Jason Clarke

MaineOpenGov.org is a revolutionary new website which creates some amazing opportunities for enterprising journalists, bloggers, and citizens to ask questions in public and among friends about our state government and back them up with facts.

How and why? The how is simple: Sponsored by the Maine Heritage Policy Center, the MaineOpenGov.org website provides a powerful, usable search engine which allows for thousands of public records to be searched on a variety of metrics. From state employee salaries to state payments to outside contractors, citizens can access a variety of information previously difficult to obtain, or unavailable altogether.

The why is equally simple: Transparency and accountability, two forces which are not only severely lacking in almost every government enterprise, but which can be powerful change agents for citizens to hold their elected (and non-elected) officials accountable.

Anybody with an internet connection (or access to a library) can search for patterns- or even single instances- of data, and use that information to tell their friends, publish it on a blog, or contact their representative(s).

This is big stuff, people of Maine- I hope to dive more into it in the coming weeks, and I encourage other Maine citizens to do the same. It’s at MaineOpenGov.org- give it a minute of your time today, even out of curiosity’s sake.

And on a side note, how have I not heard of the Maine Heritage Policy Center before? Judging by the MaineOpenGov site, as well as their organizational website, they are definitely an organization to watch, right in our own backyard.

The Bangor Daily News, my hometown paper, released the results of a poll today for the Maine senate race between Senator Susan Collins and Representative Tom Allen. If you’re not from Maine, you may vaguely know the race started off generating a ton of interest by out-of-state organizations such as MoveOn.org, but it has since been relegated to the lower tiers of watched races, as poll after poll have shown a large lead by Sen. Collins over her challenger, Rep. Allen.

Today’s poll completely supports the entire vibe (and the several other polls) in the race so far, this time with Collins leading Allen by 55-39 in a poll of 675 “likely voters” by the Daily News and local news stations WCSH and WLBZ.

In a textbook attempt to respond to these poll numbers (or actually, not respond to them), Allen spokesperson Carol Andrews told the Bangor Daily News that:

“Reliable polling conducted internally [by the Allen campaign] shows this race to be very much in play and far closer than those margins.”

Of course, no specifics were included with her comment. Possibly because Andrews is mis-representing her campaign’s polling in order to try and de-emphasize the media report. If that’s the case, it’s an unfortunate example of posturing on behalf of Allen’s campaign. If the internal polling is true, why not release the numbers in an effort to try and boost Represenative Allen’s standing in the race?

To try and resolve this question, I reached out to Andrews and the Allen campaign and see if they want to qualify their claims that internal polls show Rep. Allen much closer to Sen. Collins in the race.

In response to Andrews’ claim, here’s the email I sent to the Allen campaign’s press department today:

Dear press dept:

In today’s Bangor Daily News, Allen For Senate campaign spokesperson Carol Andrews stated that “Reliable polling conducted internally shows this race to be very much in play and far closer than those margins.”

Please send me specific results from the poll(s) referenced by Andrews, along with dates and sample. I will be happy to publish this data on my blog so that the people of Maine can see what Andrews is claiming about the race.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best,
Jason

I’ll post an update here if I receive any response.

It’s this time of year in Maine. What time of year is it where you live?

Congratulations to my friend and occasional co-conspirator Lance Dutson, who announced today he’s taking a job as Director of Internet Strategy for Maine Senator Susan Collins’ re-election campaign.

As I can attest but many already know, Lance is razor-sharp and as forward on the curve as anybody I’ve met when it comes to seeing, exploring, and making great things come from the tools of new media. He and I have shared many great conversations about the ways that Maine politicians can better harness these technologies, and I’m happy that he has a chance to put his ideas to the test. I expect great things for the campaign and for the people of Maine.

For the Maine residents who think this inside politics talk a year before the election, please let me share my explanation for why Lance’s hire is much more important than that. With Congressman Tom Allen jump-starting his bid for Senator Collins’ seat, the “netroots”, or the very far left liberal blogosphere for those not familiar, already have their sights set on taking this seat, handing it to Congressman Allen, and putting the Senate further under democratic party control. With netroots attention comes thousands, potentially millions, of dollars of out-of-state money– not to mention opinions– from people across the country, all brought to bare towards the goal of defeating Senator Collins. Since those who watch politics closely already know that the left is doing a superior job marshaling online resources and money in this way via new media channels that we’re frankly behind on in Maine, it’s easy to see how Maine people can potentially be left out of deciding who becomes their next Senator.

If you don’t like those prospects– if you want the race to be about Maine issues, decided primarily by Maine people– then you recognize that a strong new media force to face that of Allen’s out-of-state netroots supporters is not only necessary, but critical. I have the highest hopes that with Lance working for Senator Collins in this capacity, her fortunes- and thus ours as Mainers- have improved greatly.

Congratulations to two Maine journalists for recently winning two significant national honors:

Richard Anderson, publisher of Village Soup, has been awarded a Knight Foundation grant for $885,000 to take the platform and technology behind the VillageSoup websites and make them open-source.

Alicia Anstead, a Bangor Daily News columnist, has been awarded a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University. Anstead “represents exactly the kind of journalist we were hoping to attract: someone with a deep commitment to the local community,” according to an AP article on the announcement.

