The kinds of people who get giddy about the C-SPAN archives going online came together in Washington to launch an effort to encourage the public to become more involved in advocating for greater transparency in government. The Sunlight Foundation—which is quickly becoming the dominant voice in transparency and innovation in Washington—is launching Public=Online in cooperation with other transparency, technology, and media organizations to encourage the public to advocate for more transparency in government data and information. “Transparency is a pan-ideological good,” said Jim Harper of the libertarian CATO Institute at the roll-out. “Libertarians and conservatives want more transparency to reduce demand for government. Liberals see opportunity to validate government and root-out corruption.” The event, held at Google's DC office, brought out new media and transparency advocates from DC's geek and policy sector, as well as government officials working on increasing access to government data. Sunlight's Jake Brewer said the event included Tea Party activists and Moveon.org types, as well as the usual coterie of ideological think-tanks including CATO, Center for American Progress, and the Heritage Foundation. "We’ll ask candidates for office questions about their positions on transparency at town halls, we’ll scour earmark requests, write blog posts diving into campaign data or post video of important events," Brewer said in describing the project. One of the goals of the new campaign is to get the public to demand more access to data, Brewer said, which requires the media to do a better job of giving context to the data.  That may mean working with transparency groups, like Sunlight, but also embedding data or visualizing the data in their reporting. Quipping that "pot holes are the gateway drug to government engagement," Brewer said the goal was to get the public to start pushing for more government openness and not just wait for the media or transparency advocates to find it for them. Huffington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas--who was on a panel announcing the project--said the mainstream media has a reluctant relationship with government transparency, in part because the media has often controlled access to public data and therefore worry about what happens when they no longer control public information. "The mainstream media at large doesn't grasp the idea of “me” in media," suggested Vargas, who is the Technology and Innovations editor at HuffPost. He was formerly at the Washington Post. He said journalists tend to act as if they "owned the data" and that they should only release as much information as they consider important. He noted that the media has traditionally not even been transparent about its own work--pointing to unsigned editorials and editorial committees working in secret--which is why it doesn't always grasp the importance of getting information up front to the public so data can inform policy instead of explaining what has already happened.

Every year internet geeks gather for five days in Austin, TX to discuss the state of interactive media — and more importantly, what the future holds next — at South by Southwest Interactive. This year, old school tools like Facebook were barely mentioned: the hottest topics were online privacy, location-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla, and perhaps most interestingly: the future of journalism. (more...)

The gossip blog Radar Online released an exclusive report suggesting - complete with vagrant links leading to "Top Ten Celebrity Mugshots" and the Bristol Palin child support paperwork - that the resignation of Chief Justice John Roberts from the Supreme Court is imminent. It took about fifteen minutes (and denials from the few news sources quick enough to pick it up) for them to be forced into retracting the statement, but in exchange for some political credibility Radar won an all-important link on the Drudge Report and a small mention on Fox News, besides the internet wildfire of links all through the political blogosphere. (more...)

Is it gay-baiting to call the head of the government agency responsible for surveillance and airport screening "Big Sis"?  It is--according to Huffington Post's Eat The Press Columnist Jason Linkins and Towleroad's Andy Towle--when you are referring to the never-married Janet Napolitano and you reference Matt Drudge. ABC is taking some heat for an online article that describes Napolitano as "he former Arizona governor, dubbed "Big Sis" by one conservative blogger," who "oversees more than 188,000 civilian employees, 200,000 contractors and an amalgam of 20 subagencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration." It is the reference to Drudge--who knows a little something about being gay-baited--that raises the spectre that ABC was furthering a suggestion/smear that Napolitano is a lesbian. In January, Drudge featured a picture of Napolitano and a picture of naked female scan on top of a headline that read "Big Sis Wants to See Under Your Clothes." Andrew Sullivan, and others, immediately called "foul," with Sullivan quipping "Isn't outing people something Drudge might want to avoid?" ABC's reference to Drudge is what's drawing the current heat.  Linkins said there was "no substantive reason" for ABC to include the reference, and suggested "hey just want to smirk about Napolitano's sexual back story which, I guess to their minds, has some important bearing on her ability to carry out the duties of her office." Drudge didn't invent the "Big Sis" line. There are references to Napolitano as "Big Sister" going back to the beginning of her tenure at DHS. She does, after all, run the agency responsible for snooping in luggage and setting up scanners at airports.  And it was her agency that suggested, controversially, that conservative fringe groups were a terrorism threat and should be watched. While the Big Brother/Big Sis is certainly a great parallel--especially if you worry about such things--it's less clear whether that was the reference ABC was going for when it used the name and then name-checked Drudge. While it seems fair game to accuse Drudge of gay-baiting, does that accusation extend all the way to ABC just because they referenced him?

