This was  originally posted at Mediaite. And it was also quoted in The Nation, NPR, and Politico.

“Since Sunday shows never really appealed to 20-year-olds, Thompson thinks that trying to skew younger or add new technology and graphics isn’t likely to work. “Even before cable and the Internet, you wouldn’t have gotten younger viewers,” Thompson said.”
— from “Will the Sunday shows ever change?” Politico, January 9, 2010.

A debate has been raging online about the Sunday morning political talk shows, one of the venerated old institutions in American political discourse. It was started by Jay Rosen of NYU, who tweeted that maybe Sunday talk shows should fact check everything their guests say on Sundays and run it online every Wednesday.

Today, Politico’s Michael Calderone ran a thoughtful piece on whether Sunday shows will ever change, including commentary from several media personalities. They all agreed on one thing: the Sunday show format has changed very little over the years, and has done almost nothing to adapt to the new media age that we now live in.  And as such, their audience is shrinking.  Their guests are largely older white males and Washington insiders, their show formats haven’t changed since they were first started, and they rarely focus on issues that most Americans care about.  They’re Beltway shows that appeal only to Beltway audiences.

What troubled me the most was a quote in Calderone’s piece from Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse, who argued that the case for modernizing Sunday shows wasn’t that relevant because young people wouldn’t care enough to watch the shows anyway.

I stopped reading right there. I am 21 years old and have been watching Sunday talk shows for as long as I can remember, thanks to a very politically active father. And yeah, that puts me in that tiny category of political junkies who will watch Sunday shows no matter what.  But as a 21-year-old I resent having my entire generation casually brushed off as uninterested in Sunday morning talk shows.  Perhaps my cohorts would tune in every Sunday if they felt like these shows catered to them and spoke on the issues they care about. We are a very politically active generation, and we proved that in the 2008 election.  So it’s not that we’re not interested – the problem is that the networks are failing to adapt and provide programming that appeals to and informs the masses.

I fully believe that the Sunday morning talk shows need a new media makeover, and I have a handful of ideas for how they can do so.  I admit that I know absolutely nothing about what goes into the making of a political talk show. But what I do know  is that my generation wants transparency, participation, and engagement in their political process – and their news.  So here are my suggestions on how the Sunday shows might undertake a new media makeover that could finally usher them into the year 2010:

Take Questions From Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube

We may be living in the YouTube age, but from the look of most Sunday shows you’d never know it. Remember the 2008 presidential election debates, where CNN and YouTube asked citizens to submit questions to ask of the candidates, and then featured selected video questions during the debate? Would it kill us to allow citizens to submit questions to the newsmakers and politicians on Meet The Press, Face The Nation, and This Week? Whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube videos, allowing citizens to ask questions would give them a connection to the shows, engage them, and allow them to play a role in setting the news agenda. And talk show hosts like David Gregory and Bob Schieffer should help facilitate that citizen-politician connection. Although David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, and George Stephanopoulos all have Twitter accounts, their level of engagement with fans is very low. Schieffer and Stephanopoulos’s Twitter accounts aren’t even really them, but are merely RSS feeds of updates from their websites.

And while we’re on the subject, the only Sunday show with a Facebook page and Twitter account is Meet The Press. And even then, their Facebook and Twitter are both used as one-way, broadcast mediums only. The MTP Facebook page is used solely to push out promotional content for each week’s show, and they receive little response from Facebook users.  But what if instead they posted a status update asking citizens: what do you want to ask Janet Napolitano on Meet The Press next Sunday? What if there was a chance David Gregory would actually ask your question to Napolitano on air? I guarantee you citizens of all ages and all backgrounds would start paying more attention if they felt like the networks were paying attention to them.

Continue reading the rest at Mediaite.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the 22-day Israeli military raid on Gaza. Gaza, one of the two Palestinian territories currently under Israeli occupation.

I know Gaza is not a topic of polite cocktail party or happy hour conversation for most people. Most people probably aren’t quite aware of where Gaza is (here is a map for that), especially since it’s a tiny territory that’s only about 139 square miles on the coast of the Mediterranean.

