Category Archives: Politics

Rolling Stone under fire for mishandling of General McChrystal scoop

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Rolling Stone has come in for a fair amount of flak from media commentators for the way it handled its General McChrystal scoop. It’s a very big scoop, the fallout from the story has seen McChrystal, who was US and NATO Commander in Afghanistan, sacked by President Obama. And yet the magazine decided to hold back the story for its print edition, aiming instead to generate buzz online and direct the money to the newsstands.

Buzz successfully generated (as Roy Greenslade reports, the New York Times has led with the story since it broke, as have many other outlets), readers who logged onto the Rolling Stone site couldn’t access the article. In fact, the story was nowhere to be seen.”It is one of the best pieces of reportage I’ve ever read. In these digital days, how could Rolling Stone ever imagine it could keep such an agenda-setting story to print alone?” writes Greenslade.

The story is still not available in print, it hits the newsstands tomorrow. “Clearly, competitors can’t wait until Friday to pick up a copy, especially when McChrystal has already been summoned to the White House,” wrote former Politico staffer Michael Calderone on his Yahoo! blog that day. They didn’t need to wait though. Rolling Stone had provided advance copies to Associated Press and others as part of its buzz-generating exercise, and in an unauthorised move Politico made the full text available for download from their site hours before Rolling Stone conceded and published it online.

The story eventually went up on the Rolling Stone website at around 11:00am ET, the following (Tuesday) morning.

If you are a news outlet looking to break a big story in a similar way, Megan Carpentier’s TPM Livewire article includes a step-by-step guide. Some of the key points:

  • Fail to publish even excerpts of the story on your own website, figuring that your promotion of the story will cause people to go out and buy the magazine.
  • Go to bed and sleep like a baby after the story hits.
  • Wake up to find out that Politico has published a reprint of the story you gave them, since you weren’t smart enough to put the story on your own site and despite the intellectual property violation.

Guardian.co.uk: Gaurav Mishra on digital activism

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Ahead of  its Activiate 2010 conference, the Guardian has published a Q&A with Gaurav Mishra, CEO of 2020 Social. Mishra, who helps build and grow online communities, talks about some interesting projects and sites with which he has been involved:

In the first paradigm of digital activism, you work with a disadvantaged group that suffers from limited access to even the most basic information and tools for self-expression. So, you use simple-to-use digital devices like Nokia mobile phones and Flip video cameras and simple-to-use digital technologies like text messages and online video to enable them to access basic information and share their own stories. Frontline SMS, Ushahidi, Freedom Fone and Video Volunteers are good examples of the ’empowering with information’ paradigm of digital activism. Mini Skirt Step Mom Seduces Son full porn free video online

In the second paradigm of digital activism, you work with a group that is anything but disadvantaged. This group is at ease with using always on internet and mobile devices, both for instantaneous access to information and for self-expression and social interaction. Here, the digital activist isn’t trying to solve a crisis of capability, but a crisis of caring. Here, the aim is not to empower with information, but to engage with inspiration. Move On and iJanaagraha are examples of the ‘engaging with inspiration’ paradigm of digital activism.

Full post at this link…

California Watch tracks state’s gubernatorial candidates, verbatim

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California Watch, part of the non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting, has launched a new initiative aimed at tracking “every quote, promise and statement” made by California’s two major candidates for governor, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman.

Readers will be able to sort statements into nine different categories, reports the non-profit site, including promises, attacks and vague policy points, and a category designed to highlight issues that candidates have tried to avoid.

We are unveiling Politics Verbatim today with about 300 documents and 1,000 excerpts. We will be adding to the site daily, scouring news and campaign sites and Twitter and Facebook feeds. We also are encouraging crowdsourcing from other journalists and readers.

California Watch says it is interested in expanding the initiative to cover other candidates and races and the US Senate campaigns.

Full post at this link…

Treasury reaches out to hyperlocal sites for Budget coverage

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For today’s Budget, HM Treasury is making an effort to talk directly to local news bloggers about potential coverage.

