Two Great Chronicle Articles: Web to TV & Blogging with Babies

In today's Chronicle, two interesting articles:

First, "Web sites enable campaign TV ads on the cheap" by Joe Garofoli tells about how the web and sites like VoterVoter.com and SpotRunner.com are making video ads easier and cheaper to create and disseminate, and it discusses the ramifications of this in terms of the presidential campaign.

Micah Sifry of techPresident (and the Personal Democracy Forum) is quoted about how technology and "mass participation" is changing the face of politics. Anyone who has worked in a statewide or national campaign knows that the majority of campaign budgets go to TV advertising even now with the Internet gaining speed and digital democracy becoming a more prevalent term.

Still, the majority of voters are reached through television and it's expensive. This is why the Internet staff always takes a back seat in terms of campaign strategy; it's just a fact that television still makes the rules. I see the tides turning, but it will take time. Sites like these will help with the transition to new media as new generations of voters who are online gradually become the majority.

Second, one of my co-contributors at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog Group, Charlene Li is mentioned in Ellen Lee's article, "In parenthood, sometimes a blog is born," which I know from personal experience has many truths. Granted, I wasn't twittering from the delivery room, but blogging helped keep me sane while on bed rest and going through a lengthy postpartum recovery.

The article also quotes Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer cofounder, and it throws around buzzwords like Web 2.0 as much as possible to get socnet cred. What is most poignant about this piece to me are the stats about how much moms are targeted now in advertising online. It's always been that way on TV, but now mommybloggers are discovering their power with corporations and other sponsors to this effect. Beth Blecherman has a great post up at SVMoms that touches on this, and I think it may be eligible for some kind of "most links in a post" award.