I've been on the road since Thursday, first at a working meeting of the National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR), where I moderated a panel on the same topic, and today in Houston at a miniconference at the Baker Institute on the internet and politics. A couple of times over the last two days, I managed to pull out the N95 and shot a couple of fun, Qik videos with some of the folks I bumped into at NCMR. Check out Jane Hamsher, Susan Crawford, Robert Greenwald, Deanna Zandt, Craig Newmark and Tom Steinberg.

The Web on the Candidates

A commenter on Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine says that "there's a big elephant in the room on viral video for politics," which is that as more political advertising (and eyeballs) end up on YouTube, local broadcast stations will lose their most cherished sources of funding, similar to the way Craigslist has challenged newspapers' classified ads model.  The dominant advertising mode is still TV, Jarvis writes, but it won't be that way forever: "All political advertising won’t migrate online yet because the audience on broadcast is bigger and campaigns are inherently conservative. But there will be a point of no return."   

James Kotecki's new video takes a look at the most popular videos on YouTube that feature politicians doing or saying something stupid.  He isn't sure that, in the end, these assorted "macaca" moments will ultimately affect the race, since the more we record candidates' every move, the more likely they'll get caught making gaffes, and we'll become used to the idea that candidates make mistakes.  Kotecki ends with a sorta-funny montage of his own "gaffes."