The Risks and Rewards of Thompson’s New Site

Bill Thompson just opened a new website designed by Blue State Digital, which also designed Barack Obama’s campaign site.

First of all, I’m increasingly inclined to give my qualified support Thompson for mayor – I don’t know if it was pure election-grandstanding, but it seems like every time he  makes a public announcement of some kind, like his workaround of the MTA fare-hike, it’s generally sensible, effective, and conscious of class dynamics in the city (for instance, as Comptroller he got city pension funds to remove their money from companies that privatise formerly public housing in the city).

But that’s beside the point – I think this will be a test case in how well folks other than Obama can use his organizing model in their campaign strategy.  While I trust that Blue State won’t apply the Obama model whole-cloth, many of the central elements of the Obama campaign revolved around him specifically, and might not translate well into other campaigns.  When someone wins, it always makes their system look better than it probably is, and thevalidity of the organizing model will be need to be tested in a vareity of contexts.

Here are some of the risks I see in adopting the Obama model:

-Looking like an Obama hanger-on: to stick in people’s minds, you need to develop a distinctive personality.  The individualist tendancy in American politics asks that politicians be in a way self-made.  Trying to ride the coattails too overtly undermines credibility and might hurt the campaign.

-Social Media can hurt too: trying to mobilize folks via twitter/Facebook/etc. can become a conspicuous display of a lack of support as well.  Having 50 people on a Facebook group demonstrates weakness in a citywide or statewide campaign.  Thompson should be  sure that embracing new media will build support among his target constituencies before over embracing the technology.

-You need a good story: Obama mobilized a series of glittering generalities based on his personal story.  Thompson needs to develop a central story that reduces to a short-worded theme and three key policy proposals to organize people behind the campaign.  One of the clear differences between Obama and Thompson’s site is the lofty quote Obama put on the top of every page.  Thompson doesn’t have the same type of cred, or story to get people together.

Strategy and the Death of Newspapers

So, the spectacular fall of the Tribune Company is clearly more than the decline of one company – it is the most visible symbol of the tanking print media industry that is swept up in systemic changes that have destroyed business models and jobs nationwide.

For the activist PR person, it also signals a need for innovation.  It’s no longer enough to bang out press releases to the AP and hope for the best; even trying to ‘be the media’ is getting tired since everybody is going to be the media soon – for example, Indymedia centers no longer serve the same function when self publishing software means that anyone can be their own media outside of the framework provided by IMCs.

One of the first casualties will be the decline of ‘publicity’ as such – without big-bore media outlets running the news cycle, the sphere of public discourse will become more fragmented and less accessible.  Organizers and media people will need to think more in depth about their targets, whose support the targets need, and how to influence those supporters via the specific media channels.  I think one point of attack will be via industry conferences, publications and message boards (check Officer.com, a message board for cops for an example). In a way, attacking via these forums will be like a new office-takeover, targeted at a company and its peers/competitors as a way to put on economic pressure.

“Contradictions”

Check out this: Fillipo Minelli’s “Contradictions” It’s a one trick pony, but wow, what a trick. (should be read in conjunction with Staying Sick’s “Mining” post)

I think this is what I keep trying to get at in my skepticism about the potential of new technologies in building movements.  I think that social networking technology has a place in movement building, but it’s a very narrow one – just like we can look kindly upon the once controversial radical anti-Vietnam War movement, the movements that become visible on the internet typically have a long history, and are amenable to the people able to enjoy the net’s many pleasures: typically living in developed nations, with a certain degree of race or class privilege.

Henry Jenkins gives a particularly good description of the power of new media technology to build new forms of consciousness and thought, but he also points out that the consolidation of decision making and cultural authority in these technologies cements the power of class divisions that keep the majority of the world from accessing them in the first place.

And that’s the real value of the “Contradictions” project – it simply intervenes in the digital cultural economy by reminding it of the world outside of the echo chamber.