So it is probably not widely known that one year ago, Israeli military forces killed 1,400 Palestinians, of which over 900 were civilians and over 300 were children. And considerable damage was done to Gazan roads, houses, and infrastructure — most of which has still not been repaired.

The UN Secretary General has acknowledged that Gaza is currently suffering from a dire human rights crisis. Since the attacks last year, the UN says, Gazans have been denied basic human rights and have been denied the resources to rebuild their infrastructure.

The mainstream media has hardly reported on the ongoing crisis there.  They’re focused on other stories — whatever sells the most papers or the most advertising, I guess.

So human rights activists around the world are using unconventional channels to air their concerns about the lasting human rights crisis in Gaza — they’re mounting a Twitter campaign to raise awareness. Buoyed by the success of the Iran election activists, who tweeted their observations about the controversial Iranian election and subsequent protests using the hashtag #iranelection, and capured the world’s attention — now Palestinian activists are hoping to start a movement of their own using Twitter as their primary tool of communication.

Their hashtag is #gaza, and today, December 27, from 3 pm – 7 pm GMT, they are encouraging everyone they know to tweet using the hashtag #gaza in the hopes of making Gaza the #1 trending topic on Twitter — which is no easy feat, given the millions of people using Twitter everyday.

The topic was already trending even before the campaign was scheduled to start at 3 pm GMT. It hasn’t hit #1 yet, but has been in the trending topics all day Sunday as Twitter users from all over the world share their thoughts, hopes, and fears for Gaza. The hope, of course, is to generate attention from the mainstream media and the larger public similar to the way the Iranian election protesters did.

The power of a trending topic, however, may seem silly to some but should not be underestimated.  Getting a campaign’s hashtag in the trending topics on Twitter makes the tag visible to everyone visiting Twitter.com — bringing the topic into the public consciousness and into the forefront of discussion. Twitter users who aren’t already aware of the issue will, hopefully, click on the trending topic to learn more about it — and maybe even choose to join in.

(images: Jillian York and Global Voices Online)

Will it work? We’ll know this week. My hope is that bloggers will start to pick up the story first as they notice that #Gaza has been sitting in the trending topics on Twitter all day, and then mainstream media should take a cue from political bloggers and start to report on it as well.

You can view all the #gaza tweets here.

Last night, President Obama delivered his much-awaited speech announcing his strategy for the war in Afghanistan moving forward. I covered it, and my reaction to it, over at Care2 so if you have a sec I hope you will check it out — as well as the already very lively debate in the comments section.

In short: I think we shouldn’t be escalating. Our total troop level in Afghanistan will be at 100,000 and although the timeframe for withdrawal is tentatively set at 2011, there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll stick to that timeline. In the meantime, we’re continuing to lose dollars and human lives — two things we can’t afford to lose anymore of.

Feel free to check out my whole post here.

Also, for additional coverage I’d recommend reading other perspectives on the speech from some great writers:

The Washington Independent

David Corn at Mother Jones

And one of the smartest foreign policy bloggers around, Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy mag

I first met Krystal Ball in August at the progressive bloggers conference Netroots Nation. She walked into the room during our Youth Caucus and quietly sat down while people were making introductions. When it got to her turn, she announced that she was not here as a blogger: She was running for Congress in the First District of Virginia. And she’s just 27 years old.

Heads turned instantly. A 27-year-old running for Congress? And a woman? There has never been a woman under 30 in Congress. And that name!

I had the chance to catch up with Krystal recently and chat about her campaign and life in general. Aside from running for Congress, she’s married and has a baby daughter. It’s incredibly inspiring to see her take the political world head-on — especially when you consider how few women run for office (and even fewer young women run).

Read the rest of the interview at Lemondrop!

I know no one wants to read another boring post about “Top 10 ways to use Twitter lists” so I promise this isn’t that. I just wanted to highlight what I think is a very innovative use of Twitter lists by the mainstream media – probably the last people I’d expect to have found an innovative way to use Twitter lists this quickly.

