I just wrapped up day two of Personal Democracy Forum 2009. You can check out my Twitter feed for a play-by-play about what happened throughout the day.

I participated in a discussion about the role of online community hubs and the impact they have on state and local politics with The Uptake and E-Democracy. Check out these organizations and what they’re up to. Very cool stuff.

Hopefully I will have video of the panel by the time I return. Until then . . .

Arkie Walter Pincus of The Washington Post has a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review about what’s wrong with newspapers. He writes,

American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.

Just wanted to drop a quick thank you to all of the folks that have passed along blog posts, e-mails and tweets regarding my engagement to @jessicadean. We certainly appreciate it.

As many of you are aware I’m attending and speaking at Personal Democracy Forum 2009, the largest conference on technology and politics in the U.S. We just wrapped up day one which included a lot of compelling information from Joe Rospars (Obama ‘08), Mark McKinnon (McCain ‘08), Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?” and David Weinberger of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. I also sat in on two panels: one on social media and Iran (I urge you to take a look at this discussion from me and @reeves501 on the topic) and the future of community journalism. You can get a play-by-play by reading my Twitter feed.

Naturally, I was really looking forward to listening to Mr. Rospars talk about new media and the Obama campaign. I pulled several of his points into my Twitter feed, and what struck me the most was the clarity with which the Obama campaign understood and embraced the value of new media. From the very beginning they all realized (and by “all” Mr. Rospars indicated Mr. Obama and campaign manager David Plouffe) that new media wasn’t a replacement for anything and that it had to be tied to traditional camapign efforts. Essentially, Mr. Rospars advocated ways that new media could help bolster the work of the traditional side of politics. This was clearly a lesson learned from Howard Dean’s ill-fated 2004 presidential bid. As I like to say many times regarding online communications: the idea is to take good ideas and make them better.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg couldn’t attend at the last minute so he participated live via Skype and talked about a new initiative in New York called 311 which is intended to encourage civic participation. The program has a Web site, Twitter account, Skype account, phone hotline and e-mail address. Citizens are encouraged to report everything from trash that needs to be picked up to the state of city parks and schools to crime and more. What a great endeavor for a city of 8 million. I’d certainly like to see something like this in Little Rock.

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Kudos to readers for pointing out the muddiness with which my previous post on Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin in 2012 was written. Here’s some clarifying data to substantiate the possibility (and I emphasize potential) that a Palin-Huckabee/Huckabee-Palin ticket may have.

According to a Public Policy Poll released June 18, 2009 here’s how the potential Republican candidates fare in terms of favorability among conservatives.

Sarah Palin 72%
Mike Huckabee 68%
Newt Gingrich 61%
Mitt Romney 58%

Most notably, when compared to President Barack Obama, Mr. Huckabee’s favorability among conservatives grows to 76%, which exceeds that of Ms. Palin (74%). Mr. Romney, whom all the commenters and e-mailers love, is at 69%.

P.S. I’m not pushing a “Huckabee agenda.” (But I am laughing while I type that.)

The Think Tank heads to New York to participate in Personal Democracy Forum 2009. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will give the keynote address and Day 1 kicks off with a discussion of the Obama presidential campaign between Joe Rospars, Mr. Obama’s new media director, and Mark McKinnon, an advisor to John McCain and President George W. Bush. You can check out the Day 1 schedule here.

My discussion is on Day 2 and the topic is, “State/Local Online Politicking: How Community Hubs Can Change the Scene.” I’ll be joining Jason Barnett, co-founder and executive director of The Uptake and Steve Clift, founder and executive director of e-democracy.org.

The Uptake is a video-based media organization dedicated to training citizen journalists and publishing their work. Mr. Barnett and his team have garnered a ton of media attention for their coverage of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.

E-democracy.org is a non-profit aimed at building stronger communities and democracies through the power of information and communication technologies. Very cool stuff.

I’ll be on Twitter (@blakerutherford), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/blake.rutherford) or you can e-mail me (rutherford.blake@gmail.com) with any thoughts, ideas or questions. I’ll be updating regularly here as well.

At its height yesterday, 15% of all Twitter posts were about Michael Jackson according to Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Iran and swine flu never reached over 5%.

According to Reuters,

the social networking site Twitter came to a virtual standstill, flooded with visitors tweeting the news. Within moments of the first breaking news reports — indicating that Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest and had been rushed via ambulance to a Los Angeles hospital — both “#michaeljackson” and “Cardiac Arrest” emerged as two of the network’s highest-rated “trending topics.”

I couldn’t help but notice that news of Mr. Jackson’s death, which graced the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post, along with dominating the headlines on The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, TIME and The New Republic, didn’t make the front page of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times noticed, too. Commercial turtle harvesting did, however.

Blogger Curtis Coleman, Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2012, will speak today at the Central Arkansas Republican Club at 11:30 a.m. Super blogger Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report will be on hand with his flip cam, so Mr. Coleman better be on his best behavior. Remember what happened to state Sen. Kim Hendren with Mr. Tolbert showed up with his Flip Cam? Thought so.

An e-mail came in to The Think Tank yesterday indicating that Chris Matthews of MSNBC was talking about Mr. Coleman’s infamous southeast Arkansas comments. I can’t find the clip, but apparently he quoted Arkansas Democratic Party executive director Mariah Hatta on the air. Previously, Politico picked up Zack Stovall’s Arkansas News Bureau story.

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from MSNBC.

UPDATE II: Here’s the video.