The Inevitable Jeff Jarvis Post

worship. from somewhat frank's flickr

It was bound to happen.  If you think or write about new media long enough, you’re bound to run into Jeff Jarvis, and his blog, BuzzMachine – particularly with all that ‘buzz’ he’s been getting lately.

The difficulty I have with Jarvis’ approach to media has nothing to do with the eroding foundations of the venerated journalistic tradition, but rather his approach to the look and feel of a new newsmedia world.

My main objection to Jarvis’ approach to media is that he collaborates with the owners of corporate media outlets to help them cut their workers’ jobs.  Look, this is a guy that deifies the corporate giant Google (his next book is called What Would Google Do?), and that pretty much sets the tone for how he approaches changes in media production.  The transition from broadcast centralized media to a link economy does offer incredible opportunities for the development of new knowledge economies, but organizing the transition within the corporate system just lets the folks that ran old media to continue profiting and puts lots of smart folks out of a job.  (Google isn’t exactly this, but it does wield an immense amount of power, and I find it irresponsible to commit yourself blindly to its authority)

Treating the workers in a new media economy ethically is the first step to making sure that the new economy supports a more ethical world broadly, and I think any discussion of the creation of new media should consider the role of labor creating content, as well as the content itself.  Jarvis seems primarily concerned with the owners and content, and that troubles me.

Notes on Political Strategy on the Internet

so so exhausted. Reportback and thoughts from the last week in Pinocchio land.

First: I think it’s time to rethink the fundamental units of activism.  Creating change might require breaking from organizations that identify as ‘campaigns’ or ‘coalitions’ with their highly structured relationships and instead develop protocols for affiliating more flexibly.  Broad networks of individuals with diverse but aligned interests identify with certain points of unity and then work together on particular projects or interventions.  For instance, with this campaign, the news cycle moved faster than Pinocchio folks could react, partially because we drew on too small a group of people to work with, owing to the (relative) narrowness of the campaign vs. the scope of the whole election season.  The most damaging moments of the election so far came via short-term (and funny…) events: McCain’s “celeb” ads and backlash, Letterman’s soliloquy on McCain, Tina Fey as Palin, the insane shit at McCain/Palin rallies… each of these developed short, punchy narratives that fit into a broader constellation of ideas without ever cohering into a narrative arc per se.  The only thing that developed into its own issue this election season was the economy, and that moved so fast few folks had time to react to it – suggesting the usefulness of organizing more generally, and then focusing on rapid, narrower interventions.

Second, working on internet distribution requires a carefully cultivated voice and tone.  This isn’t like sending out press releases; effective net-action means a commitment to producing good content and commentary consistently.  Obama is winning the media war partially because he’s so personable.  People like him, and so blogs (primarily) willingly enlist to his cause and become force multipliers.  That’s how smaller operations should strive to work as well – by working to make other blogs willing force-multipliers for a message.

The blog-world (BLOG-O-SPHERE) is an echo chamber, where people link and read other folks that more or less agree with them.  Tight knit groups form and ideas travel party through recency and newsworthiness (who gets the breaks first), but moreso by making interesting commentary around the news of the day.  Generally, people who write smart things well will become more successful (though doubtless there’s more to it, a method to the madness).  This means that groups wanting to put out material via blogs need to consistently build a voice that makes them sound like folks that know what they’re doing – a bit of insider baseball, so to speak.  The author of content needs credibility just as the content needs to be credible, and that requires work ahead of time to get things going.

This is why everyone that affiliates with an organization that wants to work blogs should blog themselves – either under the name of the group or under their own name.  It allows them to develop an ethos for distribution, and to control the first impressions of work they produce, because it (hopefully) means that people come to you for content.  Instead of having to blast out emails about new work press release style, you can rely on the credibility built up over time, or have folks regularly reading your work to the point where they willingly distribute your work for you.

Radical Organizing on the Web – Beyond the Netroots

Right now I’m pondering media and public relations strategies for two groups – Take Back NYU! and the Brecht Forum – and I wanted to put down here some of my thoughts on how to transition grassroots organizing onto the web without devolving into the ‘netroots’ inanity I’ve described before in previous posts about the drawbacks of net-organizing (political impotency, undue obsession with the internet as an organizing tool).

