I have never seen a "living diary" of a presidency before. But after observing Politico44 for awhile, I see that it is a fair attempt but it's very brief. If you are looking for a quick "overview" of some highlights throughout President Obama and his administration's day, this may be a resource.
My impression of a 'diary' is a personal log and analysis of person's day-to-day life. I see that the Obama Presidency takes on this personification. And the result is pretty text heavy and not enough video!
To speculate on what it TAKES to run this site, I would gather, that the Politico staff assigned people to update the sections. The Whiteboard section is clearly the DOMINANT feature that provides highlights throughout the day. So here are my thoughts:
1. Someone must be providing these updates on the WhiteBoard almost EVERY hour.
2. Someone or a machine automatically updates the "schedule" of the President and VP daily.
3. Someone looks at other political stories online and selects the ones to be highlighted on Politico44. I saw yesterday, there were article from The Washington Post and AP linked to the site.
4. Another part of the news site is devoted to VIDEO. Politco44 provides this VIDEO link along with a highlighted clip. I looked at the video section and really liked the short clip of Colbert and President Obama talking. Colbert gets his head shaved!
5. I appreciate the "W.H. Hopes You Don't See" section. It actually makes me want to read those posts more.
6. I don't like how I don't see a clear coherent template. The site actually builds more postings or reduces postings according to the schedule of the day. This flexibility is good. But who is making the call on what is going to be pushed more ABOVE on the site?
7. There are some consistent authors: Carol E. Lee. Others are Politico bloggers: Ben Smith.
8. So, I am seeing that other parts of Politico.com gets compiled and excerpted to make up a good portion of Politico44.
9. I am taking a guess: There are about 2 Politico staffers devoted full-time to this site.
What do you think???
Elizabeth,
ReplyDelete2 full-time employees? Come on, there must be at least 8-10! On my blog I said 40 and, well, a little exaggerated. I think, going back and forth between the WH, Politico and the Hill takes more than just 2 staffers.
I voted for 10 :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Alan and Nafisa! I think if they can muster 10 people, then they must have GREAT resources in the newsroom. Given our economic climate...I took a more pessimistic estimation. LOL.
ReplyDelete1.Good ideas, but scattered. How do you connect the three distinct parts? Videos/spoons/social networking?
ReplyDelete2.Instructional cooking videos are hard to pull off. Especially for user generated content because of lighting etc. Producing all those spoons will be difficult-- who will pay for them? Will they be donated? Shipping and hand.? Will people want to give their addresses out to you so you can send them the spoons?
3. Ads on the videos would bring in money to pay for spoons and maybe sell logos on the spoons to companies to pay for the spoons. If users sign up to get spoons try to get them to opt in for email to try to sell email lists or solicit money that way or get advertisers or sell ads on emails that way.
Katy, Alan and Erich
ReplyDelete