UPDATE III: Oh man, blogger Curtis Coleman fell into Jason Tolbert’s Flip Cam trap and goes on camera to clarify his “you need a visa and a shot to travel to southeast Arkansas” comment. If I counted it right his explanation was more than 3 minutes, involved a listing of every city in “southeast” Arkansas and the number of friends Mr. Coleman has from there. All of this to say he didn’t mean it the way it was interpreted. Of course, if you watch the entire video you’ll note that he does say this:

I could have easily said that in southeast Arkansas about northwest Arkansas.

I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.

UPDATE IV: Ben Smith of Politico picks up on Mr. Tolbert’s interview on his own blog.

UPDATE V: And yes, as I suggested earlier, Mr. Coleman must be dumb. He says so himself in Mr. Tolbert’s interview:

It is a thousand more times more likely that I am stupid than I am racist.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

I’ve been getting bombarded with e-mails from interest groups about tomorrow’s vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Frances Beinecke, president of the National Resouces Defense Council, is blogging about the matter today. Former vice president Al Gore was rumored to be flying to Washington, D.C. to make a last minute plea to legislators to pass the bill, but has since decided to stay home. President Barack Obama articulated the amount of jobs the bill would create if passed.

You learned this from Top Gun, didn’t you? Well, blogger Curtis Coleman, who has announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2010, should have. His defense of his comments yesterday whereby he said that you needed to be vaccinated before traveling to southeast Arkansas is certainly a lesson in what not to do.

This from Zack Stovall at the Arkansas News Bureau,

But Coleman said he was trying to “accentuate or maybe even celebrate the enormous diversity we have in Arkansas.”

“I’ve done a lot of international traveling since the 70’s, and when going to a new and different land, you had to have a visa and shots. I only meant it to show the tremendous differences you see from one corner of the state to the other. I love Southeast Arkansas and meant it only as a metaphor,” he said.

Mr. Coleman needs to invite those former Mike Huckabee staffers he has on the payroll to meeting where he tests his metophors and his jokes. And then, after they bombard him tomatoes, he’ll learn to stick to his talking points.

I want to give a Think Tank shout-out to my friends Shannon Butler and Lizzie East who are two of the four women featured in the Arkansas Times‘ annual cover story about cool women in Arkansas doing very cool things.

For those of from Arkansas reading this blog you’ve likely encountered Ms. Butler a time or two. She’s the executive director of City Year Little Rock/North Little Rock and formerly served as the deputy director of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Shannon and I went to public school together both at Pulaski Heights and Central High. She’s quoted as saying,

I love being around young people who are excited about what they’re doing and believe in it. That keeps me going. Also, I think my history of growing up in public schools here has helped me to get really passionate about this work.

Right on.

The inimitable Lizzie East is the daughter of Cynthia and Bobby East of Little Rock. She’s a world traveler and dear friend of Think Tank Sister, which is how I came to know her. Her travels to Australia, Namibia, Zanzibar, Kenya, Spain and beyond have instilled not only a sense of duty but a belief in adventure. Talking to her about it results in both envy and admiration.

She says,

I was in Pamplona during the running of the bulls, and they said girls couldn’t run with the bulls. I said, ‘I’m going to run with the bulls.

Enough said.

Vanessa Norton and Genine Perez are also featured in the article. Thumbs all the way up.

This is state Sen. Kim Hendren’s view on becoming a United States Senator. According to Andew DeMillo of AP, Mr. Hendren said that he wants the Senate to debate whether the 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution which requires that senators be elected by popular vote should be repealed.

Mr. Hendren is quoted as saying,

Now they tell us that if you want to become a candidate, the first thing you need to do is go to Washington, pass the hat and see how much money you can get up there so they can get elected the senators they want in Arkansas.

What the . . .

I can’t say this is the dumbest thing Mr. Hendren’s said in his campaign that may not even be a campaign. (He’s a bit frustrated at the amount of paperwork one has to fill out to become a candidate.) But it’s pretty absurd.

Before the 17th amendment was passed senators were selected by state legislatures. Because, yes, that’s a spectacular idea.

Blogger Curtis Coleman announced a few months back, I think, for the U.S. Senate. Knowing that he has close ties to former governor Mike Huckabee, Mr. Coleman announced that some members of the Huckabee political family would be joining the campaign. I’m not sure what the hell for, but they’re doing it. Probably to help make that blog he’s running be all that it can be.

But Mr. Coleman isn’t helping himself. In a statement that has been widely circulated today, Mr. Coleman, speaking in Benton County, said this of Arkansas,

You go from here to southeast Arkansas, and you might as well get a visa and shots…

I’m not sure what inspired this You? You Lt. Weinberg moment for the people of southeast Arkansas, but Democrats were quick to respond. In a press release issued today the Democratic Party of Arkansas said,

What country is Mr. Coleman living in?  It appears that Mr. Coleman needs a lesson in civics, geography and possibly in manners.  Inferring that one part of our state is a disease-ridden foreign country is not only incorrect, but also insulting.  Mr. Coleman owes the people of southeast Arkansas an apology.

It’s train wreck day in Republican Party politics. Now, this statement may not have required such a fierce response from the Democratic Party; after all, this is Curtis Coleman. If he grabs 10% of the Republican primary vote, I’ll buy Jason Tolbert a new t-shirt. But the point is well made. Either Mr. Coleman’s sense of humor and comedic talents rival that of Dane Cook or he’s just plain dumb. No matter. He’s keeping it interesting which, in what will be a politically dull 2010, is fun for us.