An idea tossing around in my head for a while is the idea of all-access, ‘open-source’ movement building. Essentially, I’d like to see grassroots organizations pursue their struggles while maintaining a constant presence on the web, turning their activities into content for blogs, video/audio channels and more. This idea stems from two trends: the rise of all-access TV and web content, and the development open-source software, both of which grassroots organizations can capitalize on to expand their support at their base, and in mass/mainstream environments.

Writing the New Newspaper

Say goodbye. (from WallyG’s flickr, CC Licensed)

Ah yes, the lament for newspapers. I came across an example of one from the NY Times, written (characteristically) by Timothy Egan, a Times writer with a full time job and a Pulitzer – which sums up many of the fears and potential news-y types see in the transforming newsmedia environment.

Right off the bat, there’s pulling at the heartstrings of those who believe in American democracy. A Tommy J quote. A call to an informed citizenry. All the high-notes of any eulogy to a lost age of democracy. Too bad all this ignores the history (recent and less-recent) of the newspaper industry and its connection to democracy.

Many papers rely on a monopolistic domination of particular media markets, creating ‘one-paper’ towns and acting as gatekeepers limiting the diverse range of political voices that make up a city. You can find any number of examples supporting this: my hometown of Austin Texas has one regular daily, the Austin-American Statesman, that managed to endorse Bush in a liberal town twice, and fail to cover any of the incredible activist activity i know is going on in Austin, giving a fine-and-rosy picture of political life in the midst of a wave of development/gentrification and increased police violence.

Almost all papers have a vested interest in real estate growth, either through ad revenue from developers or potential increased subscriptions from new arrivals. Many reporters work closely with government officials on a daily basis, requiring a cozy relationship to keep the scoops coming, meaning that they’re unlikely to open up serious criticism of government when the chips are down. Corporate criticism is likely to be even more half-hearted. (The history of America’s ‘paper of record’ (The New York Times) is no better – read Manufacturing Consent for an exhaustive study on the reporting biases of the Gray Lady). This article’s lament of reporters who ‘brought to life the daily narrative of a city’ is so much claptrap considering the systemic interests many have in writing a story their advertisers and editors would like.

The second half of the article does raise some interesting points however. According to the author, online newspaper readership has increased the total number of people who rely on newspapers for their daily news. Despite this ad revenue is down, and reporters continue losing their jobs. Here’s where we get to Egan’s real problem:

“In its present form, and even in best-case projections, the Web format will never generate enough money to keep viable reporting staffs afloat at some of the nation’s biggest papers.”

Now we know the issue: the web will signal the downfall of writers like himself, those who report for reporting’s sake, career journalists. His concern is that without this cadre of career merely writers, we will lose the watchdog of democracy – a task that the “gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post” cannot take on. This type of dismissive attitude towards new journalism echoes what I called ‘civic guilt’ in another post – its reactive chiding that revels in the impotence of that which it defends with even more impotent rhetoric.

Yes, in the future, we may not have full time reporters. That does not mean we won’t have real journalism – it just means the people writing will have to be something other than merely reporters (who, despite “rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter” often fall into their own absurd or asinine habits that keep them from being effective). More likely we will have savants and celebrity, either people working, living then writing about it from the grounded perspective of an area-specific Savant (see Atlantic Yards Report or Brownstoner for New York examples), or folks who, capitalize on their name or style to build readership (Mr. Egan is a minor example, also see any of the Village Voice’s main staff writers, or Huffington Post and Drudge Report, which are named after people for a telling reason). The role of the new newspaper will be to sort the wheat from the chaff, identifying developing stories from a variety of sources, then providing depth and commentary to what has already been written to direct traffic to your site versus others.

As with voting, it is not up to us to ’save the press.’ It is up to newspapers to save themselves by developing the style and particular substance suited to the new media environment.