Samantha Hermann

            Roy Bateman is a 56-year-old gay man living in San Francisco, the Mecca of American social activism. He is about as socially conscious as they come, especially when it comes to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) causes.  And yet he said this past October's National Equality March, which organizers say drew a crowd of 150,000 in support of LGBT equality, barely made his radar. How can this be?

           

            In part, it may be because the march was largely the work of a new, younger generation of LGBT activists.  Jay Michaelson, executive director of Nehirim, a nonprofit organization that focuses on LGBT issues in the Jewish community, said that the march had a distinctly youthful quality. He compared the march's organization to that of the Obama campaign. "There was a lot of use of social media and a lot of grassroots organizing, as a opposed to sort of a more top down approach," he said. The march also had an anti-establishment bent. "There was a kind of useful rebellious energy that was at the march. And then the rhetoric that was used at the march, the way it was constructed, and even the idea of having a march at all, it wasn't necessarily establishment politics," said Michaelson.

 

            The New York Times' coverage of the march quoted one attendee, Corey Johnson, 27, as saying that the day represented "the passing of the torch."  This begs the question; who are the members of this new generation who will bear the torch? What does their activism look like? How do they view the older generation? What issues are important to them? And, on the flip side, how does the older generation view the new generation? What is their relationship like? Is there a generational divide? And finally, how is all of this affecting the movement?  

 

The Wired Generation

 

            One of the most obvious things that sets the new generation of gay activists apart from their older counterparts is a pervasive reliance on and sense of comfort with the Internet, particularly social media. They have been dubbed Stonewall 2.0, a nod the 1969 riots that resulted from a Manhattan police raid of several gay establishments. Stonewall is widely regarded one of the first times the LGBT community fought back against the unequal treatment they received at the hands of the government. The Stonewall 2.0 moniker is quite accurate considering this generation's skillful use of sites like Facebook and Twitter to draw attention to LGBT causes coupled with their extreme drive to fight for equality.

 

            The NOH8 campaign, which protests California's passage of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, is a prime example of Stonewall 2.0 activism. At the campaign's core is a collection of portraits of celebrities and non-celebrities with duct tape over their mouths, representing the silencing of supporters of marriage equality during the election. 

 

            Though the campaign has held gallery exhibitions of the photos, much of its message has been spread digitally. Co-Founders Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley have taken full advantage of social networking sites as a grassroots-organizing tool.  Participants are encouraged to display their photos on sites like Facebook, effectively expanding the campaign's reach far beyond its Los Angeles base. "There are millions and millions of people on these networking sites, and for what we are doing it is easy for a lot of people to see it. We can get it to people in Brazil, we can get it to people in Australia," said Parshley.

 

            They have also used Twitter extensively, both to spread the word about the campaign and to reach out to potential celebrity participants in a medium that makes stars more accessible than ever before. "Once we saw Twitter and we saw that celebrities were kind of the pull there, we hopped on that early," said Bouska.

 

            The ability of the Internet to create virtual communities is particularly appealing to LGBT youth, many of whom continue to face prejudice and isolation. Stephen Searles, a University of California Los Angeles student who worked as a field organizer during the campaign against Proposition 8, said, "The most powerful thing, in my opinion, is for a young queer individual to be able to go online and find that other people share the same experiences. It is profoundly assuring."

 

            Michaelson finds this social media savviness to be a clear strength of the younger generation.  He said that social media are more than a useful tool but also a fundamental part of how activism is done today. "These tools are very potent. When I am running events with my organization, the first thing I think about is putting it on Facebook and using social networking and so forth. It is not like, oh, how do I take advantage of new media and hire a consultant?" Michaelson said.

 

            For Bateman, this shift to high-tech forms of communication is something that remains novel and a bit foreign, certainly setting his generation apart from the younger one. "What I have heard is that younger people who are using these technologies never escape from their friends, or are isolated. There is constant communication, and the concept that no one might know where you are at any point in your life is becoming a thing of the past," he said. While many in Bateman's generation have become comfortable with digital communication, there is a bit of a lag when it comes to newer web technologies. "You've got older people who have adjusted to email and website communication, but not the new forms of electronic communications - the social networking, the kinds of communication that are designed for extremely short messages," said Bateman.

