I really wanted to attend the Citizen Journalism Academy presented by the Society of Professional Journalists in Greensboro, NC today but after a hectic spring travel schedule I thought better of it and stayed home to visit with my family. Luckily local social media maven, Wayne Sutton’s (@WayneSutton on Twitter) been sending tweets with the commentary from the program.

One thing that caught my eye was a link to Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code (47 USC § 230) part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some commentary on it. First the relevant part of the law:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” The courts have repeatedly rejected attempts to limit the reach of Section 230 to “traditional” Internet service providers, instead treating many diverse entities as “interactive computer service providers.

What that means to bloggers:

Bloggers can be both a provider and a user of interactive computer services. Bloggers are users when they create and edit blogs through a service provider, and they are providers to the extent that they allow third parties to add comments or other material to their blogs.

Your readers’ comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it. However, if you selected the third-party information yourself, no court has ruled whether this information would be considered “provided” to you. One court has limited Section 230 immunity to situations in which the originator “furnished it to the provider or user under circumstances in which a reasonable person…would conclude that the information was provided for publication on the Internet….”

So if you are actively going out and gathering data on your own, then republishing it on your blog, we cannot guarantee that Section 230 would shield you from liability. But we believe that Section 230 should cover information a blogger has selected from other blogs or elsewhere on the Internet, since the originator provided the information for publication to the world. However, no court has ruled on this.

There’s more commentary on the site but unlike some laws that deal with electronic communications their have been numerous court decisions that have established precedent.

I think it’s a good practice for the “new media” to understand the legalities of all media. I also think it’s a good idea to understand the ethics that good journalist practice and that our spelled out by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics that boils down to four main themes.

1. Seek Truth and Report It
2. Minimize Harm
3. Act Independently
4. Be Accountable

I believe that Citizen Journalism has gained increased popularity as a result of the accountability factor, remember the Killian documents from Rathergate.

Anyhow, I am sorry I missed the conference especially since I am sitting here blogging and my wife went for a pedicure, quality time bah…

Technorati Tags: Blogging, blogs, Publishing, Section 230, Title 47

Thursday night the Iowa caucuses gave the U.S. their first glimpses into who the real front runners were for the Democratic and Republican parties. After seeing who won it made me wonder, as a web marketer, whether there was any relationship between the winners and their presence on the web. So I did a little non-partisan analysis.

Methodology

I looked at a number of factors to determine their reach on the web but mainly I relied on their buzz factor on Technorati (the leading blog search engine), the ranking of their website as determined by Alexa (a web service that determines a websites popularity), and Google (for PageRank and general popularity based on number of times the term is mentioned).  I also looked at the quantity and quality of personal communications from the candidates which in my mind is quite low for someone who is trying to sell you not only on their positions but their sincere belief in those positions. My main criterion was their willingness to engage in conversations with their constituents via personal messages in a conversational way. I was looking for blogs that allows comments or forums that allowed discussions among supporters and even those in opposition of their platform. I also poked around for other ways they engaged the web-savvy voter. 

Here are my findings.

The Democrats

Barack Obama

His election site is the first hit for his name on Google (as is the case with most candidates). He also is running Google Adwords advertisements on his own name. A look at his site shows that his Alexa ranking is a 17,303 and he has a Google page rank of 7. Technorati shows over 104,000 hits for him in the blogosphere. I also notice that The ObamaBlog on his HQ website however doesn’t use RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and doesn’t have any personal messages on it from the distinguished gentlemen from Illinois. Senator Obama does have 214,000+ friends on MySpace though. He also has a group on LinkedIn.  And another 208,000 supporters on Facebook. Barack’s staff also sends updates via Twitter though they are more status than messages from him. 

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s election site is also the number one hit for her name, and while I didn’t see any Adwords running on the search by her organization. I did get one for MikeHuckabee.com [See illustration on the right]. Hillary’s Alexa ranking is on 32,729. Hillary also has RSS enabled for her blog. Hillary’s blog was ranked 12,130 on Technorati with an authority of 379. 

