In that strange way that seemingly unrelated items in life can weave themselves together, Evelyn Waugh, Joe Trippi, and one of our clients got me thinking this week about how the Internet presents information to people around the world and how it has lowered the barrier of entry to the decision-making class.
First, I spent Sunday afternoon with some former Dean staffers and other D.C. politicos at a party for Joe Trippi’s new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He spoke at some length about the power of the grassroots Internet campaign that the campaign ran, and one of the main messages of his well-written book was how the Internet allowed a broader participation in politics than ever before. (I highly recommend the book for its retelling of the campaign and Joe’s expansive thoughts on the future of the Internet, and make sure to look for me, Nicco, Michael Silberman, and Stephanie Schriock in the index.)
Also this weekend, I was reading Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop, which focuses on fictional British war correspondents during the days of yellow-journalism. They rolled into a country without knowing anything, made their sensationalist stories up out of whole cloth, declared victory and went home:
“Why, once [Wenlock Jakes, the highest paid journalist in the U.S.] went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window--you know. Well they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers.”
It’s incredible to think that even just a hundred years ago – even just in our grandparent’s lifetime, there wasn’t a way for people independently to verify the information they were receiving through the media and from the government. But now, with the Internet, everyone can be a decision maker. The amazing thing we learned on the campaign about the Internet is the way that empowers people around the country by providing them the information and the resources to form their own opinions. You can read newspapers from around the world from the comfort of a Starbucks and read blogs from soldiers and reporters in Iraq.
We’ve finally arrived at a time where anyone with a computer and a telephone line can access (most of) the same information that the world’s decision-makers can—and, since people can, they don’t see any reason why they should be cut out of the decision-making process. I spoke about something similar in a Vermont Public Radio commentary I did at the end of the campaign:
Last Sunday, I met with John Sykes, one of the four original founders of the Dean online community, for lunch near his home in New Hampshire. We talked about the campaign, and he explained that despite his frustrations and disappointments, he was going to stay involved in politics and community service. As we stood up to go, he paused. He said, "You know, it may have just been a campaign slogan, but I always felt that I really did have the power."
And all of that is a round-about way of getting to the third part of my woven thoughts here: the launch of one of Echoditto’s latest projects, This is Rumor Control, a blog about national security and foreign policy by people who actually know what they’re talking about.
The people who put this together travel the regions of the world that make news and don’t feel that our mainstream press (or our government, for that matter) is doing a particularly good job about reporting what’s going and the very precarious position that the U.S. is in right now internationally. Thus, they’re offering their own thoughts and reportage, and allowing you to make your own opinions. Read away. The Internet has given us the keys to the world.