 

            Of course, generational differences in technological know-how are not specific to LGBT activism, or even activism at all for that matter. In fact, signs point to the older generation gradually becoming more wired. Robert Nakatani, a senior strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union, notes out that as older people retire, they find more time to become acquainted with the web and its associated technologies.

 

            A recent New York Times article describes the work of Chris Bartlett, who has taken to the web to memorialize those who died during the AIDS epidemic and educate the younger generation on this important historical period in LGBT activism. On his site, The Gay History Wiki , he has created social-networking style profiles of those who succumbed to AIDS during the early years of the epidemic in Philadelphia.  He also uses Twitter, tweeting under the name @harveymilk in order to spread the word, in 140 characters or less, about LGBT history.

 

Historical Ignorance

 

            Bartlett's work is particularly interesting because there is some sense within the LGBT community that the younger generation is not as aware of their history as they should be. Kate Kendall, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, has found that the LGBT community does a poor job of communicating its history, which she feels is a great missed opportunity. "History is a really important tool for people to understand where we've been, how we got to where we are now, and how progress was made."  In fact, Kendall indicated, knowledge of history can actually help to enthuse the LGBT community.  She said,  "Anyone who looks at LGBT history should be very optimistic about how much we've been able to accomplish and how far we've come, and that can reinvigorate you and excite you and inspire you to continue fighting, because look how much we have achieved."

 

            Searles, who acknowledges being more educated on LGBT history than most of his peers because of his college coursework, agrees that history is a source of inspiration. "LGBT rights have come a long way in a relatively short time, and young activists want to move the project further and in ways more gratifying and accessible than simply donating money to a lobbying organization. I think the younger generation is inspired by the history of things like Stonewall and ACT UP, and thus the power of collective action," he said.

 

            Elders bemoaning the ignorance and disrespect of youth are a part of most organizations or movements. As Michaelson put it, "When you have a civil rights struggle, generations come and generations go, and young people are never fully cognizant of the gifts and the sacrifices of an older generation. We aren't grateful enough to Mom and Dad, let alone our elders in activism." 

 

            However, the LGBT movement is somewhat unique because it is part of a non-familial minority group. Searles said, "Ethnic communities are tied by family heritage and can pass along oral histories. The same can be said of religious communities, which often have regular services at which histories are preached. The LGBT community has nothing comparable to pass history along effectively. Queer people are not often born into queer families and not many LGBT gathering places are likely venues for oral history." 

 

            But, there is also a bright spot in this lack of historical awareness; it makes the movement seem less rigid to young activists.  As San Francisco activist Bateman said, "It was certainly true of me when I was younger. I had no idea about history or perspective of the wisdom that comes from knowing about the trajectory of issues over the years. And that was good and bad. It meant that I didn't really have a good perspective on things because I didn't know much of the history, but it also meant that I wasn't constrained by thinking it should take 20 years to achieve this or that."

 

            Michaelson echoed Bateman's sentiments, calling this lack of historical knowledge both a blessing and a curse. "The curse is that [the younger LGBT community is] not aware of history and where we have come from and can sometimes be a little tone deaf to where a lot of America still is. But there is a blessing in that, too. The younger generation is not held back by that history either," he said.  Michaelson said the older generation bears the scars of growing up in a society that told them they were degenerate. "Its impossible to just wash your hands of that kind of bigotry. The blessing of the younger generation is exactly their ignorance--the fact that they didn't go through that trial by fire," said Michaelson.

 

Tired of Waiting

 

            Being born into a climate that is largely more tolerant of homosexuality than that in which their predecessors grew up has changed the tone of the younger generation's activism. "The issue of whether gay is ok is not really on the table for much of the next generation of activists. They are not tentative about asking for their rights and worried about whether they are legitimate or not. There's an assumption of legitimacy, and that makes for a more potent kind of activism," Michaelson said.

 

            This has also bred a sense of impatience and frustration with the pace of progress within some of the younger generation, which is particularly evident in the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 8. The question of whether same-sex marriage should go back on the ballot in 2010 or be held another two years has been a topic of much debate in California's LGBT community. Proponents of a 2010 vote argue that it is better to keep up the momentum and push aggressively for immediate action. Those who prefer to wait until 2012 say a more prudent, calculated approach is necessary to avoid another defeat. A sense has emerged within the LGBT community that the 2010 group is largely made up of younger activists while the 2012 group consists of older, more experienced activists. 

