So USA Today gives me way more credit than I probably deserve, but they’ve given me the privilege of hosting a roundtable chat on blogging and social media this Thursday, December 2.

In the chat we’ll talk about how to get started blogging, some of the different blogging platforms, and how you can leverage all the social media tools out there to build your own online brand that effectively represents who you are and what you have to offer the world.

I hope you can join me for the chat! Post any questions you have in advance of the chat on this page and then come right back to this page on Thursday morning at 11:30 a.m. to join in the conversation. Looking forward to chatting with you then!

That’s what the AMP Summit, being held today and tomorrow here in Washington, D.C., is all about–and so far, it’s a fantastic conference.

This morning I had the pleasure of volunteering with registration at the conference, which earned me a free ticket and the chance to bump into more than few cool people right from the get-go. Once off my shift, I attended a session on online advertising with representatives from Aol, Google, and Facebook–lots of good content, albeit mixed in with some heavy sales pitches and brand plugs.

Not a whole lot of time to discuss it much right now, but if you’d like to keep up with the conference be sure to follow the hashtag, #AMP10, and check their website to follow along with the schedule of events. And of course, follow me on Twitter for all of my own exciting updates and commentary.

It’s all especially relevant lately, and here in D.C., as Stewart and Colbert prepare for their big rallies on the National Mall in October.

American University Professor Matt Nisbet has been writing a lot about this lately on his Age of Engagement blog and he has a lot of fascinating things to say. One of the coolest parts about his most recent posts on this topic, too, is that he’s interviewed one of my other favorite American University professors, Dr. Lauren Feldman, about the issue (she also happens to be our AU-SMCEDU advisor–more on that soon).

It’s all absolutely fascinating to read. Read the whole series on the Age of Engagement blog here–Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. And check out a quick excerpt below the cut.

Q: Are audiences learning about politics when they watch these programs or are these programs, as some fear, replacing the use of more valuable sources of news and information?

Feldman: During the 2004 election, the Pew Research Center reported that young people were relying on satirical comedy programs like SNL and The Daily Show and late-night talk shows like Leno and Letterman for information about the campaign. While this group was the most likely to say they learned from comedy, it was the least likely to say they learned from network news and newspapers. These trends fueled a media narrative that young people were deserting traditional news in favor of comedy.

Well, it turns out that although at a macro-level, yes, young people as a demographic are consuming much less traditional news and more late-night comedy, it is not necessarily that the same individuals who are tuning out the news are those watching late-night. A 2006 study conducted by Danna Young and Russ Tisinger found that those young people who reported watching and learning the most from late-night comedy also reported the highest rates of exposure to more traditional forms of news.

As a follow up to that study, I partnered with Danna Young to investigate whether exposure to political information in late-night comedy might actually lead people to pay more attention to traditional news. We were testing something called the “gateway hypothesis,” originally proposed by Harvard political scientist Matthew Baum.

This is the idea that entertainment programming that contains political content will motivate otherwise uninterested viewers to start paying attention to the news by making politics more salient (via its political interviews, jokes, etc.) and providing them with a cursory understanding of political issues.

Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that over the course of the 2004 primaries, the audiences of Leno and Letterman increased their attention to campaign news in traditional sources at a faster rate than non-viewers—suggesting that coverage of the election on Leno and Letterman fostered interest in conventional campaign news.

The audience for The Daily Show, on the other hand, maintained high levels of news attention regardless of that program’s election coverage. This is likely because, unlike Leno and Letterman, the content of The Daily Show is consistently and reliably political—not just during campaign events and elections, but all the time. These results confirm that late-night comedy audiences—of both The Daily Show and Leno/Letterman varieties—are not tuning into these programs instead of traditional news.

I would also argue that traditional news is not necessarily more valuable as a source of political information than The Daily Show or Colbert Report. Although it is unclear how much people learn about politics from The Daily Show and Colbert Report, any absence of learning is not due to a dearth of political substance – for example, a study by Julia Fox and colleagues found that The Daily Show was at least as substantive in its coverage of the 2004 election as the network evening news.

More likely, audiences are already knowledgeable about the news of the day when they tune into The Daily Show and Colbert Report. All in all, I would argue that The Daily Show and similar programs provide a useful complement to, rather than a replacement for, citizens’ traditional news diets.