Today, the Huffington Post welcomed the newest member of their family, HuffPo College. It's not quite as cute as the Kardashian kid. But lovable nonetheless.

Lead by Jose Antonio Vargas and Leah Finnigan, HuffPo College pulls its content from 62 student publications around the country and cross-posts from other articles on the site. They're also working to build an army of citizen journalists to cover on-campus issues. If you'd like to join, go here.

Like the rest of the HuffPo, it's an aggregator sprinkled with original content. A bit obvious, but it serves the section well; drawing from student papers offers an almost-exclusive peek into our nation's universities, informing us, for example, that UC Berkley has a Quidditch league.

But it also provides a stellar overview of journalism's rising stars. One of their featured bloggers is Paul Bowers, a student at the University of South Carolina. As a Sophomore, Bowers won Nikolas Kristof's Win-a-Trip contest, traipsing through Sub-Saharan Africa and documenting the whole thing with text, images and video.

Now, Bowers will take to the streets of Columbia, South Carolina. For the week of March 7, he and his roommate will relinquish their apartment "to document the homeless experience in our city firsthand" You can follow their story  in real-time on Homelessincolumbia.com and, I'm presuming, some sort of summary on the HuffPo. Some may think he's nothing more than an arrogant college kid, but his work already demonstrates poignant, reflective commentary that has the potential to create powerful social change.

Plus, the first night on the streets, they were offered cocaine and held at gunpoint. Coincidence his name sounds like Jack Bauer? I think not.

So good for you, HuffPo College for giving these kids the exposure they need to leap into journalism after graduation. Now, if we could only resolve the matter of pay...

video Minnesota got a special treat recently when a billboard depicting a jolly-looking former Pres. George W. Bush appeared over Interstate 35 asking, "Miss me yet?" The idea was too surreal to actually exist for many people who called "Photoshop" at first sight, but NPR confirmed yesterday that it was, in fact, looming over the Minnesota landscape, waving uncomfortably to drivers on their way to work. (more...)

video Is Arianna Huffington vs. Glenn Beck the new Keith Olbermann vs. Bill O'Reilly, or perhaps even the new Andrew Breitbart vs. Media Matters (and a whole bunch of other people depending on the day and the Twitter)? Huffington is certainly taking advantage of every available opportunity to direct attention to what she describes as Beck's "dangerous" language. This Sunday on Reliable Sources Huffington described Beck to host Howie Kurtz and fellow panelist Hugh Hewitt thusly: (more...)

video File this in under "selective reporting." Media Matters breathlessly reported how Rep. Tom Tancredo opened the Tea Party Convention in Nashville yesterday with remarkably harsh words for both the American electorate and President Obama. What they neglected to report was that he also shared similarly harsh words for GOP nominee John McCain. (more...)

video It was a news-making This Week on ABC today, as Barbara Walters took the helm for not just Scott Brown's first big sit-down but an epic roundtable from around the political spectrum. The two stand-out guests - CEO and President of Fox News Roger Ailes making his first appearance ever on This Week and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington. (more...)

Air America has folded — again, but, it seems, permanently. Two dominant reactions seem to have emerged: Disappointment that a liberal, progressive radio empire couldn't make it, and an utter lack of surprise. The LAT's James Rainey blamed Air America's failure on "Bad radio. Boring radio. Preachy radio"; as the NYT's Brian Stelter noted, Daily Kos founder and hyper-liberal Markos Moulitsas responded with “Air America was still really on the air?” However saddened people are by the loss of the flagship liberal bastion, it doesn't sound like anyone actually listened. But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for a liberal radio juggernaut — just maybe not on the radio. And that's where HuffPo comes in. (more...)

