When Campaign 2.0 Met Citizen 2.0: A Confusing Love Story

Alan Rosenblatt
May 2007

True leadership can sometimes feel like a balancing act that requires the all the skill of a tightrope walker. One of the many lines to walk is weighing the need to act boldly and take advantage of new opportunities with the imperative to be a responsible steward of your organization’s resources. This can be especially hard when making decisions about resource-intensive technology projects. more

Politics Online: Expectations for how politicians communicate with voters and how voters will question and give feedback to candidates and elected officials will dramatically change as more campaigning is done through the Internet, which prides itself on being participatory, open, transparent and skewed more toward younger audiences.

Journalistic Integrity: The new media environment has created a new dimension to journalism, but the need for in-depth research and reporting does not disappear. Full-time journalists are necessary to balance the media environment prone to shallow news and entertainment.

ABC's Digital Convention Scam

By: Jeff Chester
The Nation
August 2004

 

ABC, like other broadcast networks, will cover the forthcoming GOP convention precisely as it covered the Democratic event--by largely ignoring it. After all, nothing must get in the way of the multibillion-dollar revenues from prime-time commercials.

CBS, NBC and ABC will air a measly three hours of the GOP convention, the same short shrift they gave the Democrats. (Fox Broadcasting doesn't show any convention coverage at all!) Although the four big broadcast networks' fortunes are predicated on free use of the public airwaves, no major politician will publicly chastise them for their greed and disregard of the public interest. In our hypercommercial media culture, even presidential candidates know that civic discourse doesn't bring premium prime-time ad rates.

So for the majority of viewers, who still watch broadcast TV, their glimpse of the convention will be for a slim, single hour at 10 pm Eastern time on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, August 31 to September 2.

Despite this lack of broadcast time, ABC is even boasting of its "comprehensive" coverage. Through its new, purportedly ground-breaking ABC News Now digital service, the network promises "a more comprehensive look at what this election and these conventions mean." Using a combination of broadband streaming (via AOL and others), Sprint "Vision" phones and a handful of digital TV channels, ABC's "FAQ" sheet crows that "no other network is offering that kind of comprehensive coverage across multiple platforms."

Time Is Now to Fight for Future of TV

By: Jeff Chester
AlterNet
April 2003

 

The rising tide of protest against U.S. media coverage of the war should also signal the need for a new progressive strategy about the future of the media system. Recent marches across the country protesting the networks, and a new focus by Moveon.org on media issues are vitally important. But they don't address the need to take advantage of fundamental changes taking place and alter how our media system is structured. The time is ripe, given all the activism and commitment now in place, to direct our energy towards achieving long-term positive changes for our media system.

A major transformation that is underway is reshaping broadcasting, cable and the Internet. The TV system in the U.S. is being reorganized because of digital technology, which should provide new opportunities for progressives to directly offer channels and program services to the vast majority of television households. But unless progressives and their allies pursue a proactive strategy, they will continue to be as marginalized as we are today.