Q: It seems that the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and SNL have become an important part of our personal conversations about politics, at least among a younger generation of Americans. If these programs are not only being watched but also frequently talked about at school, at the office, or online via Facebook and blogs, does this add to their impact?

Feldman: Absolutely. Conversations about these shows – both online and offline – only serve to increase their profile and reinforce their impact. People don’t have to actually see the original broadcast of these programs in order to be influenced by them. Moreover, when relayed by a friend or colleague, along with a personal endorsement or commentary, this is apt to give more weight – or provide new context – to the show’s message.

Comedy Central apparently recognizes the importance of informal sharing of its shows’ content; its website facilitates online conversations about The Daily Show and The Colbert Report by making it easy for people to embed or link to their video clips on blogs, social media, etc.

Facebook thrives on being important. And now that they’re the largest social network in the world, they can proudly proclaim themselves “the most important.” Without a doubt.

But in the past year a new social media ecosystem has sprouted up–location-based services, e.g. Foursquare, Gowalla, and the like. And tweeting back and forth with my good friend @bigguyd just now, I realized that Facebook’s strategy is much larger than either of theirs. They don’t want to put them out of business, or buy them out, or pound them into obscurity. They want these other services to thrive, but only if they play by Facebook’s rules.

Look at what Facebook has done with games on their network. When developers started creating simple games for the network people initially dismissed it as nothing but a distraction. Users hated all the application notifications. They were annoying, they were everywhere, they ruined the user experience. But Facebook is important to us, and no one quit.

After a certain amount of time, everyone got used to applications being there and developers started getting more aggressive with their games. And then came Farmville. And in 2009 companies like Zynga were seeing revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And they were also totally, without a doubt, 100% reliant on Facebook for survival.

That’s why Facebook just entered the “location wars.” They don’t want to take over the location network craze. They want to own it. They want to force everyone else to build on their system, making them the ultimate backbone of the location-based social network realm. By creating a dumbed-down, ultra-simplified check-in based service, they created a simple and flexible platform that developers can use. By keeping the stream of data flowing openly both ways through their platform, they’re enticing both new and old developers to jump on it and take advantage of their 500 million ready and willing users who are already plugged in and not leaving any time soon, if ever.

In essence, Facebook delivered a captive market of over 500 million users to Foursquare, Gowalla, and myriad other developers on a silver platter. And as those developers become increasingly reliant on Facebook’s Places platform, Facebook will begin taking a cut of all the revenue and everyone–within reason–wins.

Is it diabolical? A little. Is it not-exactly-a-good-thing for the ambitious, startup LBS developer? Yea, kinda. Is it abso-effing-lutely brilliant? You bet it is.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Dave Weigel is human, with thoughts, emotions, and feelings, like most of the rest of us.

Let me explain. Until yesterday, Dave Weigel was the Washington Post blogger covering the conservative movement. One caveat: he’s not all that conservative. Does that make him a bad blogger? A poor journalist? No. Does it mean he might not have been the best person for the job? Maybe. But that’s missing the larger point here.

The point is that our media is fundamentally flawed. Journalism in the 21st century is facing overwhelming forces, and yesterday’s fiasco at the Washington Post only underscores the futility of trying to fight them. The idea of objective journalism is a myth, for three reasons:

1. News moves faster than people.
2. “Unbiased journalism” is no longer a unique selling point, nor one that consumers are willing to pay for.
3. Journalists have opinions, and hiding them only misleads the public, preventing them from properly interpreting the news they read, hear, and watch.

News moves faster than people.

In the 1990s we saw the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, as dedicated cable news channels like CNN and Fox News Channel emerged on the scene. Little did they know, the media was only witnessing the beginning of a rapidly accelerating news cycle, one that has now accelerated far out of their control.

Today we have social media. Social media doesn’t drive the news cycle–events drive the news cycle. But social media has placed the control of the news cycle squarely in the hands of the information consumers themselves, leaving television and newspapers struggling to keep up.

Lost amidst the battle between corporate media conglomerates and the “little guy” citizen journalists, of course, are the paid, professional journalists. These journalists are overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and forced to hold themselves to outrageous and unrealistic standards of “objectivity”–standards that are simply impossible to live up to the 21st century hyper news cycle.

“Unbiased journalism” is no longer a unique selling point, nor one that consumers are willing to pay for.