 

            Nakatani, who places himself in the older generation, said part of the reason for the divide is that there was a generational difference in the reaction to the passage of Proposition 8.  "I think [younger activists] felt the outrage more. Those of us who have been around for a long time, we are sort of used to losing...When people say 'I can't believe this happened in California,' from my standpoint it wasn't surprising to me that it happened in California." This is a notion Kendall, who was part of the steering committee for the campaign against Proposition 8, is all too familiar with. "We faced a lot of complacency by people who just assumed we were going to win, and that was an enormous frustration," she said.

 

            Jonathan Nelson, a 26-year-old Los Angeles casting associate, said he was floored by Proposition 8's passage, but admitted he hadn't done enough during the campaign to fight against it. "I was in the midst of being a gay man, and voting on this...and not really thinking that it was going to pass. I didn't really put in enough effort in my own right to realize that there are people in California that don't see the same view that I do." Nelson supports going back to the polls in 2010, and said there is a risk of losing momentum if the issue is held until 2012: "I think [we should] keep it in people's faces. There is no reason to keep it out of the public eye. If we are fighting for our rights, why would we wait four years?"

 

            Michaelson said Nelson's views are typical of the sense of impatience he sees in younger activists, and something he thinks can be a strength: "I think it is really important for a younger generation to kind of say, well, we are not going to wait and be patient. We are going to demand our rights now, and we are not going to be taken for granted" Kendall agreed that this sense of impatience can serve as an important reminder for more experienced activists. She said, "I think that those of us who have been doing this for some period of time need to question the assumptions that we make about how things happen and how change is made because we should be able to move things more quickly than we are. And if that's not happening, it could easily be a function of us accepting more incremental gains than we should."

 

            While anger and impatience can be useful, Bateman cautions that they need to be used strategically.  He said,  "I think there is some sense among the group that wants to put the marriage issue back on the ballot in California that if they campaign in areas where there isn't support for same sex marriage and have confrontational protests in those areas that they will win people over.  In fact, said Bateman, when it comes to winning over non-supports anger can be counterproductive. "Being confrontational, frightening them, being disrespectful of the beliefs they have either been brainwashed to have, or honestly, sincerely believe in - I don't think it's a useful strategy," he said.

 

            For Nelson, impatience itself makes a powerful statement. He said, "We can change this. If we can move it to where we can actually force it to come back in two years as opposed to four years; then you have already said something to the entire country--that enough people believe in this where we actually got it back on the ballot in two years."

 

            While he appreciates the eagerness and drive of Nelson's generation, the elder generation's Nakatani is apprehensive that the push to go back to the polls in 2010 is not the best use of this force. He said, "The 2010 issue is scary for me. I am willing to be pushed by young people and really like their energy and I like the new perspective, but I worry if we lose again in 2010, that it will be a generation before the thing will come back."

 

            But Nakatani credits the younger generation with bringing the marriage issue to the forefront of the movement in the first place. He said, "The younger people really pushed the rest of us within the movement to embrace the marriage issue. Most of us who were doing relationship recognition were much more incremental in our approach." And, according to Nakatani, it's not just marriage.  Youth were also an important force in igniting the issue of gender identity within the movement. He put it this way, "Although many of the young people are not transgender, they come from a whole history of having to deal with gender theory and queer theory in college and gender nonconformance. They have a much more concrete understanding of it, and they have pushed the rest of the movement to do that issue."

 

            Nakatani expressed that younger people who push more forcefully on certain issues are playing a key role in the overall movement, even if society as whole is not prepared to meet their demands. He said, "What it does is that it creates a certain dynamic within the world where what this group is asking for is so out there that it makes modest gains much more possible," he said.

 

Just Getting Started

            Another consequence of Proposition 8 and recent losses in the fight for same-sex marriage in other states across the country has been to rouse a faction of the younger generation who previously saw no pressing reason to be active in the LGBT movement.

 

            Kendall believes part of this complacency is the result of growing up in a less homophobic society. She said, "If you look at people in their twenties and thirties, many of them came of age in a time when they pretty much could be out and had relative social acceptance. There were positive gay images on TV or in movies, the kind of things that those of us who are in our forties and fifties never saw. And I think that those gains, to some degree, made a lot of folks think, well, its all taken care of...I don't really need to be engaged."