The Huffington Post has really outdone themselves today with their latest Green feature: "Animals Eat Weird Things." The slide show depicts tigers, butterflies, squirrels, monkeys and bears eating "weird" things like lollipops, sneakers, corn and--gasp--blocks of ice! When the rest of the Green section contains legitimate articles such as "Mountaintop Removal Debate: Kennedy and Blankenship Spar Over Coal" and "Examining Haiti's Water Future", I'm not really sure why they would give top spot to an article about "weird things" that "aren't weird at all." This lean towards tawdry seems to be a trend over at the HuffPo, as Mediaite's own Tommy Christopher pointed out a couple weeks ago with their groundbreaking "WATCH: Walrus Gives Himself Oral Pleasure." Since Media and Entertainment stories create the bulk of the HuffPo's traffic, it makes sense that they occasionally lean towards trashy rather than classy. But have you looked at cat food? All animals eat weird things. So why does this slide show get prime real estate on an "award-winning progressive newspaper"?

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While not quite on par with the masturbating walrus, Huffington Post's latest foray into trashy hype fairly drips class, as they announce "Scott Brown's Wife's RACY Music Video Uncovered," complete with an awesome screenshot of the Senator-elect's wife causing a sunscreen eruption.

I realize that we're using the same exact video and screenshot, but it's for the criticism, so it's OK. Plus, ours says "Mediaite" on it, so you know it's quality. (more...)

I'm not the only one who has noticed The Huffington Post's march toward trashy headlines, but usually, these are confined to gossip or entertainment items that scream things like "WATCH: Nazareth Man Gets Totally CRUCIFIED!"

Now, it seems even HuffPo's enviro-conscious "Green" section has succumbed to this condition with the blunt entreaty to "WATCH: Walrus Gives Himself Oral Pleasure (NSFW)"

My first response is "Why would I want to do that?" Still, I understand the curiosity at work here. Perhaps we have our first definitive translation of the phrase "Coo coo ca choo."

I'm obviously familiar with the concept of a grabby headline. It's just that the sheer volume of these blunt, shouting headlines to hype even the most minute items have a deadening effect. They also undercut Arianna Huffington's recent high-minded entreaty to ignore stories like the Balloon Boy fiasco in favor of stories about homeless children. If they ran any such stories at HuffPo, they'd be under a banner like "WATCH: Kids Sleep in Things That are NOT HOUSES!"

For those of you who really want to see a walrus getting to know itself, I guess I'd rather have you watch it here than someplace else. Enjoy?

video The new year is as good a time as any for the Obama administration to rework the current media narrative on their policies. And as we've learned over and over again in politics, repetition is key, especially when it comes to language. It's something George W. Bush's White House perfected, most successfully during the first term, and it's an idea Frank Luntz built an entire career around. (more...)

poll Last week, Mediaite asked you who was the top online editor of 2009. As we'd mentioned at the time, some sites didn't quite fit into the bloggy rubric. Which is why in this round, we're recognizing sites which are too vast and ambitious in scope to describe in terms of the work of just one editor. You know the drill, loyal, smart, and attractive readers: below is a list of our nominees for the top site of 2009, including The Business Insider, Ars Technica, Politico, and Talking Points Memo. Vote for your favorite, or leave any deserving candidates you think we left out in the comments: (more...)

Verena von Pfetten is Air America's Senior Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor, and the former Living Editor at the Huffington Post, which makes her my former colleague and great friend. (She is also Canadian, as well as the former Verena van der Woodsen to my Blair Sklardorf). Verena had the good fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, to run into me at a moment of inspiration, during which I suggested we experiment with a new form of our traditional 5QQ — the impromptu video. Verena gamely gave it a whirl, and what followed was about as informal and off-the-cuff a rendering of the 5QQ as we have ever done (usually we email the questions to our quarry, who then have time to think about the answers. Not so today with Verena. Lucky her!). (more...)

video If you're online then you've probably already heard: after 13 hours of negotiations with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the Democrats have announced that they have the 60 votes they need to pass a health care reform bill before Christmas. That is, as long as they can read all 338-pages before midnight on Saturday. And as long as Rep. Stupak doesn't play spoiler. But! Things are looking good enough for President Obama to comment: (more...)

