I’ve gotten my fair share of internet/blogging enthusiasm with two recent reads, We the Media by Dan GIllmor and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager. Both are solid books.
We the Media is a must for any blogger or person interested in blogging and its permeations in “old media” and journalism. At its best, We the Media offers a fair look at how blogging will change the role of today’s journalist. Since Gillmor is both a print columnist and blogger, he looks at both sides and that’s something you don’t often see from people who think blogs are the best thing in the world to those who think they’re the worst. If journalism and media are the things which tickle you when it comes to the blogesphere – as opposed to, say, RSS or the business opportunities – then read We the Media.
Trippi’s book is a little bit of everything. A little bit of his personal history involved with campaigns, a lot on his joining and then leaving the Dean campaign, and a little bit on technology and the internet and how they will affect democracy. Woven together, the book is entertaining and a fast read. If you were involved in the Dean campaign – I wasn’t – or if you have read other articles chronicling the rise and fall of the campaign (of which there were many) then you may find nothing new in the meat of the book. Since Dean mania has subsided quite a bit, obviously, it is helpful to look back at the amazing numbers they put in, in terms of supporters, dollars, and attention. Trippi’s rallying cry is that the “movement” not die even though Dean went down. We’ll have to see. The mainstay line from Dean and Trippi has been repeated a thousand times, but reading this book it rang true in an inspiring way: You Have the Power.