Blogosphere

Oh wow!

I can't remember for how long I've been reading Kevin's column, but it is going to be at least 5 years now, if not more.

Kevin is the kind of centrist liberal that always throws me off-base; kind of like pro-choice Republicans --maybe it's the reason why I find him and Andrew Sullivan to be soul brothers. They have a lot in common, but only argue the minutiae about how big government ought to be.

So after weeks of reading his pro-Clinton posts, Kevin (who lives in California, btw) has done an about face : He's voting for Obama.

I've got some good reasons and some bad reasons for changing my mind. The good reasons include (a) the ugliness coming out of the Clinton camp over the past couple of weeks, which has turned me off, (b) a growing sense that Obama's steadiness running his campaign under fire is a good sign of what he'd be like as president, and (c) some of the red state endorsements Obama has gotten recently, which speak well for his potential to produce strong coattails in November.

There are also some not-so-good reasons. I'm half embarrassed to admit that this stuff even affects me, but the fact is that the actions of both the candidates' supporters and detractors has had an impact. Watching Andrew Sullivan rant and rave on a daily basis about Hillary, for example, has had the perverse effect of keeping me on her side. I just hated the thought of fever swamp hatred like that influencing my party's nomination. Conversely, today's Paul Krugman column, which was yet another installment in his months-long anti-Obama jihad had the opposite effect.

Skippy birthed the idea or at least kept it warm and cozy in his marsupial bag. Jon Swift was the midwife (or was it the other way around) and I am just one of the many godmothers to take care of their baby.

So here's a list of bloggers you ought to know about :

Rox Populi
http://roxpopuli.typepad.com

Jeffrey Feldman's Frameshop
http://frameshopisopen.com

Eric Mueller
http://isthatlegal.com

Media Girl
http://mediagirl.org

American Street
http://reachm.com/amstreet/

ePluribus Media Community
http://epluribusmedia.org

Skippy the bush kangaroo
http://xnerg.blogspot.com/

In Search of Utopia
http://grupo-utopia.com/blog/isou

Terrance Heath's Republic of T
http://republicoft.com

Sister Talk
http://sisterstalk.tblog.com

Unapologetic Mexican
http://theunapologeticmexican.com/elgrito

Matt Ortega
http://mattortega.com

Roberto Lovato's Of America
http://ofamerica.wordpress.com

Kai Chang's Zuky
http://zuky.net

Orange Citizen
http://orangecitizen.com

Migra Matters
http://migramatters.blogspot.com

¡Para Justicia y Libertad!

ACCESS WASHINGTON: TRACKING THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT
FROM GRASSROOTS TO ONLINE

WHAT: New America Media conference call with Washington experts to track immigration legislation. This week’s call will look at how anti-immigrant movement has been organizing online as well as the grassroots and how they have been accessing media. From national organizations like FAIR to blogsphere how effective has the anti-immigrant been using new media and getting their message across? What are they doing to put immigration in the hot seat ahead of the caucuses in Iowa? Which are the best-known blogs? Are immigrant rights organizations able to fight back? Who's who in the anti-immigrant movement?

WHO: Participants will include

Henry Fernandez, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center
Liza Sabater, Blogpreneur, CultureKitchen and The DailyGotham
Devin Burghart, Director of Building Democracy, Center for New Community

WHEN: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:30 AM PST (1:30PM EST)

RSVP: All ethnic media are invited to participate in the call though space on the call is limited. The call-in number is 1- (866) 244-4629 . The conference ID is 1180231 . For any questions or further information please contact Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: NAM offers this service to ethnic media across the country. The fee to subscribe is your agreement to send us clippings or links to any articles you produce based on the call. Your stories help NAM sustain the program through foundation support. Please send clippings or links to Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

If you are a blogger who is looking into making money out of your online publishing, there are a number of blogs you ought to read on a daily basis, one of them being TechCrunch. There's much to learn from Michael Arrington's blog, especially if you were brought up to believe that an Arts & Science education was better without having a couple of business courses under your belt. Boy ... do I have regrets.

Anyhow, yesterday Michael posted a bit about a new commercial project going beta, Political Base. Here's a bit of what Arrington had to say :

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can’t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can’t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site’s community the ability to create and edit content.