John Edwards

John Edwards election site is the the number one hit for his name. The Alexa ranking for his site is 69,182. His blog does support RSS and it’s driven by supporters and well supported though any message from Senator Edwards is absent. The blog itself has an impressive showing with a ranking of 6,516 and an authority ranking of 572. His Google Page Rank is 6.

The Democratic Google Fights

Finally, we pit Obama versus Clinton versus Edwards in Google searches.

• "Hillary Clinton" yields 6,360,000 results.
• "Barack Obama" yields 1,800,000 results
• "John Edwards" yields 4,240,000 results

What’s disappointing is that none of the candidates have a personal blog post(or at least one that I could readily find).  I guess the see no benefit in virtual glad-handing bloggers. Also, when it comes to Google search, it’s worth noting that Hillary and John Edwards have been more prominently in the public eye for a much longer time which could explain their commanding leads in Google search results.

Republicans

Mike Huckabee 

Mike Huckabee’s election site has an Alexa ranking of 38,119 and a search for "Mike Huckabee" in Google returns no Google Adwords for himself or his competition. He also has a blog and he made a personal post. Actually, he actually made more than one. While searching the archives are a little tough, Huckabee’s figured out that he can type it once and have it live on. Plus one for understanding that if you have a blog it’s important to communicate your own thoughts there not the positions that your team has carefully screened and crafted. 

Mitt Romney

The MittRomney.com website has an Alexa ranking shows 63,714. His website is pre-empted by ,in my opinion, an awkward splash page.  His blog is populated mainly by aggregated posts from his five sons. He’s one of the few that candidates where I have found a personally written blog post but it’s not ranked in Technorati and his posts are sporadic.

John McCain

John’s election site has a 99,639 and a Google Page Rank of 5.  John McCain is advertising on his name in Google Adwords. He’s not listed in Technorati but he has 274 blog reactions. His website looks like a production of his staff and doesn’t seem to have any "personal touch".

Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson has no Internet site that I can find the best I can see is the Friends of Fred. Perhaps he is relying on his Internet Movie Database entry to provide his web presence. [Updated: Fred does have a Facebook profile with 18,000+ supporters]

Ron Paul

Ron Paul is perhaps the most web savvy of all the presidential candidates. His site RonPaul2008.com is ranked 6,034 which is astounding, for comparision the Republican National Committee web site GOP.com has a ranking of 101,168. Though ironically Dr. Paul has no blog that I could find prominently linked from his election site he does have one at http://blog.ronpaul2008.com (which has 529 blog reactions via Technorati) and it was personally updated numerous times by his staff. Ron Paul also has some personal messages. He effectively uses YouTube to communicate messages as well with over 43,000+ subscribers and 6.5 million views. His Facebook page shows he has 67,000 supporters. The Ron Paul 2008 website shows a Google Page Rank of 7 (the highest of any candidate). 

The Republican Google Fights

Finally we look at Google search results for Google. 

• "Mike Huckabee" returns 1,560,000 results
• "Mitt Romney" returns 1,470,000 results
• "Ron Paul" returns 3,050,000 results
• "Rudy Giuliani" returns 1,310,000 results
• "Fred Thompson" returns 701,000 results

Analysis

Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards seem to be the leaders when it comes to the reaching Internet savvy voters.

Looking deeper at the amount of money raised by each candidate it’s no wonder that Ron Paul (who has raised considerably less money then many of the other candidates ) has a good website presence. As someone with scarcer resources he’s turned to the most leveraged method for reaching voters the Internet, a scale-free network.  Though he finished in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses he would be my prediction to be the surprise candidate of the election based on his ability to effectively communicate over the Internet. 

I also think it’s notable that perhaps the best execution in communicating via the Internet is Obama election machine.  I don’t believe that he’s demonstrated a human element over the Internet but he’s photogenic and he his team uses the Internet to effectively deliver the messages of his platform. 