Metaphor -- you're doing it wrong. One of the big stories today involves President Obama's Monday meeting with bailed-out Wall Street executives that included a conference call with three of them. The Huffington Post is running the giant headline "BANKERS PUT OBAMA ON HOLD", with a picture of the President holding a phone. So, not only did 3 of these guys not even show up, they actually had the brass to say "Can you hold a sec, Barry? We gotta take this?" Not exactly. The headline is pegged to this New York Times column, entitled "Putting Obama on Hold, in a Hint of Who’s Boss." The column starts out describing the conference call, but there's nothing about putting the President on hold. A lazy or casual reader could easily get that impression, but it didn't happen. Such is the nature of headline-writing, I suppose, but isn't it a good idea to put a little bit of distance between your metaphor and your actual subject matter? If you were writing a story about an insolvent racing team, you wouldn't headline it "Racing Team Goes Off Track, Crashes and Burns," would you? There's no real need to oversell the story, anyway. It takes a special kind of person to treat the President of the United States the way you would the fry station at your local McDonald's.

George Stephanopoulos' move to Good Morning America has left open the plum assignment of Sunday morning talk-show host. The This Week gig is not just a big break for the eventual host, but a real opportunity for ABC News to break NBC's ratings stranglehold on Sunday mornings.

On a very short list of rumored Stephanopoulos replacements sits ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper. While he has been tight-lipped about the job, I think Tapper would be an inspired choice. (more...)

Sarah Palin makes very clear how she feels that the media treats her unfairly -- and many on the left remain skeptical of her claims. But every now and again there is a clear example that support's the former Alaskan Governor's view. Case in point: Huffington Post's headline "Sarah Palin Quits Turkey Trot 5K Race In Kennewick, Washington," which isn't exactly true. Gotcha! (more...)

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Last week this website reported on two rather unique and interesting stories involving me. The first dealt with my attempt to get answers from David Keene, who is the head of the American Conservative Union and CPAC. The second focused on my offer to Keith Olbermann to pay his favorite charity $100,000 if he agreed to devote one of his shows to debating me about Sarah Palin who he claims I defend because of a “crush.” I wish to address some of the issues that have come up in response to these news items. (more...)

The hits just keep on coming. The Republican National Committee flubbed the roll out of their new web identity in glorious, grand ole, fashion on their own yesterday. Today the dark underbelly of the internet decided to help them finish the job. What's a conservative to do?

Twenty-four hours into the life of the RNC's new web site and parodies of the Faces of GOP web banner were circulating on the internet. Some are apt, some are funny and naturally, most are offensive. (more...)

Books have had a hard time establishing a profitable foothold on the Internet. In many respects, they're the anti-blogosphere: they take a long time to read, and thus to form opinions about, most people don't read very many books (according to a 2007 AP poll, the typical American claims to have read four books in the past year), and the people who do skew older and are not as plugged in. There are smart folks over at The Huffington Post who know all of this, no doubt, and their decision to launch a new book vertical under the leadership of Dutton Books' Amy Hertz, suggests that they think it will succeed anyway. Can it, though? More importantly, how does it define success? (more...)

Over at The Huffington Post, they've been treating the news of David Letterman's shocking affairs with staffers -- and the extortionist who tried to squeeze Letterman for $2 million dollars, suspected to be Robert "Joe" Halderman -- with their trademark blanket coverage, leaving no stone unturned. The secret winner? Jay Leno. Ads for his show are popping up all around the news of his rival's troubles. (more...)

What's scarier: A Facebook poll asking people if President Barack Obama should be killed (with the response options: "yes", "maybe", "if he cuts my health care", and "no"), or the fact that over 730 people voted? (more...)

Late last year, at the end of the most historic election in the nation's history, and certainly the most covered, there was much speculation as to what websites would survive beyond the end of the traffic-driving election narrative, and which would fall away. (more...)

Hey sports fans! The Huffington Post is set to debut their HuffPo Sports section next month, but today they've got a preview for you. Do you like sports? Do you like page views hot women voting for things? Then check out their new Red Sox-Yankees related post. (more...)

Sad, successful, middle-aged women of the world unite! Or something. Last week Arianna Huffington, who is lately giving Google a run for its money in the Internet dominance dept., introduced a new column written by one Markus Buckingham, that aims to help women with their "sadness" (whether or not women knew they were sad prior to reading this is another question entirely). (more...)

When I saw this item at HuffPo, declaring that Fox News' Bill O'Reilly backs the public health insurance option, I immediately thought "There has to be a catch." (more...)

VIDEO Is Bill O'Reilly a socialist? On the Wednesday night O'Reilly Factor, he surprised many by appearing to come out in support of a moderate form of the public option on healthcare. But was that really what he was saying? (more...)