I have now for some time been asking bloggers, privately and semi-privately, about how the different campaigns are reaching out to them.

I just decided, after the string of posts about campaign blog outreach, to put all my questions together into a post. I'd like to use your answers in a follow up post here and at TechPresident.

Here they are :

1. How early in the campaigns have people reached out to you?

2. Did they come directly to you or did they come recommended by another blogger?

3. Are you receiving direct communications from their online organizers and/or blog outreach people or are you getting standard press releases?

4. Have they hit you with ideas, fundraising requests or both?

5. Have they asked you to recommend other bloggers?

6. Have they invited you to events with the candidate?

7. Have they offered you to be in a conference call or an email exchange?

8. How about actual to an sit-down?

9. Do you appear in the candidates blogroll?

10. Have your site been ever mentioned on any of the candidates official blogs?

11. Who would you consider the best blog outreach director?

This has got to be one of the weirdest blog outreach maneuvers coming from the current crop of Presidential candidates. Juan Tornoe, of Hispanic Trending, a marketing site, has published an "interview" with the junior senator of New York and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

Let's just start by clearing out the air here. Even though I loathe the word Hispanic I don't necessarily loathe the people that use it. I believe though that the use of the word contextualizes the politics of the person using it. So within the context of my previous post, make what you will of my view on the "hispanic" demographics.

That said, even though I read from time to time Tornoe's blog, I wouldn't consider it as Ms. Clinton has allegedly said in the interview, a very popular site --especially within the latino blogosphere.

I'd just as well think that honor would fall on blogs like Vivir Latino, Latina Lista, Xicano Power, Unapologetic Mexican, LatinoPundit or Latino Politico. Last place I would go for all things latino would be a marketing site, if you know what I mean.

The Barack Obama campaign has one of the worst track records in reaching out to the blogosphere for support. Not only have they snub the so-called netroots bloggers that strategize through the Townhouse mailing list, but they have actually gone out of their way to not reach out to prominent black, latino and women bloggers who are outside of said mailing.

The best example of this snub was the campaign's absence from BlogHer, the largest convention of women bloggers in the United States and, technically, the world. At BlogHer we had the pleasure to have Elizabeth Edwards as one of our keynote speakers. The Hillary Clinton campaign made a lukewarm appearance by sending in a representative. The biggest omission was Barack Obama himself. After all, the conference was in his hometown of Chicago.

Not sending Michelle Obama to speak to the 800+ networks of vote-ready of mostly mommybloggers who were in attendance has been, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes of the Obama campaign. Worse than the unforgivable muscling-out of the volunteer Joe Anthony from the largest volunteer Obama network on MySpace.

So it does not come as a surprise that Barack's blogger outreach guy has left the building :

Ben Smith back in the days of The Politicker

I hope Ben Smith is making a lot of money. We miss him terribly over at The Daily Gotham, because we really had a conversation going on our blogs about the mess that is New York politics. With his replacement? Not so much fun as good old Ben.

Which is why I wonder if he's really cozy and happy over at his new digs. Ben is supposed to be the lefty voice over at Politico.com; yet with his current acid keyboard he's earning the badge of the Democrat's worst frenemy, especially if that Democrat happens to be John Edwards.

He's the guy who first wrote about Edwards' $400 haircuts. He is now throwing Edwards under not only the bus, but the SUV and the private jet as well.

((( C'mon Ben, dude. As if anybody would be able to run a presidential campaign on Northwest fucking Airlines. Commercial airlines are snakes on a plane, dude. Snakes on a moddafruggin' plane! )))

So it is no wonder that a certain a-list blogger wants to kick his ass.

Literally.

Which A-list blogger told me non-chalantly that "he's go it coming".

Hillary Clinton is quite likeable and a really good speaker and she obviously has very committed people work her; but blogdamn, what the hell is thinking when they take up seats so they can look like there are cheerleaders in the crowd, in a room where there is only standing room. NO! It just looks bad.

THAT SAID, I really, really like listening to Hillary Clinton speak. Eons ago, when I used to work as a translator, I had to translate transcript of her speeches and interviews with friends and family members. She is listenable. She definitely knows how to turn on the charm; YET just comes out as extremely measured. After the "town hall" meeting, a couple of "on the fencers" gave her a B.

Here's some notes of the whole thing. More introspection coming later.