Newscoma

If you aren’t getting Left Wing Cracker’s daily e-mails, well, you should be. He’s amazing, tireless and just the best.

He sent me a link to where Steve Cohen is blogging. I love it when politicians’ blog.

My vision for that generation is one of fully recognized freedoms for all individuals living in a nation where government helps those less fortunate to be a part of our great society. My vision is of one People, one Nation, one America. “E Pluribus Unum” is not merely some trademark stamped on the Great Seal as part of some American branding scheme. It is a vision of our world. It is a call to unity. It is, in and of itself, a sacred purpose.

As a society we do not gain the right to call ourselves unified or just if we are not. Just being American does prove us great and good. It is those things that Americans have done that has made America so, and America will continue to be great, to be good by continuing to expand civil liberties for all, by embracing all walks of life into one society, into one America.

There’s more here.

On another note, I’m watching Sen. Joe Lieberman defend John McCain this morning. Mabel may have to get back in the race if Lieberman keeps it up. Just so she can bite him. I’m a pacifist. She’s not.

I talk to people about the use of the Internet in not only the communication industry but in politics. Where I live, Twitter is unknown and Friendfeed isn’t something they would ever consider (although it has been surprisingly helpful for me and I can’t recommend it enough. In the college town I live in, MySpace and Facebook are huge as is LinkedIn.) I’ve joined a few different social media/networking sites but Twitter and Friendfee are the two that I keep going back to. I joined Plurk last week but it tends to be all over the place which is fine but I don’t think I see it as a tool at this point.

I read this over at Eschaton this morning and it got me thinking.

I think in 2008 computer use and understanding of the internet should be part of the basic skill set we expect from people in positions of prominent public leadership. It’s pretty much impossible to have any kind of understanding of how people in the modern world go about their lives and work without that. The internet is not a fad or the playground for 17 year olds.

He’s right.

So it amazes me when I speak to either local politicians or business people who still insist that the ‘tubes are a fad. I don’t know why it irritates me so much but it does. If there are free tools available, why aren’t people using them?

I ponder this …

I wrote a couple of months back about Ron Sylvester who twittered the murder trial of a 14 year-old girl.

He writes about it this morning at his blog, Technolo-J.

I had started using Twitter during jury selection, as a solution to some problems we’d had with trying to file live updates during the trial. We wanted immediacy, and we got it.

One day, I cut and pasted all my “tweet” updates into a traditional story file. It measured 80 inches. Now, I don’t think anyone would have read an 80-inch story from the newspaper on this trial, as compelling as it was. My editors certainly wouldn’t have run a story that long. But what I found is that people will read an 80-inch story, given to them a paragraph at a time, 140 characters long.

He certainly is right. Most editors wouldn’t print an 80 inch story. That’s a huge hunk of newspaper real estate. But what he did was offer news in one of the most immediate ways available and for those of us who followed his tweets on the murder trial were given the heart wrenching story of a girl who’s life was cut short.

One of the most fascinating things to me was the jury selection. If you have ever covered any kind of trial, it honestly can be tedious. Sylvester, 140 characters at a time, made it fascinating. As jurors had to vote on life in prison or the death penalty, there was a great deal of emotion tied into what each interviewed juror would do.

I thought this was cool. The immediacy was really amazing.

I say it at least once a week. Delivering news is changing. I think it is good.