Huffington Post’s OffTheBus Superdelegate Investigation

As part of the Huffington Post’s OffTheBus citizen journalism project, I interviewed Nancy Worley, a Democratic superdelegate in Alabama, and contributed to the site’s coverage.

“Evangelical Power Vastly Diminished Headed Into Super Tuesday”

OffTheBus Masthead The so-called “evangelical vote,” often cited by media analysts as a crucial constituency in securing the Republican nomination, is likely to exercise considerably less influence this cycle, according to a series of interviews with clergy and political analysts conducted by HuffPost’s OffTheBus {citizen journalism project.}

I recently participated in the Huffington Post’s OffTheBus citizen journalism project, which can be read at the above link. I interviewed Executive Pastor Marty Thompson of Bethel Evangelical Free Church in Fargo, North Dakota, for the piece.

It was my first such participation in a citizen journalism project and I was both impressed with Amanda Michel, Marc Cooper and Dan Truel for coordinating the effort, as well as pleased with the final result. Although many of the issues discussed in the article fell outside the scope of my specific conversation with Pastor Thompson, I still felt my interview informed the article and helped the group arrive at a collective truth regarding the so-called “Evangelical vote” leading up to Super Tuesday. Namely, we dispelled the notion that evangelical Christians are somehow to be perceived of as a homogeneous voting bloc in the United States, a notion reflected in my particular interview with Marty Thompson.

The best new magazine Web site of 2008

I just wanted to take a moment and recognize the folks over at Popular Science magazine for their Web efforts. They quietly launched a redesigned site, PopSci.com, in 2008. It’s built on the Drupal platform and one way of looking at it is that, functionally, it’s a group blog. Each navigational bucket along the top represents a category, but all posts/articles/stories appear time-stamped in reverse chronological order on the home page.

If you haven’t checked it out, I recommend.

It offers a unique model for a traditional print company to leverage their assets on the Web. It also gives me hope that old media companies will come to realize that a blog is just as easily (and perhaps more helpfully) understood as a medium, not as a genre.

Does Facebook’s ‘friend limit’ thwart the ability for mass organization?

A friend of mine sent me the following story of a Canadian union organizer banned from Facebook for making too many friends:

CUPE organizer/Labour Start correspondent Derek Blackadder’s foray into labor-related social networking was rudely interrupted by a warning from Facebook saying that he was making too many friends.

He then asked me, “Does this thwart the potential for organizing through Facebook?”

No, I said. And here’s why:

Obviously, if you want to get a message out to organize a protest, a prayer service or anything else , you’ll get that message out most QUICKLY by having a lot of friends, say, more than the 5,000 limit. Note I said most QUICKLY. (This is the equivalent of broadcasting a message through a traditional one-to-many medium).

But not necessarily most EFFECTIVELY, nor most SUCCESSFULLY, if the barometer for success is how many people take the desired action you’re hoping for.

Here’s the key

Successfully organizing on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean one person broadcasting a message to 5,000 people. If anything, that message is going to be watered down for broad appeal, less relevant to each specific person, and prompt the least (percentage wise) action.

The KEY is getting 50 people to each tell 50 people to teach tell 50 people, etc., etc., etc. (Or, really, 5 people to tell 5 people, etc., etc., etc.) Each message then becomes a relevant, targeted message, and a message that the recipient of which is most likely to pass on.

And that’s what gives social networking sites, such as Facebook, such a great potential for organization.

So you sort of have two issues: 1) crafting the right message and 2) getting that message to the right people.

Obviously what I’m describing here is simply viral marketing in theory (the practitioners of which will tell you in reality is anything but simple).

“Companies must become social” – Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis posted recently over at the Buzz Machine about companies need to become more social.

I can’t agree more.

He describes how one company’s attempts to “be more social” pay dividends down the road in terms of increased creativity and good ideas. Well said.

New position at Southern Progress Corporation

Well, I’ve finally settled into an apartment here in Birmingham, Alabama, and have one week under my belt at Southern Progress Corporation. Thus far I’ve been nothing but impressed by the professionalism and the energy at SPC.

I’ll be working in the Travel and Livings sections of SouthernLiving.com.

Exciting stuff.

The worst tour company in Cusco for a trek to Machupicchu

I hate to use my blog to do this, but I can’t let faulty business practices go unreported.

Peru Viajes o Globo (UPDATE: former link now a spam site) swindled me and my friend out of money and provided a drunk guide.

Victor the swindler Victor, pictured at right, sold my friend Brett and me a four-day tour with a guide along the Inca trail from Cusco to Machupicchu on January 5th, 2008. He informed us we would be returning to Cusco around 7 pm on the 8th and agreed to book an overnight bus for us from Cusco to Arequipa the night we returned and charged us an additional 75 soles (or $25). Our guide, who got drunk and left us to our own devices to ascend Machupicchu by ourselves, booked the wrong train for us to return to Cusco on the 8th, causing us to miss our overnight bus to Arequipa. We approached Victor the next day, but he refused to refund us our bus tickets.

That’s how it went down. Not a huge deal, and I’m not immensely bitter, but a faulty deal nonetheless.

Newspapers are “just another player”

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) published a list of 66 trends which, according to newspaper executives across the globe, are affecting them and their business models. The whole list is worth downloading, but one I found particularly interesting was the following:

Newspaper companies are becoming “just another media player”
The newspaper industry can no longer perceive itself as exclusive or unique to other market players.

Wow. Should the newspaper industry ever have perceived itself as unique or exclusive? As a consumer of news, I think that attitude can often lead to a feeling of estrangement from a local news source. Newspapers, as a part of the fourth estate, undoubtedly perform a valuable service to their communities, but they are still part of the community.