Amy Goodman had a great interview a few days ago with Jane Mayer, author of The New Yorker’s The Insiders: How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin. . The transcript is up at AlterNet. Mayer traces the Palin promotion path–as the new Alaska Governor to the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. There’s a lot of interesting info in the article, but I wanted to pull out two main points.

1) The conservative media helped propel Palin into the national spotlight and basically land the V-P position. They were able to do this because they a) have a successful echochamber and b) their influence is so strong in the beltway, DC circles–the politicos listen to them. This is a stark contrast with the innerworkings and influence of the progressive media.

It all started out with the heads of the conservative media meeting Sarah in her own home in a sort of skewed version of “Who’s coming to lunch?”

The contingent featured three of The Weekly Standard ’s top writers: William Kristol, the magazine’s Washington-based editor, who is also an Op-Ed columnist for the Times and a regular commentator on “Fox News Sunday”; Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor and the co-host of “The Beltway Boys,” a political talk show on Fox News; and Michael Gerson, the former chief speechwriter for President Bush and a Washington Post columnist.

This got the ball rolling and when the contingent headed back to D.C., the Palin praise train started rolling out of the station. Mayer notes that many of the lunch guests had become full blown cheerleaders.

The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

The next day, however, Kristol was still talking about Palin on Fox. “She could be both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President,” he said. “She’s young, energetic.”

But as Mayer noted in her article, by February 2008 the “the chorus of conservative pundits for Palin was loud enough for the mainstream media to take note. Chris Cillizza, reporting for the Web site of the Washington Post, interviewed Palin and asked her if she’d accept an offer to be McCain’s running mate.” Palin demurred at the time, but her star was on the rise. During the V-P selection process, McCain REALLY wanted his good buddy Joe Lieberman, but his political operatives gave him the big “talk to the hand,” noting Joe (the Senator) was too liberal on domestic issues and sent him in the direction of a little-known, arch conservative, charming woman from Alaska. And the rest is history.

I find this fascinating for a few reasons. One, I don’t know of any traditional progressive media outlets or individuals who from the ground up, will actively promote and then crown potential candidates in such a way. The progressive media speculates, bets and discusses to death the pros and cons of various candidate options. When they feel ready (and if they are able), they will endorse. The progressive blogosphere has actually started to fill this gap by actively promoting and raising funds for candidates across the country, but the influence beyond the chorus is unclear.

When you look at the sphere of influence that the conservative publications have within their own party and the mainstream media, it makes you stop for a second to ponder the potential. But maybe that’s the corrupting influence of power overtaking me. The most important take away for me is that the conservative media has made sure that the beltway establishment doesn’t ignore them (or can’t, even if they want to.) The progressive media is starting to move in that direction, but still has a long way to go to have the same level of influence.

2) The other major point of this article that really struck me was the efforts by one man–Adam Brickley and where he came from. Mayer tells Goodman that Brickley was one of the main individuals that lifted Palin up above the masses.

Brickley, who is just out of college, and he is a staunch conservative, he’s looking for somebody who could add some pep to the Republican ticket, and he particularly is worried about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as, you know, a possible combination. So, anyway, he’s looking for a female. And he starts with Wikipedia, and he just looks for all the females in the Republican Party. And he told — I interviewed him — he says at some point, you know, he couldn’t find anybody good, and then he thinks, oh, what about that lady that just got elected in Alaska? So he looks up things about Sarah Palin and sees that she’s considered kind of this rising star.

And so, he starts a blog that’s called Sarah Palin for Vice President Blog. And it starts pushing Palin and gets picked up by many other conservative blogs and then finally works its way into kind of conservative radio, Rush Limbaugh, and the American Spectator, conservative magazines. So there’s this sort of growing groundswell.

Ok-great. We’ve heard the story of the lone ranger become a powerful powerbroker in the blogosphere before. And we love it. But I find this nugget much more interesting.

Mayer says that Brickley has “gone to the Leadership Institute, which is an organization that Morton Blackwell, an evangelical Christian, founded a couple decades ago to train sort of cadres of the right wing…. He’s also received scholarships from various right-wing organizations. He currently is living in a dormitory that’s part of the Heritage Foundation here in Washington, which is another big right-wing think tank. You know, he’s been trained in how to kind of help the conservative movement and how to become part of it. So, he’s pushing Palin, and his blog gets a lot of traffic. And so, there’s kind of this nexus of these forces coming together, both of which are really Washington forces that are pushing Palin.”

The training of young, media savvy progressive political activists is in full swing, but we are still CLEARLY far behind them in the active caring and feeding of them. The conservatives give their young leaders a career path. We give them fits and starts. This is not a new or brilliant notion, it’s just one I wanted to reinforce.

All in all–I’m not interested in the progressive media becoming king or queen makers, but I am interested in determining the means and infrastructure for raising its influence among the individuals and groups that are. What are the first steps? It would actually be interesting to survey D.C. insiders to see what progressive media they consume and why. Who wants to work with me on that???

