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A couple of months ago we wrote about AirCongress, a site started by Danny Glover of the National Journal's Beltway Blogroll. The site had just launched and while the idea behind it was interesting -- it wanted, and wants, to be "the one place where people can go to hear and see the latest news of, by and about Congress" -- it was so new it was hard to judge it beyond its mission statement.
The site collects video and podcasts published by legislators, advocacy groups, journalists, and others. It's just Glover doing all the work -- it's not a Digg-like community site -- but he's doing us a potentially valuable service. Especially useful are his frequent posts featuring video from across the political web; see his roundup of post-SOTU video commentary from Josh Marshall and the folks at Americablog and audio commentary from Ed Morrissey of Blog Talk Radio.
When a candidate posts a video statement like, say, Hillary Clinton's announcement of her "conversation" with America (via one-way, pre-written video statements?) it will be useful to see others' video and audio responses in the same place on the site.
The site could move beyond its current editorial model. The right sidebar features "Producer's Picks," which are apparently posts that Glover thinks are particularly relevant, and they are. Why not give users a chance to upload their own video responses to official videos from lawmakers? Giving the site's readers more of role in content creation -- perhaps the chance to submit content themselves -- would help make the site feel even more relevant.
With such an increased focus on online video coming from presidential candidates, AirCongress seems poised to be the go-to place for primary and secondary video and audio sources -- if it can get a handle on how to create and utilize a community of readers.
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Creating A Community
Thanks for drawing attention to my site, Josh.
I'd very much like to hear from you and PDF readers about how to create and utilize a community. I have some ideas of my own, but I'm definitely open to suggestions.
One thing I'd like to do is get journalism students involved with AirCongress by having them interview their lawmakers back home. That accomplishes a few things: 1) It gives the next generation of journalists exposure to the new media they will have to learn in order to succeed; 2) it gives them good experience (and World Wide Web) exposure in political reporting; and 3) it lets citizen journalists hold lawmakers' feet to the fire back home.
That's just one of my hopes for the site. But like I said, I want to hear what other people are thinking, too. Tell me what you think AirCongress should be, and together we can figure out how to make it that go-to place I hope it will become in short order.
Danny Glover, AirCongress
Publisher/Executive Producer