July 22, 2007

On the eve of tomorrow’s CNN/YouTube Debates, which will allow average citizens, through homemade videos, to engage the presidential candidates, I’d like to belatedly direct viewers to a clip posted in April by blogger-pundit and press-expert Jeff Jarvis. (Full disclosure: It was Jarvis who encouraged me to set up this blog in the first place!)

The clip, viewable HERE, is Jarvis’s hilarious advice to one candidate, John Edwards, and serves as a reminder of how the presidential hopefuls need to be mindful of remaining genuine as they make their pitches to the American public.

Jarvis runs BuzzMachine, one of the blogosphere's must-click portals for monitoring how news, new media, and old media intersect. The Edwards Advice clip is part of his PrezVid initiative, an attempt to gauge the 2008 presidential race through a YouTube-tinted monocle.

As I mention in Watching the World Change (pages 287-290), Jarvis began blogging on September 11, 2001. (Click HERE for a link to an audio narrative of his coverage that day). An editor for the new online startup Daylife.com, he is also the director of the interactive journalism program the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Tune in to CNN tomorrow night, or CNN.com, to watch the latest two-step in the electronic tango between politicians and the public.