"So what is spreadable media good for?

* To generate active commitment from the audience,
* To empower them and make them an integral part of your product's success,
* To benefit from online word-of-mouth
* To reach niche, highly interconnected audiences,
* but most of all, to communicate with audiences where they already are, and in a way that they value."

Interesting: "With the Post out of the picture, said the economists, “its absence appears to have made local elections less competitive along several dimensions: incumbent advantage, voter turnout and the number of candidates for office.”

" I believe groups like Organizing for America and Unity '09 (the liberal-backed group that includes MoveOn.org Politico's Ben Smith writes about here ) help mobilize partisan Democrats, but also create the kind of political noise necessary to break through the din of other cultural and media messages — a crtical tactic in reaching certain electoral blocs.

Less politically engaged Americans tend to hear the "loudest voice in the cafeteria." These efforts by liberal organizations and Democrats help project the White House agenda to this often hard to reach, but key constituency."

"…advancing a connected, engaged citizenry requires more than acknowledging the rise of online media. Here is one tradition that Obama could start: invite new and independent voices into the East Room by pledging to take a citizen-generated question at every prime-time press conference.

To put this idea into action–and give the busy White House something tangible to work with–The Nation is teaming up with a broad coalition of new and traditional media, including the Washington Times and the Personal Democracy Forum, to begin gathering questions from you, the public. "

"To some extent, one's position in the media ecosystem — mainstream or activist or partisan — leads to a real change in worldview. On the JList, the movement activists will often sharply criticize the reporters, and the reporters fire back. Yet these arguments are heated precisely because there is an assumption that everyone is fundamentally on the same side, namely that of intelligence and decency. You might think that veterans of left-of-center outlets, like the aforementioned outspoken progressive, might share the activist sense of outrage against conventions of objectivity. Generally speaking, that's not true. Rather, the veterans take on the views of their older colleagues. Somewhere there is an interesting lesson in the power of institutions, and how they reproduce sensibilities."