A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others. And Barack Obama’s backers have an edge in the online political environment.

Here is more:

Led by young voters, Democrats and Obama supporters have taken the lead in their use of online tools for political engagement.

• 74% of wired Obama supporters have gotten political news and information online, compared with 57% of online Clinton supporters.
• In a head-to-head matchup with internet users who support Republican McCain, Obama’s backers are more likely to get political news and information online (65% vs. 56%).
• Obama supporters outpace both Clinton and McCain supporters in their usage of online video, social networking sites and other online campaign activities.

Here is general information about youth, the Internet and mobile devices in this election year: 

Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns…

Young voters are helping to define the online political debate; 12% of online 18-29 year olds have posted their own political commentary or writing to an online newsgroup, website or blog.

And this:

35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos–a figure that nearly triples the reading the Pew Internet Project got in the 2004 race.

Read the full report here.

Elizabeth Edwards says it all again, but this time about the present campaign coverage. In The New York Times she writes in part:

The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough to search out information about the candidates are finding it harder and harder to do… 

She asks why Fred Thompson, who was a non-candidate from beginning to end, was anointed as a front runner by the news media even before he declared, while Joe Biden got no coverage even though he was in the race with fine ideas.

Her’s is worth a read and when you are there click on her interview too, it’s a good listen.

What is most amazing to me was that there was not one reported moment. No one interviewing people. No voice of the people. Just the big mouths, yelling at each other. It was to me just a continued extension of the ABC News debate where political trivia, sleaze and manipulation reigned supreme. If TV news disappeared tonight, what difference would it make to our democracy. None.

In my moments of despair over journalism, the profession I love, I keep getting draw back to the Public Journalism Network charter declaration. Twenty-four of  us worked on that in early 2003, but I think we did a very good job of defining what we wanted from journalism. Here are a couple of my favorite declarations, the essense of which have been totally abandoned by commercial TV:

We believe journalism and democracy work best when news, information and ideas flow freely; when news fairly portrays the full range and variety of life and culture of all communities; when public deliberation is encouraged and amplified; and when news helps people function as political actors and not just as political consumers. 

We believe the best journalism helps people see the world as a whole and helps them take responsibility for what they see. 

Did that awful TV commentary tonight help me see the world better and to be a better actor in the democracy in which I live. No. Not at all. It was a waste of my time and instead of helping engage people in the political process, it has done nothing but drive them away.

As I said after the ABC News debate debacle and I will say here to CNN and MSNBC you owe the American people an apology. We deserve better.
 

If the ABC News Presidential Primary debate debacle had happened back then, people like David Brooks and George Stephanopoulos with their now totally neanderthal view of quality news and information, would have had the megaphone and totally trumped any criticism and put the Public Journalism people on the defensive. The movement had the right ideas, but lacked the DNA to make them heard and happen. In a figurative sense public journalism lacked the equivalent of thumbs. But alas it has the thumbs now.

In 2004 I wrote:

The new weblog-infused DNA makes public journalism more nimble and provides it with figurative set of thumbs. It allows public journalism to grasp and do things impossible in the old public journalism… We want to ensure that the … spin doctors do not control our elections..

I do believe if there are any spin doctors out there today thinking like Brooks did in his New York Times column, they are in big trouble. Brooks wrote:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues. 

This week, some 20 years after the first protests about this inane, neanderthal type of journalism, the spin doctors, Stephanopoulos and Brooks have learned that the people have their own megaphones and that the once struggling public journalism has evolved into the public’s journalism and its new thumbs cannot only grasp, but when push comes to shove, they can gouge.

First, Democrats, and especially Obama supporters, are going to jump all over ABC for the choice of topics: too many gaffe questions, not enough policy questions.

I understand the complaints, but I thought the questions were excellent. The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that…

Here is my favorite part, Brooks writes:

We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.

Hey David, you forgot to mention that while H. W. Bush was touring the flag factories during the 1988 election the Republicans were also running the racist Willie Horton ads. In fact, it was exactly the very trivia and sleaze that David Brooks thinks is good journalism that led to the public or civic journalism movement. Here is what Charlotte Grimes wrote in a Harvard public policy paper:

The defining event for civic journalism is usually pinned to the 1988 presidential campaign, with its fixation on horse-race polls and focus on Gary Hart’s adultery, George Bush’s visits to flag factories and Willie Horton ads, and Michael Dukakis’ ride in a tank. The campaign was a triumph of trivia, sleaze and manipulation. And it provoked an outburst of soul-searching by many journalists on their role in it.

Apparently it caused no soul searching for David Brooks — he thinks manipulative questions are good journalism. He can make his elitist, well-mannered argument, but on this one I am siding with  my wife, who during the “symbolic issues” questioning Brooks describes above, was screaming: Haven’t they heard how many people died in Iraq today? Ask a question about that. Haven’t they heard how many people are losing their homes today? Ask about that.

David, maybe you haven’t heard, the American people are tired of the trivia oriented, sleazy and manipulative political maneuvering, which you so politely call “symbolic issues.”

Of course, David Brooks, who has sided with the current administration on so many bad policy decisions, would prefer that the real issues get ignored. So David let me ask you a symbolic issues question: Which is more important an American flag lapel pin or the 4,000 plus flag-draped caskets that have come back to America from the Iraq war which you supported? Apparently in a debate you think the former is more important, my wife thinks the latter and so do I and so do most other Americans.

It took about an hour before the first real policy question was asked, then the debate took on some semblance of high ground. But this morning the front page New York Times article, also reproduced by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, dealt only with the inane part of the debate with a headline that reads: Clinton Employs Broad Attacks in a Key Debate.

