• First point to remember. Blogs are simply a blank piece of paper. They can be used any way the blog publisher wants to use his or her blog. They can strive for truth, for example, PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, which parses ads for how truthful they are and how false they are.

In the past, a campaign would put out a lie. The news media aiming to be balanced would restate the lie and then get both sides to comment on it. Even a blatant lie got repeated so often, that it had traction within voters’ consciousnesses. It’s a lot harder to do so with PolitiFact fact-checking ads and talking points and then rating them with the worst offenders getting a Pants-on-Fire lie rating with a graphic to emphasize the point.

• Blogs can be blatantly partisan for example Drudge and Powerline on the right and Atrios and the Daily Kos on the left.

• Blogs can be a powerful force for justice, even if they are leaning in one direction or the other. For example, TalkingPointsMemo exposed the US Attorneys firings, which eventually meant the downfall of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and has had ramifications directly into the more recent claims of voter registration fraud. Here are self reported facts from TalkingPointsMemo for October 2008:

Absolute Unique Visitors: 3.12 million
Visits: 15.29 million
Page Views: 30.99 million.

• Blogs can be amazing tools for mobilizing forces. For example, obscure Minnesota US Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann called Barack Obama unpatriotic on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said he that he should be investigated. Within hours the left-leaning blogosphere started a campaign to fund her fully unknown opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg. In days he receives $1.4 million dollars from independent contributors via the blogosphere. The influx of money for advertising almost immediately begins to diminish a Bachmann advantage and puts her seat in play.

• Blog sites like Pollster.com and Fiverthirtyeight.com have running commentaries on every poll and parse every number. They are all about the horse race and nothing about the issues, but they are addictive.

• Blogs allow individuals like me to be a player in a way that would have been impossible five years ago. At my blog PJNet.org, which talks about citizen media, I try to practice what I preach so occasionally I do a citizen journalism post. Here are two examples:

During the primary Rudy Giuliani came to Marietta, Ga where I live. I took out my still camera with video capabilities and went to the town square. Giuliani got met by a large Ron Paul counter-demonstration. I got it all on video and uploaded it to my site and to my blog. It received 6,700 views. I did another one last week of people waiting in an early vote presidential election line; it got 230 views. Combined those are about 7,000 sets of eyeballs diverted from other mainstream media, and I am just one guy with a little still camera with video capabilities. Multiple that times that other tens of thousands people doing similar posting and you have a real movement on your hands. How big?

• The New York Times reports :

• YouTube videos mentioning either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain have been viewed 2.3 billion times, according to the measurement firm TubeMogul.

• “SNL” videos proved to be particularly popular online; Tina Fey’s impressions were viewed more than 50 million times.

• With 5 million views since March, Mr. Obama’s 37-minute speech about race is the most popular video on his YouTube channel. (New York Times, Nov. 2, 2008)

• A Pew Research Center survey conducted in October found that 39 percent of registered voters had watched campaign videos online.

• Four years ago in the 2004 election there was no YouTube.

So what about the overflow of information,  how can we tell the good from the bad, misinformation from good information? Part of our challenge as a university is to advance media literacy, but which is more democratic a few brand-name monopolistic media organizations dominating the news or a cacophony of voices?

Right now people are voting with their eyeballs for a cacophony of voices. Plus they are coming out to the polls in record numbers and they have a wealth of information unavailable to them in the past.

We do have some some problems looming. Much of the stimulus for the conversation comes from mainstream news sites, producing hard-to-gather journalism. The free blogosphere is undermining  the old business models that have supported quality journalism. How will solid journalism be supported in the future? We don’t know, but remember just four years ago there was no YouTube so anything is possible.

Know The News is a website aimed at providing the resources that allow students to remix internationally broadcasted news and then submit the final result to the internet community for review where it is then rated based on quality, fairness, accuracy, and style. This from a Know The News press release:

Journalists and news consumers have to navigate a tidal wave of images, sound, and information every day. Know the News helps users think critically about TV news, by interpreting news coverage in a global context. Our mission is to offer a new perspective on TV news by creating greater awareness of the forces at work on all news-gathering enterprises, and how those forces mold the messages that viewers around the world receive.

Know The News is not only seeking to provide the tools for citizens to take control of the news, it gives professors the tools to facilitate instruction in citizen media and media literacy. According to their press release, professors will be able to upload footage in order to create specific projects for their students in order to foster News Literacy skills.

Know the News is now enlisting journalism professors who are interested in using these tools in their classrooms. For an invitation and a class code, or to learn more, contact knowthenews@linktv.org.

Post written by Noah Echols for the PJNet.org.

Through Friday, of 270 news articles published in The Times about the election since the national tickets were formed in late August, only 29, or a little over 10 percent, were primarily about policy substance. And that is a generous tally that includes some very brief items.

That count by my assistant, Michael McElroy, is similar to figures compiled by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which has been closely monitoring election coverage in a wide range of media. The group found that only 8 percent of front-page articles in The Times from late August through last Sunday were about policy. Nearly three-quarters were about the horse race, political tactics, polls and the like. The Times numbers are about the same as for the news media in general, including cable television and blogs — not a standard to aspire to.

Apparently, that does not make the public happy; Hoyt writes:

Early this year, roughly three-quarters of voters of all political persuasions surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said they wanted more coverage of the candidates’ stands on issues. For the most part, they were disappointed, and their satisfaction with the news media has declined, according to Pew. In February, 55 percent said the election coverage was good or excellent. By June, 54 percent said it was fair or poor.

Those interested in civic and public journalism have been taking on this issue since the public journalism reform movement began  after the 1988 presidential election. Jay Rosen has been one of the most informed critics. Here is what he said back in January, 2008. Here is what I wrote in October 2007 and if you want to keep going back, here is Rosen again in 2004 with his PressThink piece Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race. Forever!

If I were surveyed, I would answer that I want more issue oriented stories. However, here is a confession: I can’t help myself, apparently like a lot of political junkies, each day I visit places like FiveThirtyEight.com which provides fantastic horse race coverage, just like inside baseball. It is addictive. Here is what FiveThirtyEight posted last week about the site’s audience growth:

Seven months ago today this site … went live, with 80 visits. Yesterday we reached 693,216 … Glancing at the daily circulation figures for US newspapers, it looks like we’re at or about the top ten and rising with a bullet.

So for me I want my polls and my substantial reporting too. Right now we are obviously getting more of the former and too little of the latter and that is the big problem now, has been the problem in the past and will probably be the problem forever.

Here is what she says at her new blog:

Not only will I share my teaching ideas and materials, as some great (e.g., Mindy McAdams) people have, I will also decipher research in journals related to online journalism. One common criticism I hear from some academics and professionals is that research published in journals is not written for the average reader. Just as history does, research can help explain, and even predict, how journalism will evolve.

She adds:

My goal as a researcher is to share and decipher research found in academic journals on the topic of newer media. … I will summarize and share with you the journal research articles that I have read, however I encourage you to talk to the authors of the research to find out more regarding what they have learned. And perhaps, conversations will lead to the sharing of ideas, and ultimately lead to increased accuracy of research conducted by those in academia.

If you have an hour, take the time to watch Presentation: A Portal to Media Literacy. It is the future.