The Greatest Story Ever Sold- using the Blogsphere

I took a couple days off 'work' this week and went to Daytona, Florida to visit my parents who live in a neighborhood with no DSL service and absolutely no wireless to slurp off neighbors. It was the same story last time i visited only dial-up but i always forget and the first day is rough-like a cocaine addict on the first day of withdrawal i suppose.

It was Bike Week in Dayton this week (plenty of bloggers on hand), so i had plenty to keep myself busy with and the weather was gorgeous (although lame waves). This is what i want in case you are looking for an early B-day present for me by the way. So i went old-school with a book and even strayed away from the regular business-Internet books or even historical fiction (Italian Renaissance is my favorite) and went on a politics diet on the recommendation of my husband with Frank Rich's "The Greateast Story Ever Sold" which is a great and recommended read.

I won't bore you with my political views but will highlight a couple things that interested me in this media 2.0 world and how Frank Rich explains the adminstration's use of the blogsphere:

• It is evident that the blogsphere influence was used multiple times to distract, create a new reality or offset official news about what was happening from 9/11 to Katrina by the administration
• I won't be the first to blog about but it is evident that the next campaign is going to be using social media heavily as seen from examples like the John Edwards stint with Robert Scoble, to Barack Obama's MybarackObama.com, to Hillary etc. Conservative bloggers are buzzing again as well
• Aside from the up front social media in the previous bullet, some parties will leverage the blogsphere to dispute issues, raise doubts and propagate lies (Rich's book has plenty of examples)
• Laura Scott has a good post about the disruptive nature of social media on politics, in which she states "we're seeing social media play a similarly disruptive role in politics -- especially presidential campaigns -- as it has in business, by taking control of the message away from the campaign managers and placing it into the hands of the people ... all of the people."- i agree but somehow there also needs to be a check because there are many 'new' Internet users that can't simply understand the power of new media if they equate old media standards. I think most newspaper or TV media consumers can identify the spin that is put out by the editorializationof the news- let's hope the same extends for the blogsphere.