 

            Kendall feels the passage of Proposition 8 awakened a sense of shock and outrage in some of those who had become complacent. She said, "I think the loss on Prop 8 really was a galvanizing wake up call that we have come maybe so far in social acceptance, but if we are going to make it the rest of the way where we really are an accepted part of the natural culture and landscape in this country, it's going to take many more people to be engaged."

 

            There is also a notion that some of the impatience attributed to the new generation, especially with regards to the push to go back to the polls in 2010 is not necessarily a function of age, but rather of being new to a cause. Nakatani said he believed it was not simply young activists who were pushing to go back to the polls in 2010, but specifically new, young activists. Nelson, who falls in this category, is extremely passionate about fighting for equality, but also acknowledges that he isn't necessarily well educated on what it may take to get there. He had, for example, a vague awareness that Proposition 8 was going to be challenged in the California Supreme Court, but wasn't sure if it had or had not yet happened. For the record, the Court upheld Proposition 8 in May 2009.

 

            Fledgling activists like Nelson may have a long way to go, but the movement is welcoming them with open arms. Kendall said getting more people involved in the movement is vital to make further progress.  "We need a lot of volunteers in order to do the outreach to communities of color, the faith communities, and to potentially persuadable voters, to have the direct conversations with them to change their minds. This can be done, but it requires a very strategic, a very deeply thought out and widely canvassed plan. We have to reach and talk to about three million voters and finding where those people are, getting to them, engaging them in conversation, and moving them all requires enormous resources of personnel and financial support" said Kendall.

 

We All Can and Do Just Get Along          

 

            Whatever the generational differences, both useful and divisive, there seems to be widespread agreement that both groups can learn from each other and work together harmoniously toward a common goal. Some even say talk of a divide can be dangerous. Searles points out that things are not necessarily clear-cut. "I doubt that there are two easily distinct groups and further doubt that they are simply separated by age," he said. He worries about damage from such categorization. "Unity is of utmost importance, and while we do not have to all agree on everything, dividing ourselves into an "us" and "them" could be very harmful. We need to bridge gaps across and between communities, not create them," he said. Bateman agreed, saying, "I think when people are trying to comment on a social change or write about it, there is always a need to talk about categories, and that is useful conceptually, but sometimes the categories blend a bit."

 

            Whether the divide exists in a concrete form or not, the LGBT community as a whole appears to have been roused by the action packed period of both impressive strides and devastating setbacks on the political front over the last few years. Kendall, from the older generation, is hopeful that this will result in a more powerful movement going forward, where many more than the one percent of LGBT people she estimates have been active in the past will become advocates for the cause.

 

            For Bateman, it is not just stronger activism that he hopes will result from the infusion of new voices into the movement, but also a more supportive and cohesive community. "In theory, if we had a stronger LGBT community where there was more communication and interaction between older and younger people, younger people who weren't getting support from their families would find it from a larger representative family," he said.

 

             Just as having children both vitalizes and strains a traditional family, so too has the birth of a new generation of activists vitalized and strained the larger LGBT family Bateman refers to. At the same time, the LGBT community as a whole can expect to further experience the joys and bonds of being a family.  For the older generation, this includes the sense of having a legacy to pass on to a younger generation, which both challenges and invigorates it.  For the younger generation, this includes having older role models to learn from and challenge newer beliefs, as well as offer a sense of community and identity.

             A Los Angeles-based Ethiopian human rights organization has joined the global campaign to free political prisoner Birtukan Mideksa, who is serving a life sentence for alleged attempts to overthrow the Ethiopian government.

            Andinet Los Angeles, which is also known as Kinijit Los Angeles, works to educate the public about what the organization's chairman Mesfin Hailu called the "brutal dictatorship" that currently has power in Ethiopia. "There is no rule of law in Ethiopia... nobody supports the existing government except those who are benefiting from that ruling government right now," he said.

            The country's ruling party is the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, led by prime minister Meles Zenawi, who the party said was elected to a second term in a hotly-contested 2005 election. Mideksa is a member of the opposition party known as Kinijit or the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, which Hailu said was the rightful winner of the 2005 election.

            Mideksa, along with other Kinijit leaders, was jailed for 21 months to prevent them from taking power after the election. The group was released as a result of what Hailu called the "pressure of the worldwide media and democratic supporting groups." Mideksa, however, was re-arrested after the government reversed her pardon on the grounds that she failed to meet its terms because she did not apologize for her crimes. 