In case you haven’t noticed, newspapers are dying. There’s lots of theories as to why they’re dying, and likely more than one accurate explanation. I tend to favor the Strategic Dissonance Model, created by former Intel CEO Andy Grove.



The model, above, basically states that at a recent point in history there was an inflection point in the business of information. As consumers of information and new media–i.e. blogs, social media, etc.–moved one direction, progressing towards an open, generally opinion-based, consumer-generated style of news, old media regressed toward a more closed, more staunchly “objective” style. This, in turn, created a dissonance gap between the two, resulting in old media’s decline and new media’s rapid success.

My point here is that consumer’s dont give a shit about objectivity. Not only do they not care, but they sure as hell don’t care enough to pay for it. The only people subscribing to old media today are people who either a) just like the feel of the newspaper, or b) rely on very factual, researched articles for research of their own.

Journalists have opinions, and hiding them only misleads the public, preventing them from properly interpreting the news they read, hear, and watch.

Finally, the obvious point. Journalists do have opinions. That is an obvious fact, and one that every single person on earth should know. If you think that journalists are robots and have no opinions, don’t agree or disagree with politicians, and don’t feel certain ways on certain issues, then you clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

So here’s the situation. We have a hyperspeed news cycle that is out of corporate media’s control, consumer’s that don’t care about unbiased journalism yet business models still founded on selling it, and journalists with opinions working for businesses that refuse to acknowledge their humanity.

See any problems there?

Not only is this a fundamentally flawed system, but this misleads news consumers. When you read an article on the Huffington Post, you know that it’s going to have a liberal bias. When you watch MSNBC you know it’s got a liberal slant. And when you watch Fox News they make no efforts to hide their conservative bias. These media organizations are some of the few in the world that are being (relatively) honest with their consumers.

The ones claiming objectivity are lying to you. I’m looking at you, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and, for that matter, the AP, NBC, ABC, CNN, and any number of other organizations. Each of these organizations has biased journalists, producing biased work, yet they insist over and over that they are objective and unbiased. When relatively uninformed readers and watchers consume this content, they interpret it as objective. Informed and experienced information consumers recognize the political bias inherent in these organizations and journalists and interpret it as such, taking in the actual facts and the rest with a grain of salt (as it should be).

In other words (and thanks for sticking around through this long entry), Dave Weigel should never have been fired, and journalists should never feel the need to keep their personal opinions and bias secret from the public.

Think about it. How can we change this? What will it take to convince traditional media that they are simply going about the business of news the wrong way?

Sound off in the comments or tweet at me. And don’t forget to retweet and “like” this post on Facebook using the links below.

]]> http://alexpriest.com/2010/06/26/the-myth-of-objective-journalism/feed/ 5 http://alexpriest.com/2010/06/04/the-most-simple-idea-in-the-world/ http://alexpriest.com/2010/06/04/the-most-simple-idea-in-the-world/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:14:16 +0000 Alex Priest http://alexpriest.com/?p=866 Continue reading →]]> This video just totally challenged my way of thinking. It’s a little long, but please watch.

For more information on the RSA, check out their website. They’re also on Twitter @theRSAorg.

Illustration for the video was done by Cognitive Media, which looks to be an equally awesome organization.

]]> http://alexpriest.com/2010/06/04/the-most-simple-idea-in-the-world/feed/ 0 http://alexpriest.com/2010/03/06/let-em-talk/ http://alexpriest.com/2010/03/06/let-em-talk/#comments Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:23:47 +0000 Alex Priest http://alexpriest.com/?p=683 Continue reading →]]> My latest column in my university’s newspaper is up today, here at The Eagle. This week, I’m focusing on the performance of Democrats in the media and how to handle (or not handle) their messaging alongside that coming from Republicans. With the way Republicans have handled their message–Tea Party and all–my advice is pretty simple. Let ‘em keep on talking, the only people they’re going to hurt is themselves.

The full column is below the cut. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Democrats aren’t doing half bad right now. So far 2010 actually isn’t looking nearly as dire as it was just after pseudo-Republican Scott Brown won the Kennedy seat in Massachusetts.

If Democrats keep up the hard work and continue to ignore tea partiers—radical conservatives and ultra-liberals like they have been—they might just survive this year. Nevertheless, here’s a little advice.

