He was convincing in a smarmy, student council sort of way. One got Turns out Tobin had the good fortune to run into Steve outside an ice Turns out Tobin also had the good sense to listen to Steve, and eventually Early results are mixed. The site (The Dowbrigade will have a separate post on this topic at some point However, if Mr. Tobin expected unqualified kudos for courageously entering As we pointed out at the meeting, since the media frenzy of last fall’s We told Mr. Tobin on Thursday that if he wanted a "real" blog, one that What we didn’t say, but fervently believe, is that any authentic, worthwhile We know. We have tried. Since well before the elections last year one The only way to do it is to convince them of the truth – that the political Before the invention of television, and the rise of mass media, no one But today that is a flawed and doomed strategy. The public has The closest we have seen was the instructional case of the daring Dr. The younger generation especially, and as usual, have highly developed Perhaps, rather than getting politicians to Eventually, someone will create a tidal wave in the new media of sufficient Here are the notes The much anticipated main attraction at last Thursday’s meeting of the Berkman denizens whom the lovely Norma Yvonne refers to as "our cult" was a guest appearance by Boston City Council member John Tobin, an earnest, dyed-in-the-wool old-school political animal. … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/jtobin.jpg\")
The
\n much anticipated main attraction at last Thursday’s
\n meeting<\/a> of the Berkman
\n denizens whom the lovely Norma Yvonne refers to
\n as "our cult" was a guest appearance by Boston City Council
\n member John Tobin<\/a>,
\n an earnest, dyed-in-the-wool old-school political animal. He
\n opened by telling us of growing up in a neighborhood where every other
\n person was an elected official and the other half were unsuccessful political
\n candidates. <\/p>\n
\n the impression that he really liked getting out among his constituents
\n and finding out what their concerns are, in an attempt to do something
\n about them, within the system and its limitations. He found his way to
\n the Blogger’s Cabal thanks to inveterate group member and poster boy for
\n Video Blogging, Steve Garfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n cream parlor<\/a>
\nin Jamaica Plain, part of his City Council district. After introducing himself,
\nSteve went into his heartfelt spiel about how a good blog can transform an
\nidea, or a project, or a politician, making them accessible and understandable
\nto a whole new segment of the population. <\/p>\n
\n hire him to set up and maintain a blog, prominently featuring Steve’s
\n prodigious video blogging talent.<\/p>\n
\n itself <\/a>is clean and well designed.
\n It features useful information for constituents as well as promoting
\n the activities of Mr. Tobin himself. Steve’s videos are, as usual, professional
\n and inventive, and show Mr. Tobin in some off-the-record and behind-the-scenes
\n moments to do convey a sense if intimacy and personal connection. There
\n are also intriguing links to an initiative Mr. Tobin is involved with
\n to bring city-wide Wi-fi connectivity to Boston. For this alone he deserves
\n support.<\/p>\n
\n this weekend, and will backlink to this when we do.)<\/p>\n
\n the blogging arena, he came to the wrong place.
\nThe most important thing we personally noticed absent from his blog, and it’s
\nparent
\nsite,
\nis any trace of Mr. Tobin’s own personal voice.<\/p>\n
\n presidential election, every Tom Dick and Harriet
\nof an elected official, and scads of wannabees, have established blogs. Almost
\nwithout exception, they simply went out and hired a blogger or other techno-weenie
\nor drafted a teenaged relative to actually write the damn thing. <\/p>\n
\n would connect with our<\/em> constituents, he needed to invest
\n something of himsel<\/em>f, and take the time to write regularly, not
\n delegate or dictate. And not just stale PR pap, we want
\nreal insights into who he is, what it is like to be a Boston City Councilor,
\nthe pressures he is under, the difficulty of the decisions he has to make, how
\nhe goes about balancing legal, political and moral priorities. Like all bloggers,
\nletting his readers, in this case his constituents, get to know him as a person.
\nScary stuff. <\/p>\n
\n blogging involves some real element of risk. It can’t be faked, or copied,
\n or mailed in. The blogging audience is highly discriminating. Anything
\n that is ghost-written, that is boilerplate, that is safe and bland, will
\n wither
\n on the blogging
\n vine. Any
\n good blogging, maybe any good writing, involves taking real personal risks,
\n exposing
\nat least a part of the soul. Blogging is not for sissies, or hypocrites. On
\nthe other hand, it
\nis
\nhard
\nto
\nconvince a politician to take risks, especially with anything related to their
\npublic
\nimage. Real blogging for pols is not an easy sell.<\/p>\n
\n of the ongoing group goals among the Berman
\n bloggers<\/a> was to offer, entice, facilitate
\n and
\n support
\n politicians
\n who wanted to blog. As far as we can tell, Steve recruiting John was
\n the first real fruit this effort has borne. We personally have tried
\n to convince three pols (2 sitting and one candidate), to take the plunge.
\n After we
\n gave our impassioned rant on the impact and potential of the new media
\n movement, we noticed little besides the normal crude, cunning calculus
\n as they processed the stereotypical calculation – how could this help
\n me?<\/p>\n
\n landscape has changed, is changing, and that the old recipes won’t work
\n anymore. For decades, centuries, politicians survived by maintaining very
\n separate public and private personalities. Outside of a handful of personal
\n aides and regular contacts, no one in the country actually saw the elected
\n officials, other than at highly staged campaign rallies at election time.<\/p>\n
\n knew what their leaders even looked like, much less how they acted, walked,
\n ruminated, relaxed, ate, reacted to attack, behaved when sick, on little
\n sleep, or when surprised or angry. Before CSPAN and paparazzi and TV
\n "news" magazines and doggedly persistent blogs, a politician was wise
\n to present a public persona markedly different than the private man.<\/p>\n
\n too much access. The coverage in constant, intuitive, all consuming.
\n The result is that people perceive the underlying falseness of the dual-persona
\n approach, and as a result distrust all politicians. The political class
\n can no longer get away with this deep duplicity as a way of life. People
\n are on to them. Of course, the insult and indignation they feel is thus
\n far unfocused, because as of today there are no alternatives.<\/p>\n
\n Dean, who really seemed to be speaking from the heart and letting us
\n all in on what he really thought. And we all know how savagely
\n he was eviscerated by the mainstream media when they realized that he
\n really
\n did believe all that stuff and the eventual result, should he have been
\n elected, would have been the loss of their monopoly on the American consciousness.<\/p>\n
\n bullshit detectors these days. The old politics will not fly in
\n a world where anyone who cares can follow a candidate or politician virtually
\n 24\/7. The
\n new politics demands a new breed of politician – less consumed, more
\n transparent, more wysiwyg. <\/p>\n
\n blog, it is time for bloggers to enter politics.<\/p>\n
\n magnitude and depth to withstand and overwhelm the evisceration that
\n derailed the Dean train. When such a figure emerges, the Dowbrigade,
\n and we suspect
\n millions
\n of others, stand ready to go to the mattresses when the the shit hits
\n the fan. But you’ve gotta know somebody pretty good, pretty intimately,
\n to get to that level of commitment. A lot better than we’ve ever gotten
\n to know anybody over our TV set.<\/p>\n
\n from the meeting<\/a>, and here is Steve’s
\n Video <\/a>of it<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"