            Hailu believes the real reason Mideksa was taken back into custody was because she is a political threat to the current government. "There is an upcoming election next year. They know she is the only one who can win. She is the leader of the biggest opposition party, so they throw her in jail," said Hailu. In response to her re-arrest Andinet Los Angeles launched a local campaign to fight for her release.

            Andinet Los Angeles' campaign is part of a larger global campaign, known as Free Birtukan.  Yonatan Amezene, the organization's online campaign manager, said Andinet Los Angeles' work has been particularly helpful in garnering attention for the cause. "Most of our activities are done by our chapters...The Andinet support organizations, such as Andinet Los Angeles, provide us with tremendous support, as Birtukan is the leader of the party in Ethiopia they are supporting." 

            During Los Angeles' annual Little Ethiopia Cultural Street Festival, which was held in September, Andinet set up booth to educate the community about Mideksa's plight. Hailu said his goal that day was to be "a voice for the voiceless." "Birtukan Mideksa spoke the truth and that is the only reason she is in jail. I am trying to speak for her. Just to stand up and say her name makes me feel proud," said Hailu.

            Those who stopped by the booth were given the contact information of their California senators and asked to call and express their concern about Mideksa's imprisonment.

            The group also set up a simulated solitary confinement cell inside that attendees of the festival were encouraged to spend two minutes to get a sense of the conditions Mideksa faced. "It is a rat-infested corrugated metal shack...She is in a 6-by-6 foot cell, which is deplorable," said Hailu.

            Hailu said that there is a great deal of support for Mideksa in the Los Angeles Ethiopian community. "All the people you see out here, they are all trying to expose the government and show what good Birtukan is trying to do for the country," he said.  

            Though she remains in prison Amezene said Mideksa has since been moved out of solitary confinement.  Still, aside from her young daughter and ailing mother Mideksa has little contact with those that are fighting to free her. "The government refuses to allow [other] visitors, including her attorney, despite a court order to do so," said Amezene.

            Amezene said that the biggest change in her situation recently has been what he called the "tremendous pressure the Ethiopian government is under" from nations around the world to free Mideksa.  Amezene said this is in large part thanks to the work of organizations like Andinet Los Angeles.

            Amezene expressed hope that the upcoming elections in 2010 would serve as an impetus to freeing Mideksa. "It seems that it is in everybody's interest to have the elections perceived as legitimate as possible, and the imprisonment of Birtukan is and has always been a symbol of repression," he said.

            Hailu said Mideksa's imprisonment is just one of many atrocities committed by the Ethiopian government which he and Andinet Los Angeles will continue to work to bring to light. "What we have is the rule of the jungle in Ethiopia. These people came by force. They have no mandates. They are not elected. We are trying to expose that to everybody for Ethiopians' safety." 

 

Watch Mesfin Hailu talk about Birtukan Mideksa at Los Angeles' Little Ethiopia Festival:

 

            By Hollywood standards Daniel Assael is a success. He works as an executive at a production company in Beverly Hills. Fuel, a documentary he was a producer on won the audience award at Sundance in 2008.

            Assael, however, defines success differently.  His real passion is entrepreneurship. Over the last two years, however, Assael, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Business Management of Economics, has been bitten by the start-up bug and said he has been "trying to come up with different ideas to make money."            

            One such idea is Beyond A Date, a dating website designed to bring together groups of people with common interests and alleviate some of the awkwardness of one-on-one blind dates. Assael founded the website along with his ex-girlfriend.

 

Hear Assael explain what makes Beyond A Date different: 

 

            Startups have a notoriously low success rate and often struggle to raise the capital necessary to get up and running. Assael said Beyond A Date is somewhat of an exception because the costs of running the site, both in time and capital, are relatively low. "It is very low start up. I can pretty much program the whole thing...I think it costs me about ten bucks a month, which I can handle," said Assael. Still, Assael said he would eventually need funding for marketing and promotion, which he has yet to start. 

            Even with funds for marketing and promotion Assael said finding a business model that will make Beyond a Date profitable may be a challenging.

 

Hear Assael explain what he foresees will be the biggest challenges for Beyond A Date and his expected solution:

            In addition to Beyond A Date, Assael is also working on two other ventures that he declined to speak about on the record because both are still in the development stage.

