Last Saturday, Sen. Barack Obama did a face-to-face video interview with Erin Kotecki-Vest, an editor from BlogHer, responding to questions on a range of issues from female bloggers. Obama is the first to respond to repeated invitations that have been extended to all of the candidates in the past year.
(NOTE: This information has been clarified since it was originally posted:) Established in 2005, BlogHer is a non-partisan online community. It includes its own ad network of 1800 blogs (which together get 9 million unique visitors a month), and lists more than 14,500 blogs by women in its categorized blog directories. As a contributing editor for BlogHer and a member of its politics team, I had a behind-the-scenes view of the process leading up to Saturday’s interview.
The process of generating the questions and conducting the interview reflect one vision of an emerging civic media — a term coined by folks at MIT for what has been variously called citizen journalism, public journalism, representative journalism, or participatory journalism. Propelled by thinkers such as Jay Rosen, Jan Schaffer, Leonard Witt and many others, the goal of civic media is to empower citizens with tools for democratic participation.
There are a few things about BlogHer’s process for setting up the Obama interview that other news organizations might find noteworthy:
- Our questions to the candidates came from BlogHer’s August, 2007 Voter Manifesto, which was the product of discussions that began in focus groups during BlogHer’s 2007 conference and continued online. Thus, the questions weren’t driven by the campaigns or the news media, but by citizens.
- Avoiding surrogates. After seeking feedback from the community, BlogHer made an important decision in Dec. 2007 to reject offers from the Romney and Obama campaigns for interviews with the candidates’ wives.
- Journalists were involved. While the questions came from people who may or might not have been journalists, people with professional journalism and political campaign experience were involved in managing the process. I especially saw the value of this last week during the back-channel discussions within the political team when it came to understanding how to work most constructively with the Obama campaign. For example, our producer and interviewer, Erin Kotecki-Vest, is an award winning TV veteran She handled the logistical, journalistic and technical challenges that can sabotage any field reporting assignment with an assurance that only experience can provide.
- Larger strategy. BlogHer’s Voter Manifesto project is part of a larger voter education project that includes a widget-based Guide to Political Bloggers, as well as discussions where community members research and debate candidates’ positions on issues ranging from the mortgage crisis to reproductive health.
…Granted, other campaigns are finding ways to include bloggers in their media events. Sen. John McCain held a conference call last week with bloggers, for example. However, BlogHer’s effort at encouraging voter education and participation represents a comprehensive and sustained approach to election coverage that is well worth watching.