All of candidates could benefit greatly from leveraging the Internet. Here are my impressions on what they are doing and how they could improve.

• Blogging – Personal messages via their blogs can be delivered better via RSS. With exception Mitt Romney does this fairly well and Ron Paul does this via his You Tube channel,his blog, and even Twitter. Though the other candidates could learn something here.
• Adwords – Google Adwords is a big opportunity for all candidates and running ads that counter the issues that they feel their opponents are weak on would be interesting. I have to wonder there is almost a lack of advertising on candidates names which I find interesting. 
• Social Networking – Obama and Paul seem to have successfully tapped into the social networks of Facebook and MySpace. I would love to see what Fred Thompson’s MySpace would look like (I can’t find one). He does have a FaceBook page which means someone at Thompson HQ understands that the Internet is a useful promotional tool. 
• Marketing/Polling – If I were running the candidates online campaigns I would be making sure that each candidate was running affiliate badge campaigns that pointed to candidate’s "At a Glance Page" that had their strongest easy to understand messaging. The same way Internet marketers use landing pages for product marketing. I would also be doing my own polling to test messages and gather intelligence on why their supporters find them appealing as well as other demographics.
• Claim Blogs on Technorati – I think there is valuable insight to be gained by the candidates who have claimed their blogs on Technorati. This gives them a ranking and a way to report on their blog success. Conversely, it also provides their competition a competitive view. 

My gut feeling looking at this data is that while you probably won’t win the election on the web alone but you gain an advantage by doing so. I think Huckabee, Obama, Paul, Edwards, and Clinton are doing this most effectively. I also think that Fred Thompson by ignoring the web precludes himself from being a true contender. I am surprised that Giuliani who was such a proponent of IT when mayor of New York doesn’t have a greater web presence (I gleaned this information from his autobiography no personal knowledge). As the election progresses I will continue to observe and comment. New Hampshire is coming up and will give me more data to correlate the result and the candidates web presence. 

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, elections, Google, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucus, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Search, Web 2.0 marketing

The Wire creator David Simon in this interview states:

The newsroom where I used to work (the Baltimore Sun) had 460 people. Now it has 300. And there are people out there who just don’t care. They’ll make more money putting out a mediocre paper than they would putting out a better paper. They know this. It’s their equation. They’re quite content with mediocrity.

And within that culture we have people that are saying, ‘oh no, we’re going to do more with less,’ which is one of the great lies of the 21st century. What it means is we’re going to less with less. And that’s the nature of what journalism is becoming.

I don’t disagree. How can a newspaper keep up while news is readily available from a virtually unlimited number of sources that are faster, free and more convenient. They are competing against the web and text alerts at the same time as Craigslist is cutting into classified revenue? Newspapers are going to have to reinvent themselves. In the short term cutting the quality of their product keeps them afloat but it’s only a stopgap measure.

Newspapers are going to be forced to change their modus operandi and embrace the web as a means not only to deliver the news but also harvest the news from non-traditional sources. That’s a fine line to walk. In journalism circles I am sure Citzen Journalists are the subject of many a raw conversation. They aren’t typically held to the same standards as regular journalists. Whilst a reporter is oblgated to deliver well-written prose on deadline, bloggers are often forgiven for sins of punctaution, grammar, and even their adherence to the facts in exchange for up-to-the second reporting and free access. It’s even an accepted custom to cross-out and correct comments, a benefit of hosting content electronically.  I suspect the future of newspapers could be in a filtering and editorial role rather than as a actual producer of 100% original  content.

The traditional newspaper needs to look to their new poster child, Rob Curley. Rob is currently the Vice President of Product Development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. Before that I came to know of him for his work at the Lawrence Journal World , one of the most progressive newspapers and technology innovators in the country. Their paper spawned Django the open source Python Web framework.

So if I am right and the newspaper goes digital, "How are we going to housetrain our dogs."

(via Doc )

Technorati Tags: Citzen Journalism, Django, New Media, Open Source, Python, Rob Curley