Quick Hits — September 2, 2008

Back to work! But first, a few stories you might not want to miss.

• Daily Kos (indirectly) set off Palin pregnancy story, and Rightie bloggers Are Not Pleased.
• MySpace Page Provide Tabloids With Fodder On Palin Daughter’s Beau.
• Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It.
• Historic Obama Speech Sets Internet on Fire, while Obama’s Text Prospecting Turned Up Rocky Mountain Gold.
• Republicans Push Online Hurricane Relief At Convention, and Obama uses his email list for Hurricane relief.
• Despite Rumors, Republican VP Candidate Is No Hacker.
• Will.I.Am: From Online Video To Convention Floor.
• McCainSpace: Too Little Too Late.
• More Bloggers, Please (at the DNC).
• Safer Driving Due to Web 2.0? Dissecting an online advocacy campaign.
• Prioritizing Websites vs. Email vs. Online Outreach.
• Google’s ad team? Not so shy about spreading the word. And, McCain’s folks may have listened (via TechRepublican). But, Online ads might not sway US voters.
• McCain Raises $4.5 Million Online in 24 Hours After Palin Pick, part of a $47 million August haul.
• Cyberwar fears grow after Georgia websites attacked. And you may be an involuntary draftee: Facebook application turns users into attackers.
• How “speculating now trumps reporting” in modern political news coverage: “Think about where journalism is heading when an entire industry knowingly adopts a false narrative and pushes it for days simply because it likes it; because it gives journalists a good storyline…It was a case of too many journalists embracing manufactured stories in order to fill up airtime.”
• Press Gets to Cut: When the People’s Media Meets Privilege.
• Associated Press Reporter Ron Fournier is receiving so much fire from liberal bloggers/online activist groups that the AP sent employees talking points defending him. Which of course leaked.
• Online-Only News Sources Filling The Gaps.
• Click by click, presidential campaigns are watching you online. A little behavioral targeting, anyone?
• Michael Kinsley lays out the REAL problem with Palin: she destroys a potentially powerful Republican message (and with it a lot of people’s credibility?).

  “How could anyone truly believe that Barack Obama’s background and job history are inadequate experience for a president and simultaneously believe that Sarah Palin’s background and job history are perfectly adequate? It’s possible to believe one or the other. But both? Simply not possible. John McCain has been–what’s the word?–lying. And so have all the pundits who rushed to defend McCain’s choice.

  “This is especially damning to McCain because his case for himself (besides not being Barack Obama, a standard under which many of us might qualify) has rested on his honor and integrity. The North Vietnamese couldn’t break him, and neither could the Brahmins of his own party in the Senate. He was a maverick who always told it straight. So much for that.”

– cpd