           For now, Assael's biggest challenge is finding the time to be an entrepreneur. "Working full time is how I am earning money and surviving, so time is really the hard part. If I am working from 9am to 6pm and then I get off and work for a few hours on other projects, it is limited. Projects take longer than usual," he said.

            In the future Assael hopes one or more of his ventures will allow him to make up for some of the free time he is missing out on now. "In ten years, I see myself probably coming into a office maybe two or three times a week, just checking in on things. I don't see myself working 60 hours a week. Hopefully by then my partner and I will hand off the duties to someone else. We will still be running things, but we won't handle day-to-day operational stuff. "

One in every 230 people in California is homeless (2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress).

Seventy percent of California's homeless population lives outside of shelters (2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress).

Los Angeles County is home to 44% of California's homeless population (2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress).

The 2009 Santa Monica Homelessness count recorded a point-in-time homeless population of 915 individuals in the city (Santa Monica Homelessness Count).

There are currently 432 shelter and transitional housing beds in Santa Monica (Human Services Division of Santa Monica).

80% of Santa Monica's homeless population is estimated to have substance abuse problems. 38% are estimated to suffer from mental illness (Ending Homelessness in Santa Monica).

In July 2009 the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Santa Monica alleging that police were violating the civil rights of the city's homeless population by harassing and arresting them in order to pressure them into moving to other locations (Los Angeles Times).

In the Internet-age skeletons never stay in the closet, and the Average Joe can perform a background check from his home computer. Private and public citizens alike are realizing that their so-called "digital footprints" are the basis on which they are judged for everything from a job interview to a first date.

This is a particular issue for journalists, who are, at least in theory, supposed to be pillars of neutrality. How can a journalist project a neutral and objective image when his audience can find out about his political party affiliations, domestic disputes, and net worth?   

To illustrate this point, consider "The Today Show". It certainly does not provide the most serious or analytical take on current events (Matt Lauer dressed up as Humpty Dumpty this past Halloween), but it is where many Americans turn to get their morning news, garnering an average 5.4 million viewers each day during the 2008-2009 season. So how much do we really know about the hosts of the show to which so many of us devote those bleary-eyed morning hours? Probably not much aside from the carefully crafted images they present to viewers on the show. However, a simple Google search reveals volumes about these figures who seem so familiar and yet we actually know so little about. What we fine online could substantially alter the light in which we view them.

Take Matt Lauer, for example. Did you know that Lauer is a college dropout? That is at least according to several sources on the web (here, here, and here). The Today Show's official biography lists him, simply, as a graduate of Ohio University; however, according to the other sources, he was indeed awarded a degree in 1997--18 years after he left, with the university counting his journalism experience as independent study to make up for the credits he needed to graduate, but never earned. Does the fact that Lauer never finished college matter? Not really. If he does his job well, the piece of paper vouching for his intelligence becomes irrelevant. The point is that "The Today Show's" attempt to this mask this unflattering information in Lauer's biography probably would have been successful, were it not for the Internet. But, can we even trust the sources that have given us this information? Maybe, maybe not.  Since these references to Lauer's supposed college dropout status from aren't from "reputable" sources, who is to say whether it is true or not?

That said, even seemingly benign factual information from reputable sources that is readily available on the web could be damning to a Lauer's public image. For instance, he recently spent $2.15 million on a waterfront home in the Hamptons. This doesn't reflect poorly on Lauer per se, but it is also not exactly something that makes him relatable for the average American who watches "The Today Show".  A story on families struggling to make ends meet during the recession, for example, might seem ridiculous coming from a man who just purchased a multi-million dollar vacation home.

 Then, there is the question of Lauer's objectivity. Does the web shed any light on his political leanings? Campaign donation records don't show any contributions made by Matt Lauer, but his wife, Annette Roque Lauer, is listed as having contributed $2,300 to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Lauer's wife's political leanings don't necessarily say anything about his own views, nor do they indicate that he is biased in any way; however, the very fact that they are so readily accessible marks a change in the way the audience relates to journalists. Reporters always had political leanings; now it just easier to figure out what they are. Even if Lauer was as objective as humanly possible when reporting political stories, an audience member who has this information is going to look at his reporting through a different lens.