As VentnorBlog, based in the Isle of Wight, reports:

…Rather than just rely on ‘traditional’ media, they [HM Treasury] want to innovate and extend their reach to distribute the information as widely as possible. They want VentnorBlog to help Island readers understand the details as soon as it’s been announced.

Information will be available on the Treasury’s website after the Chancellor’s announcements, but the department will also issue some bloggers with regional press notices and resources at the same time it goes to the news wires.

The Treasury asked hyperlocal publisher and trainer Will Perrin to put them in touch with some leading local blogs. Perrin told Journalism.co.uk that the Treasury’s interest is a “good thing” that will “no doubt be experimental for both parties”. “It’s a real challenge for a national institution to localise their message, but you have to start somewhere.”

#VOJ10 – Twitter is just another outlet, says BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

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One careless tweet could sink the fleet.

Advice from BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg, who warned of the power of a single tweet to bring down politicians and political correspondents alike. Kuenssberg, who did her fair share of tweeting during the general election last month, is specific about what she tweets:

I still use it broadly for the same things [pre and post-election] and I’m quite strict about why I would tweet. I use it for simple breaking news and information (…) it’s the fastest way of getting it out there even with 24-hour television.

I also use it for the kind of colour you see as a journalist – not gossip, not rumour. These are often the things that get retweeted the most; things that as a journalist you see with your own eyes but might not get to broadcast.

As a lobby journalist you’ve got a ticket to a very small world. You are witness to a very closed world. Its part of my job to reach out to people and give them moments of colour that they otherwise wouldn’t see.

Having trialled using twitter during the party political conferences in 2009, Kuenssberg’s following on the social network grew from around 5,000 pre-election to 23,000 post-election. But it hasn’t changed how she works, she says – just added to it:

Twitter has just become another outlet. It’s highly compatible with my job because I’m normally out and about. It has given journalists more material – not a massive amount, because so far we haven’t had massive breaking stories from citizen journalists.

Social media as a “paper trail” – tracking down the backgrounds of PPCs and following what they’ve said pre-election on Twitter – was particularly useful however, said Kuennsberg.

Although it’s still a small group of people using Twitter, it has shown me that there’s a big interest in what we do. There’s a huge appetite for politics and I think we’re reaching some people who weren’t consuming political news in any way before.

#VOJ10: How to report polls – from IPSOS MORI founder

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Speaking at today’s Value of Journalism conference (#VOJ10), Sir Robert Worcester, founder of polling organisation IPSOS MORI shared some valuable tips for journalists reporting on political polls:

  1. Watch the share, not the lead
  2. Watch the fieldwork dates
  3. Watch what’s happening: “Watch how the media expresses scepticism of the polls and how they act as if they are gospel.”

And finally: when a politican tells you that they don’t pay any attention to the polls – they’re lying.

Follow the Value of Journalism conference live via our liveblog.

Newsweek experiments with Twitter profile of Michele Bachmann

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When Newsweek reporter Andrew Romano was dispatched by the magazine to profile ultraconservative Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann it was not, as he would have liked, with a pen, paper and pretend fedora. Instead they suggested he do it live on Twitter as he followed her around. She doesn’t seem to have taken to the idea. Romano’s article about the experience makes for a good read.

I hadn’t spent enough time with her to decide if she was unserious, or crazy, or whatever. Instead, I was simply doing what Twitter demanded: being pithy and provocative. Straightforward narration would go unnoticed. Quotes from Bachmann’s old friends would seem un-newsy. Nuance would cost too many characters. So I became a color commentator, casting off the reporter’s traditional cloak of detachment and publicly weighing in on the proceedings at regular intervals. And because observation and publication were now compressed into a single act, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to phrase my tweets that I otherwise would’ve spent absorbing a scene or speaking to locals. I don’t remember much about the crowd in Monticello, the businessmen in Blaine, or Bachmann’s larger themes. I do remember what I wound up tweeting, and that’s about it.

Full story at this link…