The whole article deals with the attacks, and mentions in passing that the personality clashes were “Helped along by the questions of the moderators…”

That’s the equivalent of writing a whole story on, let’s say, a police interrogation and mentioning in passing that the confession was was helped along by waterboarding.

Never once did John R. Broder, The New York Times writer, explain how awful the question selection was, instead he, wrote in the Times edition I received in Atlanta:

“During the first half of the debate, the candidates spent so much time sparring over issues of character that they had little chance to discuss major issues that have dominated past debates, with Mr. Obama mentioning Iraq only 40 minutes into the event.”

The New York Times article is factual in every detail, but is fully wrong in context because it never mentions that the ABC News moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos forced the candidates into a personality debate. The questions, by their very nature, had nothing to do with policy. That was the story that was not reported, which the blogosphere for all its factual errors is getting completely correct.

 As you can imagine, we receive thousands of messages a day from our viewers and while we appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback regarding our programming, we are not able to respond to each one directly.

We encourage you to continue to communicate with us!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT CHANGING TO DIGITAL TELEVISION:

Television as we know it is about to change! Are YOU ready? …

No help there for a dissatisfied viewer. 

 So then I went to the ABC News debate story and found more than 1700 comments, here is the one that speaks my mind:

THIS DEBATE IS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!! What the heck are you doing?????? So much time on the errors/blunders/past, ya yayaya. Where were all the questions that affect the American people???I think this was shameful!!! You left no room for talking about real issues. And George & Charlie were where all the fault should lie. TERRIBLE, RUDE and IRRELEVANT QUESTIONS !!!!! … You owe PA an apology AND an apology to the candidates.

He healed our sick hospitals and anemic health care system and all but rose the lame, struck down by diabetes, from their wheelchairs  — and he did it with narratives, stories, examples and explanations that had just enough common sense logic to make them seem doable.

And for all of that, he deserved page three on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Metro page, with the headline that reads:

Former president skips Obama jabs in speeches 

Ah, if only he had taken even a tiny jab, certainly that would have pushed him to the front page of the Metro section and a nice round-house swing would have elevated him to 1A status. But no, he offered nothing more than a rousing speech for which hundreds of people, the Marietta Daily Journal said thousands, stood in line for more than an hour to hear. The wimp, the palooka. Thus not even a photo.

Okay, I get it, the hardcopy part of the newspaper only has so much room, the website will reflect the feeling of celebration. After all, this is Cobb County, Georgia, home of Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr, certainly one must ask: Where the hell did all these Democrats come from? I know that was a question people were asking in the line itself. 

The Marietta Daily Journal, the real hometown newspaper, did, in fact, run the story with big photos on Page 1A, and with a massive headline that reflected the mood of the crowd, and not the disappointment of the AJC reporter, with a line from Clinton’s speech:

Rebuild the Dream

The difference is that the AJC plays for a mass audience and apparently does not have a clue how to connect in new ways with small fragmented communities. Hence, they wait for the punch in the face or at least the hope of a head butt. A former President — for whom people waited not just an hour, but really for years to see in person — connecting with his tribe was a thing of beauty, which the AJC with its old ways of covering the news, basically ignored. But that ignoring, built out of ignorance of social media, is done at its own peril.  

Rather than wasting everyone’s time by burying a story on page three that no one will read, why not direct that energy to engage the hundreds of people who came to this event. Let them share photos, stories, which you play up for anyone who is interested. Do the same with the other candidates, with rock concerts, with demonstrations, but don’t just write about who is on the stage; instead be the indispensable catalyst for community building, bring your tribes back home just as Bill Clinton did last night at Kennesaw State University. Give yourself a punch in the face, wake up; find yourself the 100-mile-a-gallon news operation, raise up from your wheelchair, rebuilt your anemic ways…and tomorrow you will feel good about yourself just as Bill Clinton’s crowd feels good about themselves this fine Saturday. 

1. Simple enough: just sign up for a Twitter account, go to my Twitter page, and click Follow. (For instant updates, you’ll want to make sure you set up your IM client and/or cellphone with Twitter. If you’ve done either of those, then after Twitter acknowledges that you’re Following someone, you then have to toggle the Notifications ON — otherwise you’ll only see their tweets on your web feed, not via IM or SMS.)
2. Of course, the downside to following someone solely for the purpose of knowing when they’re live streaming or doing something else interesting is that you’re potentially subject to a ton of really boring stuff, like me complaining about the papers I’m grading, or to TMI, like a couple new media friends of ours who sometimes alert us to impending whoopie. One workaround that’s emerging for that is the use of hashtags: keywords like Technorati tags prefaced with a pound sign, e.g., #livestream. Personally, I’m trying to decide whether to sacrifice 13 of my precious 140 Twitter characters to #streetteam08 to tag my news-relevant tweets, or hope that the shorter #st08 is clear enough. The # symbol is only necessary for these tweets to be aggregated and archived at Twitter-related sites like tweetchannel.com or hashtags.org. But in order to get real-time updates about my livestreaming without following the rest of my life, you could send Twitter the command, “track streetteam08;” then, so long as I remember to include that tag in every streaming announcement tweet, you will receive that message when I send it out.
3. Sorry for the mini-lecture. Hope it was all relevant.
4. Sadly, following that #streetteam08 tag will only alert any interested parties to my particular live stream on Tuesday or subsequent video updates, as I appear to be the only one of us 51 that actually uses Twitter, and I haven’t inspired any interest in joining, yet, either.

A note from Witt: Please don’t engage me in an discussion of whether the Street Team folks are real journalists, at least not here. This is just a nice Twitter lesson that Highsmith was kind enough to provide.