OnQ Social Media Consulting » #aim09

New Media Panel

Jeff Quinton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:07:42 +0000

You can catch the “New Media and the Future of Journalism” panel on C-SPAN 2 at 3:15 EDT. I will be liveblogging this panel discussion here. Keep refreshing this post for updates.

Don Irvine (@donirvine) will be moderating the panel. Panelists include K. Daniel Glover (@Danny_Glover), Robert Bluey (@RobertBluey), and J.P. Freire (@JPFreire).

Glover is speaking first. He is the online media strategiest for Accuracy in Media. He starts out with an ode to the microphone and then goes on to mention an incident with Al Gore and journalists earlier this month when Gore had tough questions about global warning. Glover tells of Gore being evasive and the reporter’s microphone being cut off. He also mentions another incident at the National Press Club when a phony group reserved a room and pretended to be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Press Club left the microphone hot even when they knew the Chamber wasn’t involved.

Glover points out that the new media has microphones now too. He pointed out yesterday’s “un-endorsement” of Scozafavva in NY-23 by several conservative bloggers.

Glover points out the Tea Party movement as the best example of the use of new media by conservatives and the media ignoring them until they gained momentum. He also mentions the media attempts to quash the movement failed and that the true story of the Tea Party movement was heard via new media.

Glover also mentions the examples of Van Jones, ACORN, and the NEA. He points out the Left is ahead of the Right but that conservatives have made significant gains.

Rob Bluey, online media director for the Heritage Foundation, is the next speaker from the panel. Bluey says he plans to speak on new media and the future of journalism.

Bluey points out how hard it used to be to get into journalism in the old days. He tells of his own experiences in journalism school at Ithaca College and his dreams of a job in Washington. When he arrived in DC, he discovered that mainstream newspapers didn’t want to hire him because he was a conservative.

He originally worked for CNSNews.com and later for Human Events. Bluey points out that he got to report stories the mainstream media wouldn’t touch.

He points out the rise of bloggers while he worked at those places, including the Dan Rather Memogate scandal. The shift, he said, opened the eyes of people to the impact blogs could have. Bluey then left to work at Heritage.

He saw the impact bloggers could have on public policy debates specifically on the immigration issue. Bluey also talks about other examples of bloggers impacting policy, not just electoral politics.

He then talked about the work of Talking Points Memo on the Alberto Gonzales story from the Left and how the Right saw the potential for new media. Bluey also plugs Watchdog.org.

He also talks about the impact that non-profits can have on the policy debate by harnessing new media. He urges people to stick to the facts in their blogging and new media journalism.

J.P. Freire, associate editor of commentary for the Washington Examiner, is last. Freire talks about Fox News being under attack for offering facts that other networks are “loathe to share.”

Freire also talks about the Tea Party and Town Hall phenomena being covered heavily by Fox News as reasons for the attacks. He also mentions about Glenn Beck pushing the Van Jones story and the fact that Jones was a 9/11 Truther.

He also mentions the attacks on Limbaugh and the Obama administration sending letters to insurance companies trying to stop them from being critical of health care reform.

He talks about fact-checking, muckraking and looking at the data being a tenet of the Examiner and others like Fox News and those in new media doing the same. He mentions that he had a jarring moment when his mother said she had tweeted Bret Baier of Fox to say she had enjoyed his reporting.

Freire then talks about all of the people he came into contact with at the first Tea Parties in DC and the insightful comments on the Examiner website. He mentions that conservatives who normally wouldn’t be active in politics are motivated and fired up now and are speaking out.

Freire talks about the large fact-checking body in place because of citizens becoming active in the process. He points out that the standards might not be the same as traditional journalism but that the standards of traditional journalism aren’t the same as they used to be.

The question and answer session follows. Glover talks about the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan being points where those on the left and the right got involved. Bluey mentions Memogate and mentions when bloggers were invited to a bill-signing by the Bush White House in 2006. He also mentions blogger involvement in the John Roberts and Samuel Alito confirmation hearings. Glover also mentions the online activity after Katrina when the pork-laden transportation bill was passed. He mentions his activity with Porkbusters on Patrol at Eyeblast.tv and videotaping things like the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. Freire talks about the rise of talk radio and the Internet and things online pushing towards decentralization.

A question on advertising gets Bluey to talk about different advertising models for different types of websites and blogs. Freire talks about all the money that is lost in inefficient newspapers even with the ad revenue. He talks about the lesser expenses for new media. He thinks advertisers will continue to play a role online and he talks about the issues of print vs. online at newspapers. Glover uses the example of dollar coins vs. dollar bvills to discuss the differences in print and online advertising. He says the advertisers don’t necessarily understand or trust online like they do print. Freire gives the example of a friend who thought the ACORN videos were inappropriate because of the hard lives that people who are served by ACORN live. He points out that he asked the friend why she thought the videos should be hidden from the taxpayers who helped fund ACORN.

