Live from L.A. and ONA. The Internet in politics 2004 is the topic. Joe Trippi, Arianna Huffington, Jehmu Green (Rock the Vote) Mickey Kaus (Kausfiles on Slate) and Dave Winer are the panelists. So, this geek gathering is called a PowerPoint Free zone. Bloggercon was last week and Kaus says he is an optimist, though he meets lots of others who aren't. Winner tells the story of the video of Dean's scream that showed Dean's scream in context and could have been released on the web and might have influenced the outcome. Kaus: Vote fraud. Conventional response wait for facts. By not waiting as conventional media would wait, the truth came out (he asserts that there was no voter fraud.) Huffington: Loves the blogosphere. Greatest breakthrough in mainstream journalism because it allows passion to come through. Contrasted stories that play on the front page and dies, but how bloggers stay with a story and keep on it until they get some effects. She says it is bad to put stuff out that you never check--don't misquote Lincoln. Joe Trippi: Information is power. Internet in a top-down world passing information is a power transfer, not just information transfer. Money is what's wrong with our system--he talks about the vote by folks to urge Dean to abandon the campaign limits. Kerry abandoned public funding too and that made the election close. Jehmu Green: Who benefitted most from electronic and online technology--young people. They built a register the vote tool and gave it out to all kinds of yount people. They got a kick-ass email list. The message about young people coming out is false, they did come out and did vote in big numbers. Kaus: Linked to recount sites without checking their accuracy, but he holds that this led to a quicker fixing of the truth through all the blogs Winer: Media of all kinds were wrong before election because it was the moral values. Huffington: Election wasn't decided on moral values. Bloggers disproved this. If a state had the gay marriage limit, they voted for Bush less than other states. CBSNews and ABCnews showed that the moral thing wasn't the issue, but it was terrorist threat issue. Joe Trippi: rumors have always existed, blogs just make the concerns more obvious. Blogosphere is the canary in the coal mine--indicates the stories that the main media need to cover. Winer: Completely legitimate form of journalism. Not top down. Opens door for anyone to be powerful. Blue staters got told "you aren't liked" and now we need to create a dialogue with the red states. Moderator: Lippman said the television is a truth machine, but this isn't true anymore. Did the Web contribute to being a "truth machine?' Huffington: Yes, because they showed discrepancies in polls were just reported win main meia without analysis. Trippi: Mainstream media created the need for blogs on the Internet. The embedded TV journos set up a situation where the only place you could go to get more news or different perspective was web. "The only place to get stuff that wasn't rah-rah." Exit polls--mainstream media paid lots of $$ for exit polls but now bloggers can grab the exit polls and run with them. Then eyeballs ignored mainstream sites because eyeballs went to blogger sites. Kaus: Swift boat debunking and truth finding about Kerry and Bush record came out of blogs. CBS acted like blogger with the memo story, but then pretended they weren't just floating a trial balloon. Jehmu: Young voters trusted internet info more than mainstream media. Amount of info 53% from TV/43% from Internet in the young groupl. However, they are using sites run by partisans. Have more confident in their info, but they don't take into acct bias in the sites. Opensecrets--not biased. Question: Is internet contributing to partisanship? Huffington: Sees new voters as a unifying force. They are the "purple" voters. Money that can be collected from little people via internet is a new big force. Trippi: Polarization already existed. Internet just reflects the acase of real life. Blogs are communities of like-minded people finding their group. Kaus: is the web less polarizing than talk radio? Atrious is example that it might be. Winer: Presidential blogging is ineffectual. Blogs will be felt in local community. Local bloggers will be asked to run in elections because there isn't any local coverage now. Local coverage is the big idea