Via Tim Karr of Free Press re. results from their Rate the Debates tool:

49% of those who said they plan to vote for Obama watched the debate on either MSNBC (26%) or PBS (23%).

In contrast, more than 53% of the people who said they plan to vote for McCain watched the debate on Fox News Channel.

Tags: election

We thought we’d reanimate the corpse of the buildtheecho twitter account for tonight’s historic, sure-to-be FUBAR debate. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/buildtheechoor watch Current’s Hack the Debate to see if our tweets make it onto the air.

Robert Greenwald and the crew at Brave New Films released a new short video today, “Fox Attacks-Michelle Obama.” It’s got some real cringe-inducing moments from those oh-so-lovely Fauxers–Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, etc…

Watch the video and sign the petition. If you have a digg account, “digg it,” as well. BNF has been one of the most successful track records in virally spreading their video clips around (also doesn’t hurt that they partner with the likes of Huffington Post, MoveOn and AlterNet to raise awareness of their productions.)

Remember this period during the 2004 campaigns? John Kerry was struggling to pick a running mate that would bolster his low polling numbers, even as Fahrenheit 9/11 was breaking box office records. Democratic representatives were asking the U.N. to send observers to monitor U.S. elections. Even though the case against the Republicans was crystal clear, electoral prospects were grim.

Now? Bush’s approval rating is at an all time low according to a recent L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll: 23 percent. Obama’s approval rating in the U.S. is topped only by his popularity overseas. Progressives should be psyched, right? Mission accomplished.

Look out.

With the interminable primaries over, now is the time for progressive outlets and commentators to really get down to business. They need to be watching not only for conservative dirty tricks, but keeping a close eye on candidate trianguations. As Glenn Greenwald writes today:

One of the primary reasons that blogs emerged over the last seven years was as a reaction to, an attempt to battle against, exactly this narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced — that it is the duty of every Democrat to repudiate and attack their own base; that the truly pernicious elements are on the “Far Left”, whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation; that “Strength” in National Security is determined by agreement with GOP policies, which is where “the Center” is found; that Seriousness is demonstrated by contempt for the liberal masses; that every Democrat must apologize for any statement over which Republicans feign offense.

Plenty of Beltway institutions already existed for the purpose of cheering on any and all Democrats no matter what they do. If that’s all that blogs are supposed to do, then there is no need for them. From the beginning, blogs have been devoted to opposing Democratic complicity and capitulation — to the lack of Democratic responsiveness to their supporters — every bit as much as opposing GOP corruption and media malfeasance. That role is at least as important as the others.

Greenwald’s impulses are spot-on, but of course, bloggers aren’t the only ones capable of holding Democrats’ feet to the fire. A wide range of progressive media-makers—from journalists to filmmakers to Twitterers and beyond—are now connected to one another through formal and informal social networks, which allow for rapid response like never before. There’s no reason to fetishize one platform over another when we’re faced with such creative possibilities. How will we use them to make this election year different?

Tags: election

So I’ve been a little slow on the blogging the last week and a half and that’s for a couple reasons.
1) I have carpal tunnel and tendonitis in my left wrist. Very painful and hard to type.
2) Jess and I were prepping for a presentation at the academic National Conference for Media Reform pre-conference where we presented our theories and latest examples from our book. (Happy to share if you want. We’re also figuring out how to get it on slide share.)
3) I was also prepping for my moderation of the NCMR panel, “How the Independent Media Makes Change.” In short, the panel rocked. (And I don’t usually say that about panels.) Panelists included Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, Jeff Morely of the Center for Independent Media and Daisy Hernandez of ColorLines. I’m going to be posting video and commentary on that asap. (I’m struggling through learning the new Imovie8 and having problems importing. Ah, technology.)

But most of all, I and the rest of The Media Consortium team were consumed by preparations for the launch of Live From Main Street. I could tell you all about it, but let me just repeat snippets of what LFMS host Laura Flanders wrote at the Huffington Post.

A year ago, a group of independent media professionals looked ahead to the 2008 election season. Anticipating the same stump speech in 50 states and the same old reporting to go along with it, they wondered, ‘what if, instead of the candidates’ horse-race, we covered goings-on around the track?’ The project we came up with together is Live from Main Street: a series of live events, in five states in five months, bringing audiences the local perspective on critical national issues.

On June 8, in Minneapolis, Live From Main Street kicked off in the Twin Cities. Locals weren’t just backdrop for a report a national story: they were the main event. On stage — discussing the election, organizing, media and more, were organizers, journalists, artists — sharing their accounts of the free speech challenges their community’s facing in the run-up to the Republican National Convention. And it wasn’t all bad news. Alongside the grim reports of permits denied and protests squashed, we heard the latest word on “unconventional” convention plans — “our roving reporters will be mounted on bicycles connected by GPS” Marlina Gonzales of the UnConvention told Live From Main Street. “Today’s Main Street is a new Main Street” said Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice. Politicians make old assumptions at their peril, she added. It’s not just about bias, it’s about getting the story wrong.

