AgoraVox -- new "citizen media" forum

[Luftmensch067]

Just heard about this this morning. Here's the link: http://www.agoravox.com/ It's been up for a year in France, apparently, and has about 350,000 readers at the French site; it's now in beta at this English-language site. From the excerpt below, you can see that it is currently being administered by people for whom English is not the primary language, and I'm not sure yet how credible stories there will be seen to be by the general public in the U.S., but I think it's a fascinating experiment and one that will doubtless be expanded and more widespread in the future. I post about it here because I have a feeling that freepers of all stripes may find and use such a forum for anti-JK stories and I am wondering what you all think about the possibility of at some point using it to post positive JK news.

Introduction to Agoravox
AgoraVox puts together one of the first large-scale European initiatives for a totally free of charge "citizen journalism". Our initial standpoint is simple: thanks to the effective democratization of multimedia and information technologies (IT), each citizen has the ability to potentialy become a "reporter" who can identify and offer high added-value information. With means of a simple phone, a computer, a camera or a a digital video camera, thousands of internet users or bloggers are now able to perform an incredible local work that no media, no organization, no association could ever accomplish...

Why would you become a reporter? Simply to make your voice heard and to report on facts you have identified and that you think are not well covered, censored or ignored by traditional media. We could almost affirm that participating to the AgoraVox project is a citizen duty! As the Oh My News Corean team affirms, "Every Citizen is a Reporter". Yes, we are truly convinced that each citizen can become a real reporter. Beyond the "citizen duty", publishing on AgoraVox can allow you to increase your notoriety as well as that of your website or blog.

Edited to add: This post is meant to be more a report of a trend than an endorsement! From what I can see of the content so far, the place is currently populated by nutballs. I am not recommending the site as is, but commenting on the potential of the format. :-)

[Luftmensch067]

1. For instance

A self-avowed Minnesota "conservative American" "reporter" calling himself Chip D. has this posted in the Political section on February 24: http://www.agoravox.com/article.php3?id_article=4562

John Kerry’s Return to Minnesota Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Ron Carey issued the following statement yesterday regarding John Kerry’s return to Minnesota to raise money for the DFL House and Senate caucuses.

’John Kerry’s permanent campaign for president is becoming painful to watch. Following his disastrous effort to filibuster Judge Alito from Switzerland, John Kerry has become increasingly irrelevant among Democrats. It’s time for John Kerry to accept the will of the voters and move on.’

[TayTay]

2. Sounds like RW talking points

Try and take out the effective players on the other side. Won't work.

[Luftmensch067]

3. I know I agree with you...

...but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, Tay -- would you mind clarifying for the terminally sleepy? :-)

[TayTay]

4. These quotes that want Sen. Kerry to

'retire' back to the Senate and give up further ambitions he might have to run for the Presidency are all pretty predictable. The reiterate a standard set of talking points that say

1: you had your chance, now forget about it. (The 'nobody loves you' thing.)
2: ambition is quite an ugly thing, unless someone I like has it, in which case, it's a noble desire to serve your country, not ambition.
3: there is something wrong with you, so give it up. (This is the cold and aloof thing, on steroids.)

These are all RW talking points (that the clueless left often quotes because it's easier than thinking up their own points.) They aim to take someone out of the game early. They do so by ridicule and by 'assuming' a common wisdom that 'everybody knows.' None of this is true.

[Luftmensch067]

6. Oh, of course!

I knew I agreed with you.

But the point of this post is not the wrongness of the RW talking points but the relatively new forum in which they are being presented. So far, it is rather ridiculous and not something to be taken seriously, but it may in future be a new form of getting "information" to the public. At which point it would be interesting to consider having a pro-JK, truthful voice to counter the RW idiocy. :-)

[karynnj]

8. Also, if it were true, the comment wouldn't be made.

This is a comment by the Minnesota Republican chairman commenting because Kerry was raising money for Minnesota Democrats. The real story is that Kerry is successfully raising money for candidates running against his guys. Kerry has made it clear that he is doing as much as he can for 2006. It's true that doing as much as he can for 2006 works for 2008 as well, but it's also is the best he can do for the Democrats now as a team player.

It may be that Kerry's support for Minnesota Democrats is more valuable to the Democrats than the Republican chairman's backing (or Bush's backing) of the Republicans is. Kerry can still get people out.

[karynnj]

5. Excellent points - This does present on opportunity

I agree that it is would be good to report things here from our perspective. As this is pretty new (a beta site), it likely has no established culture. You're entirely right that the RW would move into to "define" JK there too.

Several of us attended various Kerry events -where he was he was uniformly brilliant, warm, and personable. The reports here have been interesting and far more detailed than the local media. In the future, re-writing them, possibly with supporting information that it assumed knowledge here, would be a really good idea. There are also all the posts here that include the press releases from Kerry's office with a little commentary, that could be sent as is. Another area that really doesn't get enough reporting is the Senate hearings. (One current one, the incredible ly important issue of permanent bases could combine the recent comment that a military official now says we will have permanent bases with the Kerry/Rice interchange - both in a last week post.)

From you example of the RW (or LW) freeper report - no substance is needed. I assume though that reports that deal with actual events, issues or analysis would be more effective than what easily is one man (or woman's) opinion. The other thing might be whether we could write "reviews" of things like the PTSD Harvard event - where we would obviously link to the video. This event subtly acknowledges Kerry's 30 plus year commitment to issues like this and could soften the less rabid of the Kerry haters. (One anti- Kerry Edwards person (she agrees with Webb over Kerry) on the this board was interested enough to see it that she emailed C-SPAN (though they didn't cover it to begin with), because she wanted to see Clealand, "a personal hero of hers". (Her computer can't handle video.)

I would be glad to take one of these issues and write it - especially if someone would volunteer to critique it before I send it. Should we try to co-ordinate getting some issues covered over there? Thank you so much for posting this.

[Luftmensch067]

7. I would be happy to be part of such an effort

I love your idea of actually putting links to things like the Harvard video and letting the good Senator's actions and words speak for themselves!!!!