techPresident continues its recent roll, with three very worthwhile posts.
Micah Sifry’s The Other Transition: Whither Obama’s Movement? contrasts the transparency of change.gov and the transition in DC with the top-down and relatively closed nature (so far) of the discussions about the future for the organizers network and my.barackobama.com. Excellent comments from folks like Wade Hudson and Jennifer Just are worth reading as well … I’ll probably weigh in too once I think about it a little more. Micah also briefly mentions Get FISA Right, including us in his (short) list of groups continuing to do MyBO activism.
And speaking of transparency and the transition, Nancy Scola’s Run Off an Extra Copy of Transition Meeting Memos, This One for the Public discusses Friday’s Your Seat at the Table announcement from the Obama campaign. The attitude exemplified in Michael Strautmanis’ and John Podesta’s direction — including the precedent of putting briefing papers for transition meetings information up on the web for community feedback — is extraordinarily refreshing and while it’s early days yet, all I can say is “wow.”
Peter Daou’s The Revolution of the Online Commentariat notes that most post-election analysis has overlooked “the impact of the ever-growing online commentariat whose pointed opinions shape our worldview and whose influence on the 2008 election was nothing short of decretive,” and makes some very insightful points about how fundamentally these kind of community conversations change things. In the comments, Ari Melber and I weigh in. Ari suggests that “democratization of commentary mattered more in areas where pundits drop the ball — like calling out dog whistles or subtle lies — and less when bloggers and citizens talk like pundits”. I build on Peter’s point that “Image making and message crafting, enduring political arts once the back-room purview of a select few, are now in the public domain” and quibble with his description of bloggers as “the heart and soul of the online commentariat”.
Put it all together and it’s incredibly exciting — and techPresident is a great place to be tracking these kinds of changes as they’re happening.
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