The Huffington Post, which currently profits off of the blood, sweat, and tears of its many hapless unpaid contributors (j/k), has hit upon a new way to involve its readers in the creative process: crowdsourcing headlines through Twitter. (more...)

Give Arianna Huffington some credit: she still knows how to surprise people. When her personal friend (and former gubernatorial campaign adviser) Van Jones was ousted from his White House job after Glenn Beck's incessant needling, it would have been the easy move for Huffington to decry the firing and jump reflexively on the Glenn Beck hate train. Instead, Huffington thanked Beck in a recent Huffington Post column. But why? (more...)

Anytime an influential man dies, attention is paid to his wife. The grace and allure of the grieving widow has fascinated Americans for decades, from Jackie O to Ruth Madoff (in a weird way). Vicki Kennedy is no exception. Since Senator Kennedy's death, there's been countless profile pieces written about "the woman who saved Ted," their marriage, and how they fell in love. (more...)

The release of an internal report on CIA torture practices in 2004, followed by a memo from the Agency's director Leon Panetta to its employees, are sparking rumors and headlines about a hostile Panetta threatening to leave his position. The buzz, however, seems to be hovering over an alleged "profanity-laced screaming match" between Panetta and a senior White House staff member over a month ago. As scandalous (and secretly awesome) as a dirty-mouthed high government official is, is the month-old tiff relevant, or just a juicy headline? (more...)

In a July interview with Playboy, Alec Baldwin was true to his actor ego and ambitiously revealed his desire to enter politics. "I have sometimes thought I could move to New Jersey or Connecticut and run," he told the classic skin-mag, singling out every lefty's favorite turncoat Joe Lieberman as a potential opponent. "I have no use for him," said Baldwin before admitting that "it's all fantasy" because he wouldn't ever be able to leave New York, as noted by Gossip Cop. The half-hearted challenge seems to have left Lieberman a little shaken, though, as the Connecticut senator took to CNN's "State of the Union" to dust off the potential contest, telling Baldwin: "Make my day." In what might be interpreted as a smug tone and with a nervous chuckle, Sen. Lieberman continued, "You know, I must say that I respect Alec Baldwin as an actor and as a comedian, and if he wants to run, that’s his right." (more...)

Rosemary Port, the 29-year-old anonymous "skank" blogger who was outed by Google after a court order forced the company to reveal the identity of the person behind the blog "Skanks in NYC," which attacked former model Liskula Cohen, feels exposed. Also angry at Google for violating her privacy. Port has apparently discovered the blogosphere is not so cozy without an anonymous handle to protect you! Not only that, according to Port, Cohen was asking for it. (more...)

Brilliant idea from Business Insider: Embeddable posts. Henry Blodget posted Thursday about the new feature, which permits bloggers to embed entire posts on their sites, rather than ye olde copy-and-paste. It's a genius idea, since it incorporates Business Insider branding and makes it easier to include the whole thing than just paste in an excerpt, where attribution may be less apparent. (It's also an eye-friendly layout; it's text-only so no photos, and comes in two sizing options.) It's a smart move and I wonder if it wasn't inspired in part by Tumblr, which has a handy "reblog" button that makes it ridiculously easy to copy someone's post, links and attribution in place, and join that conversation. I have no doubt that far less "reblogs" would take place on that platform were users required to copy and paste in the post (and those pesky links). (more...)

video Beware anonymous commenters and bloggers, your glory days may be numbered; a former model may have just killed the Internet as we know it. Liskula Cohen did not take too kindly to being called a skank on the anonymously run blog “Skanks in NYC." Instead of rolling over and concluding that hey(!) slander is just the way of things in this new media world, she took it to the New York Supreme Court and demanded that Google hand over the identity of the person responsible for the site, which had been launched using Google's Blogger platform. Yesterday Google complied. (more...)

This morning the Huffington Post and Facebook rolled out their latest scheme to take over the Internet: HuffPost Social News, which allows Facebook-using HuffPo readers to share the stories they're reading and the comments their leaving on the Huffington Post with their friends on Facebook. (more...)

For as long as the Power Grid has been around, The New York Times' Bill Keller has owned the Newspaper/Online Editors category. It's no surprise why -- despite the Times' financial and existential troubles, it remains the most influential newspaper in print, regularly breaking big stories and shaping the debate. It follows that the Times' top editor should be the top editor in the business. (more...)