About / FAQ
What is BallotVox?
BallotVox features smart local perspectives on Campaign 2008. It’s the place to find the best blog posts, videos, pictures, and podcasts created by regular people — the best social media about the 08 candidates and issues based on close observations in towns and communities. We want to highlight the voices of interested citizens rather than professional journalists.
There’s an ever-expanding ocean of “user-generated content” on the web. Our job is to highlight the breadth of the online local conversations about Campaign 2008 — and to help you navigate them.
Which Campaign 2008 races does BallotVox cover?
Our primary focus is the 2008 presidential election. If we find we have the resources to cover the other federal elections as well as state and even local races, we’d love to do that, too.
Why does BallotVox focus on local perspectives?
The national-level experts and big-picture political bloggers get plenty of attention already. We want to animate the election debate with local angles. So this means we’re interested, say, in a border story from Arizona that speaks to immigration issues; or the opinion of an Iraq-war veteran on some aspect of the war that’s critical to the stay/withdraw decision. We’d also like to get outside the US and hear how people in Nigeria or Thailand or Pakistan feel the election will affect their lives.
Why does BallotVox avoid professional media?
We want to know what regular people throughout the country and around the world think about the election. They’re out there writing and talking and filming, but it can take a lot of digging to find the good stuff. We do it for you. We save you time.
We don’t have a blanket embargo on pieces by journalists and other professionals, but if the pros cover politics or the campaign issues for a living, you’re unlikely to find them here.
What kind of content does BallotVox feature?
What we’re looking for:
A blog post by a Minnesota high-school student on global warming; or one by a French farmer about one of the presidential candidates. A picture taken by a soldier in Afghanistan; or one taken by a supporter at a campaign rally. A video made by a mom with a strong opinion about American foreign policy; or one made by a dad with an interest in stem cells. A podcast episode on gun control made by a police officer; or one on social security made by a retiree.
Things we don’t feature:
Anything produced by any of the campaigns.
Anything from mainstream media.
Anything produced by large partisan or issue-based organizations.
Anything from a high-traffic or semi-pro site that explicitly solicits citizen journalism.
Anything that smacks of hatespeech or discrimination.
Anything that is unproductively or rudely partisan.
Blog posts written by journalists for their newspapers or magazines. Posts written by journalists on personal blogs in their areas of professional expertise. Posts written by high-profile political or issue bloggers. Posts on high-traffic blogs like Instapundit or Daily Kos.
Pictures taken by photojournalists or other professional photographers in their areas of professional expertise.
Videos made by professional videographers in their areas of professional expertise. Videos from mainstream media or high-visibility vloggers.
Podcast episodes of professional broadcasts. Podcast episodes made by journalists on their own time but still in their areas of professional expertise.
The gray area:
A post about a campaign rally written by a science reporter on her personal blog. (Probably OK; the topic falls outside her regular beat and she is writing as a citizen.) A picture of an immigration protest taken by a food photographer who happened to see the demonstration. (Probably OK.) A video by a neighborhood nonprofit working to prevent foreclosures. (Probably OK if the organization is very small.) A personal podcast on the Iraq war by a Middle-East history professor. (This one is tricker. The professor is speaking as an engaged citizen, albeit a very well-informed one, but is there local flavor?)
Sometimes we break the rules:
We occasionally flaunt our own rules when something semi-professional is just too good to pass up. Especially if it’s unlikely to have been seen by lots of people. In that case, we tag it probutcool (that’s “pro but cool”) on del.icio.us and on BallotVox. This video is a good example. It’s made by a semi-pro production company (against the rules), but it also has attributes we’re looking for: It’s a wry Sex And The City parody (humor). It delivers thoughtful vox pop from the streets of Beijing about the candidates, gender, and race (a local perspective). It’s also something that many Americans might not stumble across because it’s not in the MSM or on a popular US blog. We break the rules most often for videos because it can be a challenge to find good stuff in that medium.
You can read more about our guidelines here.
How do you select the things you feature on BallotVox?
We’re looking for voices that express many of public media’s core values. Rich detail, honesty, and engagement in public life are key. A healthy dose of humor and generosity doesn’t hurt either. BallotVox is nonpartisan, and we’ll do our best to highlight the full range of political opinions.
How does this site work?
We use del.icio.us to bookmark and tag everything we collect. Then we sort it for you by medium: on the Words page, the Videos page, the Pictures page, and the Audio page. Then we blog about some of the selections on the main page. Some of our posts are pegged to the news; others are simply features about candidates or issues.
How do you use photos on the BallotVox blog?
We use them in two ways. Some posts are about pictures that are part of the BallotVox collection. Those photos are also bookmarked on del.icio.us and appear on the Pictures page. Other posts just use creative-commons pictures for extra color or a fun editorial comment — these pictures generally aren’t among the BallotVox “picks.”
Why do you only collect English-language media?
In a perfect world we’d have triple the budget and translators on staff. Sadly, the world is not perfect.
Who came up with the BallotVox idea? And why?
BallotVox is the brainchild of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). The project is part of a public media “election collaboration” funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
Who works on BallotVox?
Jake Shapiro runs PRX and BallotVox. Katherine Bidwell is BallotVox’s curator. Sarolta Cump, Misa Dayson, James Mills, Ann Raber, Sue Salinger, Genevieve Sponsler, and Larissa Zhou are co-curators. Dan Choi, Robert DeBenedictis, Andrew Kuklewicz, and Nathan Woodhull solve our tech problems. John Barth and Charles Lane at BallotVox’s sister project (Campaign Audio) keep us in line.
Who is the BallotVox audience?
BallotVox is for anyone — you! — who’s interested in fresh angles on the 2008 election.
It also offers tools for public radio and public TV. These tools include feeds and widgets that can be included directly on station websites or used to inform election coverage.
If you’re out there in the blogosphere covering the election, these tools are for you, too. Please grab any feed or widget or link that catches your fancy.
How can I help?
We’ll be scouring blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and lots more to find the best stuff out there. But the web is huge and we’re small, so we need all the help we can get. If you have favorite bloggers, podcasters, etc., please send them our way. Even better, if you find specific posts or videos or pictures or podcast episodes that speak to you about the election, we want to know about them.
You can email links here: katherine prx org (turn it into an email address). Or, if you use del.icio.us, you can send us links by following these simple instructions (our username is ballotvox).
BallotVox’s WordPress theme was created by Bob.