Over the next five months, Live From Main Street will be hosting town-hall type discussions about critical issues in Miami, Denver, Columbus and Seattle. We want to take the agenda-setting out of the hands candidates’ consultants — and put an ear to the voters themselves. In Minneapolis, the focus was on civil liberties and the need for media diversity. In Miami in July, the attention will shift to cities and sustainable development. In Columbus, the topic’s voting; in Seattle, national security from a female point of view. We’ve heard from the politiicans. At the end of the election season, Live From Main Street hopes to have heard– and amplified what voters mean by that catchword “change.”

The first LFMS was an amazing success–with a raucous crowd of 450 people. But instead of me telling you about it: let’s just watch, shall we?

Welcome to Live From Main Street

Amy Goodman on Independent Media

Civil Liberties in the Twin Cities Pre-RNC

Live From Main Street: What the nation can learn from Minnesota

So I’m going to expand the idea “new directions in progressive media” (our tag line above) to implicitly include, “bad directions for the right wing media.” Because a) it’s fun! and b) it’s important to see where the right wing media is cracking.

In light of this, I’m going to give Chris Matthews a virtual high five (never thought I’d do that!) for calling out Kevin James, a crazy right wing radio host on yesterday’s edition of Hardball.  BTW–when I asked myself “just who is this Kevin James?” Wikipedia had already been updated with the incident.  Love it! 

I first saw the video on Talking Points Memo yesterday, and as one poster on The Houston Chronicle’s citizen journalism/member blog noted today:

In a very funny, yet sad exchange on Hardball yesterday, host Chris Matthews humiliated right wingnut radio jabber Kevin James over the “appeasement” uproar stupidly started by GWB in Israel yesterday.  This guy looks about 16 years old and is like a giant Chatty Kathy – just pull the string and he repeats the same talking points in order ad infinitum.  Chris couldn’t control the conversation, or this guy’s mouth, so he tried to quizz him on appeasement by Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Britain in the ’30s, and the Munich Agreement where Britain ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.  This guy didn’t even know who Chamberlain was, how he got tagged with the appeaser label, or what he did.After making a complete fool of himself, Kevin just started repeating “appeasement; faster and faster linking the accusation to Obama.

But you know what? Words can not do justice. Just watch the video. Enjoy.

Micah Sifry of TechPresident tracked a Hillary Clinton for president support letter posted by Robin Morgan on the Women’s Media Center site.
Sifry says, “You know when something is spreading online when your friends ask you about it spontaneously.”

They started with the Iowa primary and have been going strong since. Brave New Films and The Young Turks are teaming up to bring us their unique brand of election coverage. I caught a bit of their show during the Iowa primary and was impressed not only with the cool technology (streaming video, community blogging) but that these two have created a new partnership that continues to leverages the resources that each media outlet offers and comes up with an interesting model for election coverage. And they are funny.

You should check it out. And not just cause I think Cenk rocks.

Here’s the note from BNF.

Hello friends,
Brave New Films and The Young Turks are back with all night coverage of Super Tuesday election returns. We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response to our coverage of South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa, and we’re going all out tonight to bring you the smartest, most in-depth and exciting progressive coverage anywhere.

You will get the inside scoop from movement all-stars like Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Sherrod Brown, DNC Chair Howard Dean, The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, MoveOn.org’s Eli Pariser, and legendary organizer Dolores Huerta.

Our revolutionary new format completely bypasses the gatekeepers in the corporate media, and unlike TV, you can watch it at work (or at least those of us with desk jobs), in any country, and without commercial interruptions. We’ll have the most up-to-date returns, and a team of folks answering your questions and explaining the ins and outs of how this crazy democracy works. And you can participate live, by sending in tips, commenting and voting in instant polls.

WHAT: Super Tuesday with Brave New Films and the Young Turks, hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz.
WHEN: Tonight 6pm-1am, pre-game liveblog starts at 4pm.
WHERE: http://bravenewfilms.org/network/5-super-tuesday?utm_source=rgemail
PRICE: At Brave New Films.. you set the price!

SCHEDULE
4:00 Liveblog pre-game show starts
6:00 Video starts, Senator Sherrod Brown
6:20 Senator Ted Kennedy
7:10 Anna Burger, SEIU
7:30 Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
7:40 Dolores Huerta
7:50 Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood
8:10 Melody Barnes, CAP Action Fund
8:50 Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake
9:00 Howard Dean, DNC
9:40 Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org
10:00 Robert Greenwald joins to co-host
10:00 Alexandra Acker, Young Democrats
10:10 Joe Conason, Salon.com
10:20 Trailer World Premiere, This Brave Nation
10:30 Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
11:00 Wes Clark Jr. joins to co-host
11:30 Todd Beeton, MyDD
11:40 Keith Boykin/Malia Lazu, Daily Voice
12:00 Joan McCarter, Daily KOS
12:20 Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post