Dear Democratic Strategists,

You’re doing alright. Behind all the tea party crazy talk and “Washington is broken” nonsense, the news cycle seems to be trending your way.

Predicting the news cycle is a difficult thing to do. Sometimes it’s rough for Democrats, sometimes it hits the GOP where it really hurts.

This is supposed to be a rough year for Democrats. President Barack Obama’s policies haven’t sailed through as smoothly as we hoped. Hardly anyone’s happy with Congress, and it consists mostly of Democrats. So it’s all bad news for the Democratic Party, right?

I’m not so sure. Look at the news from Tuesday just this week, for example.

The leading headline in the Wall Street Journal was “Deal Near on Banking Rules,” one of the Democrats’ key policy items. Point for us.

Let’s look at others. “Tea Party Holds Risks for GOP.” Minus one for Republicans.

“Fed Void Clears Path for Obama,” “Manufacturing Shows Strength,” “Bailout Update: AIG’s repayment means U.S. is close to getting back half of its IOUs.” Point, point, point for Democrats.

And then there’s darling Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., holding up unemployment benefits for millions of Americans.

“One Senator Holds Up Bill, in New Level of Gridlock,” proclaims the WSJ. And then Tuesday evening: “Deal Reached to End Senator’s Holdout.” Point.

“Well that’s just one paper!” conservatives might protest (never mind the fact that the Wall Street Journal typically leans right). Sure, but The Washington Post’s headlines tell the same story.

Oh, and see that cover story in the Metro section? It exposes Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia as the hypocrite he is, lobbying for education funding from the Recovery Act he’s been lobbying against since last year. Point.

So the media momentum has shifted left a bit. But we can’t just sit back and be passive, can we? “We can’t let Republicans control the agenda and the message!” say paranoid political strategists on the left.

Well, maybe not completely. But lately they’ve done a good job digging themselves into a hole without your help, Democrats.

So, let ‘em talk.

The Tea Party is a joke. Every time Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck opens their mouth, people ridicule them across the political spectrum. Ron Paul? Not much of a threat when the Republican establishment still loathes him. Let them talk.

The “Party of No” is still just saying “no,” as evidenced by Bunning’s ignorant protest of the unemployment bill. If all the public hears is “no,” let ‘em talk.

Finally, the stimulus bill is working, the economy continues to improve and Obama is working hard to find solutions to our debt problem.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to pan his economic proposals, as if they weren’t going home to hypocritically take credit for the stimulus. Let ‘em talk; it’s only hurting them.

So Democrats, for now I think you should just ride the wave. Let the Republicans screw up their own messaging—you just focus on getting things done. The people will notice. You act, let them talk.

]]> http://alexpriest.com/2010/03/06/let-em-talk/feed/ 0 http://alexpriest.com/2010/02/25/twitter-on-the-wire/ http://alexpriest.com/2010/02/25/twitter-on-the-wire/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:30:27 +0000 Alex Priest http://alexpriest.com/?p=661 Continue reading →]]> Crossposted from shamable.com, here.

In case you didn’t hear, Twitter has signed a deal with Yahoo for a somewhat more advanced integration than it has with Google or Microsoft. A conversation I had just yesterday with a friend at Agence France-Press (AFP) got me to thinking, and now this announcement has started to confirm my theory:

Twitter is starting to sound an awful lot like a social wire service.



Check below the cut for the rest.

Here’s a passage from the LA Times story about the Yahoo deal:

The partnerships with Twitter and Facebook will roll out later this year. The deals will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one, said Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo’s sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Look at it this way. Imagine a news-ticker, on all your news sites, that streams breaking news not just from the major news organizations (of your choosing, of course), but also from your friends, family, and professional contacts. Imagine a news article where the headline was pulled from Twitter, the content was a digitally combined series of blog posts by highly-ranked bloggers, and the images were pulled from Flickr, Twitpic, and yFrog. Just imagine the fundamental shift in news, business, advertising–you name it–that would come from this.

Sure, real journalism would still survive–in fact it would likely thrive as more and more people look for authentic, reputable news sources. But for breaking news stories and immediate analysis of the events you are most interested in, what better to give you the news then your favorite news sources and all your friends?

I know that nowadays, it’s rare for me not to hear a piece of breaking news on Twitter first. Most of the things on TV are at least 30 minutes old, and the newspapers? Ha, they couldn’t break news if their industry depended on it… well, I won’t go there.

