February 22, 2005
Podcasting Rears Its Head In Politics
Last week I noted that I have been learning the ins and outs of podcasting. I've also been searching for how this new tool might be used in politics. In short, podcasting is really only a few months old in the political blogoshpere, and to date here's a surface view of what I found.
Podcasting by eActivists - This is by far the most popular form of political podcasting and there are perhaps already hundreds of examples available. Here are a couple ways its being used.
Digital Divide Network - Online community spreading knowledge to help everyone succeed in a digital age.
AudioActivism.org - Contains various audio about people, democracy and social justice.
Adam Curry's Daily Source Code - Daily rants on podcasting and the world in general
Podcasting by Political Bloggers - Becoming more popular and hard to distinguish from eActivist.
Two Rights - Two Rights is the political podcast that provides a conservative perspective on current events, blogs, podcasting and vision for America. Two Rights' intent is to create Political Discourse on the left-leaning podasphere. This makes me think of podcasting as a way to TiVo your favorite local A.M. radio talkshow.
Trippi-Winer Podcast - Jon Garfunkel of Civilities breaks down a 15 minute podcast Dave Winer and Joe Trippi (shedding light on the Zephyr Teachout-Wall Street Journal controversy). This is interesting, because I see podcasting as another tool that can give bloggers more credibility. Getting a recording of an interview and breaking it down provides much richer information than what traditional MSM journalists do. Also on the MSM side, we never hear the conversation between the reporter and the journalist - allowing for the potential to spin words and stories. Podcasting could help rise above bias reporting.
DigitalPodcast.com has about 40 other examples.
Podcasting by Candidates - The only case I found so far is of candidates making use of podcasting was Donnie Fowler in his recent DNC chair bid. Dan Myers at AtariDemocrat.com passed this on; otherwise I might not have found it at all. Thanks Dan.
Podcasting by Officials -
North Dakota - Grand Forks North Dakota Mayor Michael R. Brown announced a podcasting debut in early on February. The Mayor's March 9th State of the City address will also be podcast. The city will do 6 podcasts to start. The podcasts will be available for direct download at the city's website Those interested will be able to subscribe to the podcast on both sites as well. He is the first elected official that I know of to make this type of commitment to podcasting.
Democratic Congressional Committee - The DCCC's launched its inaugural Podcast with its Chair, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-05) responding to the State of the Union. It was exciting to see an actual U.S. Rep. do something techy, and I imagine the DCCC, which is known for trendy tech savvy stuff (viral Republican Survivor anyone) will continue to produce quailty podcasts. RNC is just as savvy, if not more so with Ken Mehlman, and this could get interesting.
George Bush - Dave Pell at ElectaBlog got my hopes up with his "W Does Podcasting" post, but it turned out that it was just a New York Times article on secret recording of President Bush. The lesson from this article is that if you are going to record someone, you should tell the person, else or you're a scum bag.
Thoughts - Podcasting does have its merits, and I'm excited about it.
I won't attempt to discuss the long-term viability of podcasting in politics, at least for now. That said, if blogs allow anyone to be a journalist, then podcasting allows anyone to be a talk show host. And I imagine this is good because talk radio is popular among active Conservatives and growing more popular among Liberals. This fact, combined with the growth of blogs and satellite radio makes think that there is a very good future ahead for podcasting. Grassroots activists and bloggers turn commentators will continue to use podcasting more than politicians, and it will most likely stay that way. Finally bandwidth is a big issue and will prohibit podcast growth until broadband Internet is more widespread.
Pod on Pod people.
Posted by Buzz Webster at February 22, 2005 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Comments
"Getting a recording of an interview and breaking it down provides much richer information than what traditional MSM journalists do."
Thanks for adding a link to my piece. Though note my conclusion is opposite from yours. The Winer-Trippi podcast did not give bloggers more credibility: The blogger, Winer, did not transcribe it, did not link to transcriptions, and did not even extract from it what he originally set to find out. So just posting the audio interview seems richer, but instead it's just lazy.
Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at February 22, 2005 07:03 PM
Jon - I agree that the act of just posting the podcast was lazy, but what you did was not.
Therefore, there's a lot of potential for richer content if bloggers follow through as you did, meaning not only posting podcasts but taking it upon themselves to break it down as well.
Thanks for helping me clarify this.
Posted by: Buzz Webster at February 23, 2005 09:07 AM
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