MySpace's political initiatives didn't end with the primaries: the News Corp.-owned social network has unveiled a contest in conjunction with NBC News and MSNBC.com in anticipation of the major parties' campaign conventions.
Part of the Decision '08 initiative between MySpace and NBC News, it's a competition to choose MySpace's "citizen journalist" correspondents at the major parties' national conventions later this summer.
Entrants, who must be MySpace members who are 18 years or older, must answer one of the following questions via a video submission: "Why do you vote?" "Why are you the best person for this job?" and "How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?" Entries open at noon Pacific time on Thursday, and close on July 16.
Contest judges will be MSNBC personalities Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, as well as MySpace president Tom Anderson (yes, that Tom) and Lee Brenner, director of the site's "Impact" political activism section. They'll choose five finalists, from whom two winners will be chosen by members of MySpace.
Convention reports, both text and video, from the two winning "journalists," will then be featured in MySpace and MSNBC's campaign coverage.
Social network MySpace might've chosen MTV as its media partner for the 2008 presidential primaries, but on Tuesday it'll be launching an election news hub in conjunction with the more traditional NBC News and MSNBC.com.
Called Decision '08, the new site is part of MySpace's "Impact" political channel, and showcases election news (complete with links to MySpace profiles of NBC News anchors and analysts), opinion, video from MSNBC, polls, and a discussion forum.
This is very similar to what MySpace rival Facebook is doing through a partnership with ABC News. For NBC, it's a way to reach a younger audience that likely isn't watching nightly news broadcasts.
"The 2008 election is proving to be the most youth- and technology-driven race in history, and MySpace is a significant forum for political discussion today," Lee Brenner, MySpace's executive producer of political programming, said in a statement. "We are privileged today to be partnering with such revered news organizations...and to be taking our first steps in what will be a unique and engaging collaboration for the MySpace community."
MySpace is owned by News Corp., which operates MSNBC competitor Fox News.
When News Groper, an entire site full of "fake celebrity" blogs in the vein of Fake Steve Jobs, launched earlier this summer, some people (myself included) thought it would have a rough time making a name for itself on the Web. There's so much online comedy already out there, and after the rise and fall of Fake Steve, I thought the blog community would've had enough of celebrity satire (celebritire?)
Now, however, it looks like News Groper may have had its big break--MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson mistook one of its blogs for real, and quoted it in an article. A soundbite from News Groper's Al Sharpton blog originally appeared in Johnson's story about African American leaders' reactions to the Michael Vick dogfighting case.
The faux Rev. Al blog post used an over-the-top analogy to explain that Vick, who is African American, was a victim of racist justice. "Consider this: If the police caught Brett Favre running a dolphin-fighting ring out of his pool, where dolphins with spears attached to their foreheads fought each other to the death, would they bust him? Of course not," the satirical piece read, as quoted by Mashable's Pete Cashmore. "They would get his autograph, commend him on his tightly-spiraled forward passes, then bet on one of his dolphins."
The fake quotation is no longer there, but some suspiciously small fine print explains the situation: "An earlier version of this article quoted from a blog entry purportedly by the Rev. Al Sharpton. MSNBC.com has determined that the blog is a hoax." Considering the title of every News Groper page contains the terms "Fake parody blogs, Political humor, Celebrity Satire, Funny Commentary," this is quite the little screw-up.
Oops.
Fake Al Sharpton, naturally, wouldn't remain silent. "Excuse me, Mr. Alex 'Investigative Reporter' Johnson of MSNBC, but before you go calling people a hoax, maybe you should take a long look in the mirror," the shadowy satirist behind the blog wrote. "When I said that Brett Favre was probably fighting dolphins against each other to the death with swords crudely attached by duct tape, it obviously wasn't real; it was a METAPHOR. First of all, the adhesive in the tape wouldn't hold up in salt water, and also, how many backyard saline pools have you ever swam in?"
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