Just in time for the inauguration, my latest feature for Wired — on whether and how President Obama will carry out his promises to reboot the federal government — is available online. The glossy version should be out sometime later this week or early next.
I’ll have more to write shortly here about what has happened vis-à-vis Obama’s digital strategies since the piece closed in December. First, however, a note of disclosure. Originally the piece contained a description of my own minimal participation in the campaign, part of a longer section on how Obama utilized tech to win the presidency. Eventually we decided that the role of tech in the campaign had been covered well elsewhere (most expertly by Jose Antonio Vargas at The Washington Post). So we focused the piece more on how Obama might use the same digital techniques to govern. The longer first person bit shrunk to the somewhat cryptic:
Those efforts were combined with massive database-crunching to identify potential voters who could be approached door-to-door by last-minute canvassers, myself included.
So to elaborate: in the four days leading up to the election, well before I got this assignment, I ditched the fig leaf of political journalistic objectivity, paid my own way to Colorado, and volunteered for the Obama campaign. I didn’t get paid, obviously, nor did I give money directly to the campaign, just time and feet. As a result, I got to experience his technology-fueled ground operation first-hand, which helped inform the later story.
So to the extent that you find skepticism in the Wired piece, it’s not driven by a burning anti-Obama ideology or political sour grapes. If by contrast you somehow infer an immense relief at Obama’s victory, a strong desire to see him succeed, and an underlying feeling that he will (although not in the way perhaps some tech pundits would like), well, you got it. Either way, I hope the reporting stands on its own. In the words of Dr. Thompson, “so much for Objective journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
Posted at 2:09 pm | Filed under Disclosures, Politics, Recent stories, Technology, Wired |
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