Like it or not, it’s standard practice for campaigns — like nearly any buyer of paid TV — to pay commissions of 10% – 15% to those who place their TV advertisements. The buying function is frequently linked to the process of formulating the campaign’s message (including speeches, direct mail pieces, and the like) and making the ads, such that … Read more
Don’t miss a whole host of good takes on the meaning of the Internet and the Presidential primary, post-Iowa-and-NH: several terrific days’ worth of Dave Winer looking hard at what we should — and shouldn’t — take away from the Dean campaign’s stumble (too many entries to cite to specifically, so just cruise through the … Read more
As a former campaign operative, I’ve suffered the fickleness of polling data. It can feel like being on a roller-coaster without a reliable seat-belt. But the current crop of polls of New Hampshire voters strike me as particularly strange. Leave aside other polls showing even larger differences, but not with a tracking nature to them. How is … Read more
The first sustained national blogradio conversation, on weblogs and the Presidential campaign, a Lydon-McGrath-Stoller-et al. production.
It’s everywhere: Robert Boynton’s New York Times magazine piece (“The Tyranny of Copyright?”), running this weekend, is online already. The increasingly prevalent analogy comparing the free culture/copy left movement and the environmental movement resonates.
Stanford CIS’s Lauren Gelman says much of what I’ve been thinking about the Net and political campaigns in her excellent piece at FindLaw. And better than I could, at that.
Regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign this year, it would be a terrible mistake — a deep misreading of the situation — to assert that the internet did not come of age in political campaigns during this cycle. Witness non-Howard Dean candidate John Kerry’s statement on fundraising today: “We’re doing spectacularly, we raised an extraordinary … Read more
On this frosty-yet-exciting post-Iowa, pre-NH morning, I’ll be interested to see how the campaigns fire up their internet teams to capitalize on/mitigate the harm of the big surprise in Iowa last night. (I’ve gotten an in-box full of celebratory Kerry campaign messages (“Iowa’s ‘comeback kid’”) already). Meanwhile, Foster’s Daily Democrat had a piece on weblogs last Sunday, … Read more
An unforgettable photo — as well as commentary — from Ethan Zuckerman in Ghana. There’s also a picture of Bernard Woma, about whom Ethan told us in Digital Democracy class. Andrew responds with a picture of Ethan raising the roof. Funny guys. Among other things, they’re in Accra to promote BlogAfrica.
An “authentic plea for commentary” from one of the coolest thinkers (and, presumably, teachers) in this space. Prof. Crawford’s planning out a syllabus for an Internet Law course and exploring new teaching tools for making it interesting. Update: Ernest Miller replies in depth to Prof. Crawford. And her final syllabus is here.