Several mainstream media organizations, particularly the New York Times, have been using Twitter lists to group together users live-tweeting details about a breaking news story from on-the-ground locations. Over the past weeks, they’ve had lists for the Ft. Hood shooting and the Orlando shooting. On a lighter note, they’ve got lists for the World Series, food policy, and DC politics, among others. An interesting thing about these lists is many of the NYT-created lists include not only bloggers, but reporters from other mainstream media outlets. I guess that’s just one of the many ways new media is subtly changing the way old media works.

Remember CDs? I don’t think I have bought one since 2001, and now that I have an iPhone, iPod, iTunes, there’s no need to ever buy a CD again. One could argue there’s not much need to buy music either, since I spend more time listening online to Pandora or Blip.fm anyways.

So what will happen to books? I wonder if the publishing industry will meet the same fate as the music industry. I still buy printed books — but many people I know have switched over to the Kindle, and Kindle readers buy two to three times as many books as book readers. Or they’re just ditching books altogether and getting their reading from blogs and online magazines and news sites.

Working on the LWM social media team has been interesting because we’re essentially trying to use social media to promote and sell more copies of a print book, which is an interesting concept when you think about it. It’s harder to get people’s attention for a book when people are too busy to read any more and prefer to get their news and information in 30-second bits rather than long-form reporting and writing. And we’re trying to use social media, the very thing that’s contributing to the decline of longer-form writing and journalism, to do that.

So my question is: what will happen to books? Do you still buy books? Will actual hard copy books go the way of the CD?

One of the my projects outside of my job that I’ve been most excited about lately is my work on the newly released book You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe by Leslie Sanchez.

I’ve been working for the past few weeks with a great team that includes my friends Leslie Bradshaw and Erica Anderson, working on digital PR and online media efforts for this exciting book which takes a look at how the media covered Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama, and the roles of women in politics, media, and business today. And as anyone who knows me, or has read this blog, can tell you, this is a topic that I’m very passionate about.

When you look back at the 2008 election, there’s no denying that Hillary, Sarah, and Michelle all faced the tremendous barrier of sexism from the media and the American public during the 2008 election. Despite the fact that women are now told they can do anything they want, it seems that after the 2008 election, America is still afraid of powerful women.

A snippet of what the book is about:

“Leslie Sanchez is taking the assumptions and myths about women in politics and turning them on their heads.  YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, MAYBE (Palgrave Macmillan; October 2009) tackles hard-hitting questions like: Can women handle the stress and confrontation of life in the political limelight?  Why are women judged in terms of factors like fashion and approachability?  How did the media manage to boil down three complex women into the ditz, the bitch, and the darling of Election ’08?  D.C.-based Leslie Sanchez lives in the hotbed of high level politics, and can answer these questions with unparalleled authority, experience, sass, and candor.”

Leslie Sanchez is a prominent Republican strategist and pundit. I’m not a Republican, but am helping to promote her book because I believe in its message so deeply: the message that women have come so far, yet still have so far to go; and that more women need to take more prominent roles in America’s political leadership in order for things to change. That message is true no matter what side of the aisle you’re on or what party you belong to — and I fully believe that fighting for gender equality in American politics and media is something whose importance transcends polarizing, partisan politics.

So that’s why, although I’m not a Republican, I’m proud to support this book. And I think Leslie Sanchez may be just what the Republican Party needs more of in order to cast off its tired reputation as the party of old white men.

If you’re interested in learning more about the book or our efforts, we’re all over social media:

• http://www.twitter.com/LongWayMaybe (use the hashtag #LWM when asking “have we made progress?” on your tweets about women in biz, media, politics, etc.)
• http://www.facebook.com/LongWayMaybe
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/longwaymaybe
• http://www.youtube.com/user/LongWayMaybe (content forthcoming via journalist / video production rockstar Erica Anderson, aka @EricaAmerica)
• http://www.slideshare.net/LongWayMaybe (content forthcoming)
• http://bit.ly/LongWayMaybe (official Amazon page where you can purchase the book)

You may have noticed that I (and hopefully by now you’ve noticed lots of people!) changed my Twitter avatar today to the following:

I’ve gotten a couple questions asking, “Why?” So I wanted to throw up a quick post answering that question. Fortunately my friend Tanya already did:

I wanted to tell you about something I’m working on with some of my girlfriends – we’re mobilizing on twitter and elsewhere – and some are coming to DC – to make sure parity in cost is included in all the healthcare reform work.