Following several recent efforts to create a more interactive website, the Bangor Daily News is on the verge of launching a new user-generated content section, jasonclarke.org has learned.

“We are launching a brand new community publishing platform”, Online Services Manager Tim Archambault said in an email interview. He gives the timetable for the launch as “the next couple of days.”

The new community section will replace the News’ soon-to-be-former community.bangornews.com, a collection of staff-written blogs presented as a separate website and promoted sparingly on the bangordailynews.com homepage. Archambault describes traffic for the outgoing community site as “not overly strong.”

Rock Blogster, one of the current Bangor Daily News blogs

Though he won’t disclose specific plans for the new section, Archambault says that it will “hopefully [include] any and all content the public deems important.” Given this description, the News’ new “community” platform is likely to expand upon the current crop of staff-written blogs to invite contributions of text, photos, and potentially video from people in the News service area, which stretches from north of Bangor to the coastal regions and into central Maine towns like Newport.

The revamped section will be the third incarnation of blogs in some format for the paper since September 2005, when it launched blogs on Hurricane Katrina and energy issues. In its most recent incarnation, the community.bangornews.com domain features corporate-produced blogs on Maine politics, personal advice, area music, and the Red Sox spring training season, “all of [which]” will be carried over into the new community website, according to Archambault.

If it opts to expand its interactive components beyonds blogs to accept user-generated content, the News will follow a trend many national newspapers are pursuing in the wake of falling advertising revenues and subscription counts. But it faces stiff competition from two other Maine papers that already have a head-start publishing a variety of content submitted by readers. Both the coastal region Village Soup website and Blethen Maine Newspapers’ My.MaineToday.com feature a variety of user-generated content ranging from comments on articles to local events listings to photographs of local happenings. Up-ending the traditional “top-down” model, content in the My.MaineToday.com site, for example, is not written by reporters or newspaper staff but rather uploaded and managed by website visitors.

Inviting local citizens to help create the content of a local or regional news site is a bold strategic move for media outlets struggling to grow readership, but it can also be a risky proposition. One of the emerging “citizen’s journalism” movement’s early leaders, Backfence.com, opened to great fanfare in 2006 only to struggle mightily throughout its early existence. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that one of the company’s founders had left amid struggles with investors over how best to expand the organization, which had struggled to attract contributions from people even in heavily-populated suburban areas such as Reston, Virginia.

That said, the Bangor Daily News is not dealing with the exact same challenges as Backfence.com. While the News readership is comprised of less population than the suburban areas targeted by Backfence.com, it covers a wider geographic footprint and competes amidst a less-crowded media marketplace. However, the News still faces other challenges inherent in launching any user-generated news venture, such as “will people care?” and perhaps more importantly, “will they even visit?”

To meet these challenges, Archambault says the BDN will “absolutely” give the new community section more visibility on the bangordailynews.com website. He also hints the News will “hopefully” cross-promote the people’s contributions by re-purposing online content for the printed paper. If that’s the case, Maine could be the home to a third major community-driven news venture as early as this summer.

In this week’s issue of The Maine Edge, Tekk columnist Justin Russell explains RSS and how it can help you browse the web smarter:

If you’re a seasoned Web traveler, there’s a good chance you’ve developed a standard routine over time. Your daily site checks may lead you to your favorite news sites, stock quotes, online stores or comic strips. Staying on top of your favorites can quickly become a major task. What if the latest news and information from your favorite sites could come to you automatically as it is posted?

That’s the world of content syndication. Syndication pushes new content to viewers automatically wherever they are using a technology known as RSS feeds. Many popular sites use syndication to enhance their readership and make it easy for viewers to stay in touch with their site. Checking the latest news or sports scores can be as easy as checking for new e-mail.

Justin was kind enough to interview me for the article (though I’m still not sure why). Head over to The Maine Edge and check it out!

Thanks to MaineToday for adding this site to their list of local Maine blogs!

Welcome to a new alternative weekly publication in my local area: it’s called The Maine Edge, and it covers arts, technology, sports and more in Bangor, surrounding communities, and nationwide. I like the upbeat, positive tone and the coverage seems to be pretty competitive in terms of not just trodding the same ground as our major daily.

And in this week’s issue, they’ve got a nice article explaining podcasting written by Justin Russell. If you’re looking for Maine-centric podcasts– and come on, who isn’t– there are a couple out there besides Maine Impact, the one I co-host with Lance Dutson (we’re currently on hiatus, btw). Here is just a sample; for more, search the iTunes podcast directory for “Maine”:

1. Maine Democrats podcast, from Maine Democrats.org
2. Maine Things Considered, Maine Public Radio (link points to iTunes Music Store)
3. Maine PodCache, Maine Geocaching Association (link points to iTunes Music Store)

Thanks to my friend Lance Dutson, who is keeping things active over at Maine Impact while I’m spending time with family. In this week’s episode, Lance has a lengthy conversation with Jeff Inglis, editor of The Portland Phoenix newspaper. We’ve talked about blogs, we’ve talked about the mainstream media, and this time, Lance and Jeff talk about Maine’s “alternative” media, which is thriving, thanks to publications such as the Phoenix.

Take a listen to this week’s Maine Impact and don’t forget to share your comments!