LOL President meme, World of Warcraft style
November 9, 2008
Probably only hilarious if you play World of Warcraft, but I certainly LOLed. 
Achievement Unlocked: President of the United States (and i loved the name of the album: “dps the skull ffs”, which again, you’ll only laugh at if you’re a dirty warcraft player like me).
The US election 2008 – what worked on the web
November 9, 2008
Of course now that the US election’s over we’re in post mortem mode. As an online journalist, I was pretty blown away by the depth of news, analysis and polling information available online, and the increasingly sophisticated ways people are pushing and sharing election news online.
Here’s a brief look at what tools worked best for me as I followed the election, as the web editor looking after Crikey’s US election coverage. I wrote it in response to one of Fairfax’s tech journos who was arguing that people still rely on “mainstream media” as their first point of call for political coverage of things like the US election.
I can only assume that you didn’t just spend the last x number of months knee deep in the incredibly awesome political blogs covering the US election, as I had the good fortune to do.
While Australian political blogs tend to be analysis rather than newsbreaking, there are a number of US blogs with the resources to actually have reporters on the ground. Politico is just the first one that springs to mind.
Blogs plus aggregators like Real Clear Politics and lately Daily Beast were my first port of call for US election news. They would always point to any “MSM” stories I needed to see.
On election day I found Oliver Burkeman’s live blog at the Guardian more useful than CNN. The only time I went looking for a newspaper site specifically was when I went to LA Times because I figured they’d have the most up to date polling figures on the Prop 8 vote.
Blogs and aggregators aren’t just about analysis, they’re also becoming increasingly important in pointing people towards the news they want, fast.