Today isn't the first time I have had the opportunity to go and visit NewsJunk, although it is the first time I was made aware that it wasn't just another errant weekend project of Dave Winer's, but instead something with apparent aspirations to supplant (or at least supplement) widely accepted political memetracker Memeorandum. But politics are in the air today, given that the Personal Democracy Forum is in town, and with that came the smell of opportunity for Dave's newest project. From his personal blog today:
I was tuned in to [Robert Scoble's] QikCast of his panel at PDF in NY, and heard him say that Memeorandum was the fastest way to get breaking political news just like Techmeme in the tech blogosphere. I posted a twit, disagreeing, I don't think Memeorandum is good at fast-breaking news, it has a 24-hour cycle, and top stories tend to stick there for the full cycle, keeping other less phenomenal stories that we see quickly in NewsJunk from showing up there at all.
Sometimes they show up 24 hours after they happen! That's just not good enough for news in a political year. That's why we started NewsJunk - to scratch the itch that Nicco and I (and many others) had. We tried to imagine the news system that Chuck Todd deserved, or Joe Trippi, David Axelrod, Josh Marshall or even Barack Obama himself. (McCain, only being "aware" of the Internet is not in a position to use it).
I can't fault him on that. He saw the opportunity, and he took it (even if writing about how he hoodwinked one of his buddies after the fact is a little bit … poor form?). I decided to give the site another look. The last time I took a look, it seemed to be completely dominated by nothing but left wing stories, with story descriptions that could only be described as narrowly opinionated. In my initial visit to the site, it was clear to me that Dave Winer's clear favoritism for Barack Obama and dislike for Hillary or anything representing an alternative viewpoint played heavy in the site's selection of news stories.
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