I remember watching CNN the Sunday Barack Obama announced his VP candidate- the 3:00 am text message he supposedly sent out to his followers and the media announcing Joe Biden as his pick- and Rick Sanchez was anchoring the 3:00 pm slot that very same day. It was during that show Sanchez announced (paraphrasing) “we are going to try something new today … We are going to be Twittering and we want to hear live and unfiltered what you the audience are thinking about Obama’s pick …” . As soon as he said “Twitter” I thought uh oh here we go again, the mainstream media trying to grapple with some new technology they don’t quite understand. After all it brought back memories of Larry King two years ago trying to announce that a podcast of his show was going to be available on iTunes. As he held an iPod in his hands while making the announcement he turned to his guest and asked pointing to the iPod “do you own a podcast ?” The guest embarrassingly replied that she did indeed own an iPod and will download his podcast. Needless to say Larry looked at her rather confused (talk about a “bad face” day 
)!
However to Rick Sanchez’s credit he seemed to have done his homework on this micro-blogging/social networking thing. He did confuse FaceBook and Twitter a couple of times but who cares as long as he was in the ball park. It was during that show I saw citizen journalism at it’s “best”. Someone apparently tweeted suggesting that perhaps it was a slap in the face to Hillary Clinton that the Obama campaign purposely picked the 3:00 am time to announce the VP pick in response to Hillary Clintons “3:00 am” ads attacking Barack Obama. Sanchez’s eyes literally popped out when he saw the tweet because up until then no one in the main stream media had even thought that was a plausible scenario. Not withstanding the fact that no one cares why they decided to make the announcement at 3:00 am it was nevertheless a moment IMO where Twitter moved one step closer to becoming mainstream. There were literally thousands of folks participating in the conversation during the show tweeting and sharing information.
Looks like CNN has recognized the “power” of live micro-blogging and Sanchez has a new show now called Rick Sanchez Direct that debuted today. I haven’t had a chance to see it but here is one opinion about it. IMO the key here is if Sanchez is able to effectively manage the “noise” then the show has a future. The problem with Twitter and other services like it is the “noise” factor. There are literally thousands of messages that come in and swifting through the rough to find a few gems is a daunting task.
This is a good first step however marrying traditional media with a new phenomenon.
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The tone of the McCain/Palin - is horrible and they should realize that if they think the U.S. has lost respect from the rest of the world during the Bush years, they have made a worse impression - this is coming from a Canadian - an outsider looking in and it isn't pretty