessing information about the political process? If the role of websites like the Secretary of State Elections sites and opensecrets.org or tray.com are to maintain transparency of government, then shouldn't we also ensure that average citizens have access to these sites?

I also take offense because my two hometowns--Seattle, WA and Palo Alto, CA--have either established or are in the process of establishing a downtown free wireless zone. Last weekend when I was in Seattle, I had fun driving around town picking up wireless in the car (No, I wasn't driving :-)). Of course, it is slow and unreliable, but that's what public goods are all about! I doubt that the telecom industry would actually be significantly hurt by free wifi zones... customers who want WiFi will PAY for the real service rather than rely on the free service.

Control Freaks

Chris Bowers from MyDD has this wonderful article and analysis on the differences between progressive and conservative blogging. Bowers argues, as many others have, that lefties embrace an open blogging atmosphere that permits comments and dissent whereas the right-wingnuts, in typical top-down aristocratic fashion, tends to push dissent and difference to the margins. Initially, Bowers concluded that tight control allowed right-wing blogs to be more successful in impacting the mainstream media... but now he finds that left-wing blogs are pulling away in terms of traffic. Why? Community.

Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Café, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries / articles / polls. By comparison, there are no community sites among the top twenty-four conservative blogs. None, zip, zero, nada

Bowers finds that of the top 5 conservative blogs, only LGF even allows comments (let alone diaries, polls, etc). Contrast this with blogs like DailyKos, Atrios, MyDD, etc. which encourage (indeed, are even based on) full user participation. They thrive on discourse, dialogue, and debate rather than squelching them in the name of "staying on message." It's a struggle mirrored in real-life day-to-day party politics, where the Right maintains a united facade (while fracturing behind the scenes) and the Left openly faces its inner conflicts. I prefer the latter approach (obviously), and I tend to think it will be more effective in the long haul.

Supplementing traditional media

According to Mike Daniel of the Houston Chronicle, Keith Olbermann's Countdown is the most popular show on MSNBC! I haven't seen much of it, but I wonder how much of the show and Olbermann's success are due to Olbermann's blog. Now here's an interesting idea -- instead of pitting the mainstream media against new media, why not use them to complement one another?!