More and more, broadcast journalists are becoming celebrities in their own right and Lauer is no exception. This also means that they are subject to the perpetual rumor mill that typifies the celebrity scene, and in the Internet age a quick Google search can resurrect a rumor long after the whispers have died down. In Lauer's case his marital woes have been fodder for gossip. Celebrity blogs are awash (here, here, and here) with postings claiming Lauer's wife keeps a list of all the women he has slept with during their marriage and has threatened to make it public if he strays again. The story seems a bit far-fetched, but regardless of its validity, it is out there for all to see.

Lauer's own contributions to his digital footprint are relatively shallow. He does not seem to have a publicly available Facebook profile nor a Twitter account. In some ways this protects him from Internet slip-ups and criticism for postings, but on the other hand it also means his control over his digital footprint is limited - he is not putting anything out there to confirm or deny anything that anyone else is putting out there. 

Reporters have always had personal lives, political views, and secrets, but with the advent of the Internet, the line between private and public continues to blur. This is true not just for public figures like Lauer, but also for private citizens. In fact, it is an issue of increasing concern for younger generations growing up in a time when their every move from birth (or even before in some cases) through maturity is documentable and searchable by the general public. The way we interact and learn about each other has fundamentally changed, and the ramifications of this change are still being realized. 

There are no take-backs in the internet arena.  When ABC reporter Terry Moran tweeted (and later deleted) that President Obama called Kanye West a jackass, story took off like wildfire. The comment was in reference to Kanye's interruption of Taylor Swift's VMA acceptance speech.  Even though it was nothing more than an off-the-cuff remark, given in a supposedly off-the-record portion of an interview with CNBC, it has been scrutinized as if it was a formal presidential statement about the incident. Nowhere has this scrutiny been as widespread as it was on Twitter, which is fitting because its truly a twitter-generated story.

Many in the Twitterverse chastised Moran for what they seemingly deemed a breach in the unspoken new media code of ethics. Vchandel wrote, "ABC's scandal-mongering Terry Moran has hit a new low in the sensationalist American journalism. He is now fit to work for TMZ."  Thesleepyvegan shamed Moran with the hash tag "#ifoldpeopleusedtwitter". Shannonbuggs highlighted the gray area of journalism ethics with regards to Twitter saying, "ABC's Terry Moran eavesdrops on CNBC's POTUS intvu, tweets off-the-record quotes w/o crediting CNBC & keeps job? http://bit.ly/1Eipuu."  It seems contradictory that twitterers rebuked Moran for tweeting the remark although they themselves were tweeting about it. If they truly thought the remark never should have been released, then why create further buzz around it?

Twitterers were also eager to weigh-in on the appropriateness of Obama's remark itself. One popular tweet on the topic was "just voted 'Yes' on 'Obama calls Kanye West a jackass' - Acceptable?" vote too ➔ http://bit.ly/3U6EU0." The link takes users to PollPigeon, where they can vote on the acceptability of the president's remarks, and then share their vote with their followers. Pollysmall wrote "LMAO...Finally the video of Obama calling Kanye a jackass. I love how nonchalant he comes off http://bit.ly/1eTA04."

Sure, Kanye was acting like a jackass, and I think it was refreshing for the American public to see Obama in such a candid and relatable moment; But, I fail to see what value is added through opinion polls and links to the video of the remark. It seems people feel compelled to comment simply because they can.  I suppose you could argue that the story spread to those who might not have otherwise come across it via these tweets, but with such a trivial story, is there really any value in that? 

On the other hand, a few Twitterers used the event as a lens through which to broach other discussions. Regarding recent congressional politics, RayThomas101 tweeted "Obama calls Kanye West a "jackass" (true) and nobody asks him to apologize and everybody asks for a Joe Wilson apology for saying truth." AliveAmplifed wrote "Yo, Obama im really happy for you and imma let you finish. But Canada had the best healthcare of all time. OF ALL TIME #kanye."  While these and other discussions weren't adding any new information to the story, at least they were posting something worth sharing - a thought with some degree of originality.             

Did I learn anything new about the incident from following the tweets about Obama's remark? No.  This is not to say I see no value in Twitter. It is an amazing tool for social organizing, forming communities around a particular issue, and enabling citizen journalism and eyewitness reports. However, for me, some of the value of twitter as a news medium gets lost in all the noise and repetition.