Tomorrow Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is chairing a hearing begins at 10:30am in Dirksen SD-430.  Women have been called to testify about their experiences with insurance companies and discrimination. But you know who else is showing up? Karen Ignani, spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans.  So if you’re in the area and can come – please express your freedom of assembly and come to the hearing.

My day job beckons, but if you can spare your twitter profile pic, please feel free to use the one in this post – with thanks to the National Women’s Law Center and Rad Campaign.

If you’re unfamiliar with the problem gender inequality in our healthcare system, see my last post for more info.

In the meantime, like Tanya said — my day job beckons, but if you have a sec please feel free to change your Twitter profile pic as well! It may be small, but mobilizing online can be powerful — so I hope you’ll participate!

Apparently, health insurance companies decided that.

There’s definitely a lot of noise in the healthcare debate, but this is an issue that deserves our attention and shouldn’t be ignored. Women’s health issues are distinctly different from men, and one startling issue that has come to light as a result of the current ongoing debate on healthcare reform is that women are getting the shaft from health insurance companies in more ways than one.

Having had a pregnancy is considered a “pre-existing condition” for which insurers can deny women coverage.

Being a victim of domestic violence is another pre-existing condition for which, again, insurers can refuse coverage to women.

Only 14 states require insurers to cover maternity care.

Bring a young unmarried woman is perhaps even more dangerous. According to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand:

under our current system a 25 year-old woman pays up to 45 percent more for the same or identical coverage [than her male counterpart.] And yet, some of the most essential services required by women are not covered by many insurance plans…[services] such as childbearing, pap smears and mammograms.

And a 22-year-old woman with no employer coverage, who gets coverage in the individual market, can be charged up to one and a half times the same premium as a 22-year-old man.

When did this become okay with us? And why? Why are we okay with making it harder for women to get access to affordable quality healthcare?

Insurance companies have decided that factors that are totally out womens’ control — like being beaten up by a spouse or getting pregnant or even the simple fact that they MAY get pregnant in the distant future — are reasons that women are too risky for them to insure. Women are charged up to 48% more than men in the individual market.

What gives me hope, though, is that this issue is getting a lot of attention. Last week it was in my face constantly — and I consider that a good thing. Activists and elected officials alike are both taking action:

Last week, Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform asked a question on LinkedIn: “What is the biggest healthcare problem in your state?” — she’s already received over 840 answers and is planning to include some of the most insightful ones in a soon to be released White House webcast on healthcare. At first glance, there’s already been several answers raising the issue of women’s access to health insurance.

Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Women’s Working Group also hosted a press conference last week calling attention to the difficulties women have in obtaining problem access to health care.

Eight women Senators have been speaking out on the issue of gender disparity in our health care system. The video, if you haven’t seen it yet, is worth watching — it made me proud of the women we have elected to the Senate, who reminded listeners across the country that being a woman should never be considered a pre-existing medical condition.

I just hope their message gets through the heads of the right people.

I know a lot of women my age who won’t admit it in public, but don’t really know what’s going on with healthcare reform. And there’s nothig wrong with that — the healthcare debate is filled with Beltway jargon and partisan politics which completely detracts from the actual issues at hand. That’s why I’m excited about my latest piece at Lemondrop, which focuses on breaking down the healthcare reform debate in more understandable terms.

I may not be qualified to write authoritatively on it — I mean really, I’m no healthcare expert either. But maybe that’s what we need — more normal people talking about the healthcare debate and spreading the dialogue beyond the realm of just the policy wonks, experts, activists, and others who do this for a living.

If you have a minute, feel free to head on over to Lemondrop and check it out.