Other questions well on funding, what politics would have been like 25 years ago with today’s new media, and how to get people involved in new media.

Jonah Goldberg on the evolution of media

Jeff Quinton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:42:42 +0000

Jonah Goldberg was speaking at the Accuracy in Media conference on civility. He asked how many letters to the editors had been buried over the years before the internet? He also pointed out there was no fact checking prior to the internet for some of the outright slanders reported. Goldberg also points out that the dynasty is falling apart now.

Some monumental changes in technology have changed things, according to Goldberg. He said the monopoly is dead and the market is somewhat deregulated. Goldberg gives the Memogate/Dan Rather situation as an example and points out that 20 years earlier Bush would have lost the election over it. Instead bloggers and others investigated and fact-checked the story and Dan Rather lost his job over it.

Another example given by Goldberg is the ACORN prostitution videos filmed by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.

Goldberg’s last point is that he doesn’t want the mainstream media to go away; he wants them to get better. He wants there to be more conservatives at the Washington Post and New York Times instead of just a bunch more conservative media outlets.

Tony Blankley on media

Jeff Quinton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:21:20 +0000

Tony Blankley is speaking on “Media – Dinosaur & Digital in the Age of Obama” at 12:15. I will liveblog some comments in case it touches on new media which I think it likely will. Remember, it’s live on C-SPAN 2 and follow the #aim09 hashtag on Twitter.

After his introductory remarks, Blankley went into details about yesterday’s events with the White House Press Corps and the attempt to exclude Fox News from a pool interview. If he were a WH press person, he says he would be worried about the rest of the press refusing to go along with that.

Blankley has also been discussing the media fawning over Obama since the last election and points out that journalists used to hold an adversarial situation with elected officials as sacred.

Blankley also discusses how scrutiny of the government is proceeding via the development of various digital platforms. He discusses how the public not knowing what the government was doing back when he was Gingrich’s press guy made educating the public tougher. Blankley mentions how helpful the openness of the digital process is and how the government wants to regulate it.

However, he says it will be an interesting alliance between the Left and the Right in defending the free process and freedom on the Internet. (He prefaced that statement by saying the Left got an early start ahead of the Right in digital platforms.)

Blankley then recounted a history of the economy and cyclical levels of government intervention in the market since the Civil War and tied it into the recent economic situation including the deficit. He also mentioned how Perot (and later his old boss Gingrich) increased public awareness of the deficit. Blankley also mentioned that the deficit is an issue that cuts across partisan lines now for the first time in the history of polling – precisely at the moment that Obama is attempting to increase deficit spending with health care reform.

Blankley says there has been a lot of study recently of ethics in the corporate boardrooms. He says he has been calling for looking at the ethical restraints (not just laws or the Constitution) that need to be placed on the federal government when it starts trying to get involved in the free market. His first example is the firing of the CEO of GM by some guy at Treasury before the government had nationalized GM. Another example he puts forth from a banker is the pressure from regulators on the banks to do things the regulators don’t have control over or face consequences in the areas the regulators do have power over. Blankley thinks his ethics idea is a powerful way to push back at government involvement in the free market.

I was most interested in the remarks about how a synergy of both conservatives and liberals concerned about the freedom of the Internet will help cut down attempts on government regulation.

Trevor Loudon of New Zeal on Van Jones

Jeff Quinton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:01:14 +0000

Trevor Loudon is speaking now about his role in bringing the Van Jones news to light. He is from New Zealand and blogs at New Zeal. He is on twitter @trevorloudon.

Loudon begins talking about Van Jones’ background and his political experience and tying it into Barack Obama. Loudon continues to discuss the socialist groups and their media outlets before going on to discuss Valerie Jarrett and her father’s connections to the Communist Party.

Loudon didn’t really get much into how the story broke or how technology aided it. If there is still time for a question during Q&A I may ask that. Otherwise, I will be blogging more on the new media panel that’s speaking after lunch.

You can follow the rest of the conference on Twitter using the #aim09 hashtag. The conference is apparently live on C-SPAN 2.

In the Q&A, Cliff Kincaid pointed out that some of these things may seem like ancient history but they related to how Obama governs today. He also made the point that “personnel is policy.”

New media topics at AIM 40th Anniversary Conference

Jeff Quinton — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:31:31 +0000

I’m sitting in the Hampton Room at the Omni Shoreham Hotel right now at the 40th Anniversary Conference of Accuracy in Media. I interned at their sister organization Accuracy in Academia back in 1993.

There are a couple of speakers on new media topics and one panel discussion later on today. I will be blogging about these as they happen. I will be tweeting the rest of the conference on my personal Twitter feed (@jeffq73) as well as some comments on @onqsm.

I am using the ~~#aim40~~ (I switched to #aim09 after hearing others are using it) hashtag for the conference – I’m not sure if anyone else is using it or not.