Exerpts from Amy's Journal..... 7/8/08

Daily Journal:

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
http://blogs.kxan.com/kxanonline/
http://austinist.com/2008/04/08/local_political.php
http://pinkdome.com/
http://www.inthepinktexas.com/
http://www.texasmonthly.com/

Today we had a blogger panel: Eileen Smith, Charlie Ray, and Paul Burka. Elieen Smith is the new online editor of Texas Monthly. Paul Burka now works under her and is also a major text contributor to the magazine. Charlie Ray is now editor of KXAN online.

Last cycle, Charlie Ray and Elaine Smith were both on the blogger’s panel for Campaign Academy because they ran their own political blogs. Today, they have both transitioned into mainstream media. Paul Burks has been writing for magazines for years and is going the other direction. This was a convergence panel.

Eileen and Charlie, both Democrats, started parallel political blogs in 2004 and each created a character to present often opposing points of view. The two authors often had meetings with each other in a space they liked to call ‘the pink room’ to discuss current political happenings. Charlie began his blog anonymously, which allowed him to say things he wouldn’t normally say in public. However, when he realized his blog had influence in political circles and was giving people serious information and a taste of opinion, he decided he should add credibility to his space and give himself a name.

When KXAN hired Charlie Ray, he believed it was the wisest decision to end his persona on Pink Dome. However when Evan Smith approached Eileen, it was because of her blog. They appreciated her insight and liked her blog character and strongly encouraged her to keep up both pursuits (working for Texas Monthly and running her In The Pink blog site). (She blogged about us after speaking today.)

All three talked about the benefits of blogging in the face of a declining print media. A vast majority of intellectually savvy twenty-somethings and younger do NOT watch television, especially for their main source of the news. The internet has given people a way to customize the content that they get, with news feeds, bookmarks and customizable home pages. People do no even actually have to go to a website to read content; it is fed into their home page.

Media has turned into a different style of reporting. It is no longer a one-to-many conversations where the news source decides what news the public is given. News has become people talking to people in groups and communities. The blogs are able to create a community of people with similar interests who wish to dialog. People are no longer willing to wait for their news; deadlines are no longer at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00, people want their news faster, so deadlines must be every five minutes, more precisely whenever you can get the news. Charlie Ray works for a television station (KXAN) but just plain never watches it because he is in the generation who, really, only uses internet.

Reading blogs doesn’t feel like anyone is hammering you with opinion or information, because you generally agree with what you are reading. Either you skim past what you don’t believe or you go and switch blogs. Based on whether or not you read the comments, you can have more angles about the subject. Reading the comments should broaden one’s perspective.

Thought: The filter we learned about in Dr. St. Clair’s class, in which people choose what to believe, a filter that was present in even the old way of thinking, has gotten even smaller. In other words, people are more able to pick and choose what to listen to and what is truth, so they are becoming much more adept at being selective. Will this cause our society to become more narrow-minded?????

They brought up three interesting points.
1) When you blog, you don’t have to wait for a monthly publication. You can get more out, more quickly, showing more progressions of the story. Instead of doing 3 articles once a month, Paul Burka said he can do twenty articles over the month, and as people comment, he can also provide updates in his responses.

2) Blogging anonymously vs. anonymous comments: Are these freedoms good or bad? Does it allow you to be more unrestrained than you should be? It is more of a debate than an answer to a question, because to a certain extent, the freedom allows you to be more honest than you would be if you weren’t being anonymous, but then because you are anonymous, sometimes you don’t take yourself seriously enough and it doesn’t occur to you how far-reaching and how widely read you are being and so you might do damage to others’ reputations, when you figured you were merely talking to thin air.

The anonymity of when people post comments is a double-edged sword as well. People are more honest and more likely to get into a discussion with each other if they don’t have their name attached. But paid staff could get in hot water, for certain kinds of comments!!!!

Charlie Ray and Mark Strama have a running joke about Mark’s ‘inability to dress’. Charlie Ray thinks Mark’s favorite suit is tacky. This happens to be the suit Mark got married in, the most expensive suit Mark has ever purchased. Having recalled that Evan Smith writes a list of ten best and worst legislators, I suggested that Charlie Ray should start a best- and worst-dressed legislators list and then see where Mark fell. Catherine and I stuck up for Mark’s impeccable fashion sense. Eileen said that since Charlie had shut down his blog, In The Pink should strike up that debate. Charlie said they also have a joke about if Mark can’t dress better, at least he should stop looking like Patrick Rose (and give him a break).