But could this Twitter-Yahoo deal be edging towards something much, much larger? We’ve all heard that Twitter’s goal is to be the “pulse of the planet”, could this be the key to achieving that goal? How will news agencies react? How will wire services, the AP, AFP, Reuters, all of them, survive? If more people are breaking news faster, and providing free, high-quality photos, videos and audio for these events, what justifies the high cost?

There’s a lot to think about here, all of it purely conjecture. But it’s fun to imagine. What do you think about the Twitter-Yahoo deal? Is it just another deal like they’ve got with Microsoft and Google? Is it on the verge of something better, like I’m theorizing?

]]> http://alexpriest.com/2010/02/25/twitter-on-the-wire/feed/ 0 http://alexpriest.com/2010/01/29/wanting-to-be-a-d-c-media-maker-and-overall-life-update/ http://alexpriest.com/2010/01/29/wanting-to-be-a-d-c-media-maker-and-overall-life-update/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:34:25 +0000 Alex Priest http://alexpriest.com/?p=528 Continue reading →]]> As evidenced by my conspicuous lack of updates this week, it’s been busy around here! I’ll do my best to catch up quickly and get back to writing a bit this weekend.

First, D.C. Media Makers! I attended my first event on Wednesday evening at NPR’s headquarters here in Washington, and it was fantastic! Got to see some very cool people I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks, and got to hear the amazing Jen Consalvo (@noreaster on Twitter) speak about her photography work, how to get into photography, and some tips on how to get better shots–even on an iPhone (for what it’s worth, she recommended CameraBag as excellent filter app, pretty cool!).

As a side note on DCMM, this semester I’ve obviously been trying to get out in the city and meet people, go to events, hear speakers, get involved in unconferences, etc. It’s already paying off, and in a big, big way. I’ve met some absolutely amazing people and developed some good friendships already. I feel like I can go to any event now and usually see someone I know. This city is huge, but the community is smaller than it seems, and everyone has been so incredibly welcoming! I can’t encourage my fellow students, and professionals, enough: get out there and take advantage of this amazing city. Meet some of the incredible professionals out here and say hi, get to know them. I know I’ve learned so much just in the past few weeks from these people, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thanks so much to all of you who’ve taught me, even indirectly, and I’m already looking forward to the next event!

Now, in a more general life update, things have been pretty crazy for me lately. School is piling on the work and the reading, and unfortunately that still has to be pretty much priority number one. However, there’s a couple cool things happening in my life:

• Soon I will be contributing my first post (of many, hopefully) to shamable.com. Seeking to be the no-B.S. guide to social media, it’s a new Web site being developed by some of the best people in the business. I’m seriously honored to be a part of it and I’m hoping I can make some valuable contributions from my perspective as a student here in D.C. during this social media revolution.
• I’m hard at work on my communications honors capstone. The first of two (I’ll do my business honors capstone next year), I’m really excited about the project and overjoyed that I have an absolutely amazing professor advising me with it. The project will ultimately be a social media case study in digital form, and will be appended to this Web site. Expect plenty of updates on that throughout the semester, especially towards the latter end of it.
• Internships, scholarships, awards, oh my! Yes indeed, it’s already that time and applications are littering my desk. This weekend I hope to make a fair bit of headway into scholarship applications for my senior year (gasp, can’t believe it’s almost here already) and internship applications for the summer. Speaking of which–do you know of any opportunities (preferably paid) for a young communications professional to work over the summer? Location not a factor, let me know! All tips are sincerely appreciated!
• It looks like it’s going to be a busy Saturday for me, as I’ve already got several things on the docket. In the morning I’m hoping to get down to the Washington Auto Show, especially since it’s garnered so much buzz this year. At 1:00pm I’ll be heading over to Politics & Prose bookstore here in northwest Washington for an event with one of my former professors, Robert Lehrman. He just had his book on speechwriting published (it’s amazing, by the way) and I’m eager to say hi again! Finally, Saturday night at 5pm the AU PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) will be holding a networking event at American University. If you’re a communications professional in the area and would be interested and coming to network with some eager public communications students, please let me know! We’d love to have you (and there will be free food).

And alas, I think that’s all I have time for this morning. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!

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