Novelist Neal Rechtman, author of The 28th Amendment, an election thriller, attended this year’s Personal Democracy Forum. Here’s his report:
If the ultimate marker of the success of something is having an industry trade show devoted to it, then this year's Personal Democracy Forum last week at New York City's Rose Hall proved beyond all question that the blogoshpere has arrived. More than 600 writers, pundits, and other members of the digirati came to hear more than a dozen speakers, including Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, and Doug Rushkoff, the author of Open Source Democracy, a book that declares the Internet will (eventually) revolutionize politics and democracy the same way it has revolutionized almost every other aspect of our society. We’re still waiting for that, but to judge by all the activity at the conference, one would think something is about to happen. During most of the addresses, including the big names, half the audience had laptops open and were multi-tasking right in front of the speaker. A giant LED screen, erected alongside the podium, allowed the audience to hurl e-questions and e-comments to the speakers in real-time.
Although many issues related to politics and the media were discussed, the question that earned the most discussion had to do with the difference, if any, between a journalist and a blogger. It seems that journalists, whose prime directive and raison d’etre is to write stories that will get published (or broadcast), are limited by a host of ethical and editorial constraints designed to assure the integrity of the information published. Bloggers, however, need only push a button, and presto! -- their ‘articles’ appear.
Since journalists and bloggers compete for essentially the same audience, journalists accurately sense that they are working with a major handicap. Should bloggers establish their own professional standards? Should journalists loosen or abandon their own? Are bloggers subject to libel lawsuits under the same tort law standards that apply to journalists? The number of related issues seems unending. Welcome to the wild, wild web: the ultimate frontier.
To see videos of some speeches made at the conference, click here.
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