Spinewatch will change political coverage

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 14 September 2008 02:01PM CST

Section: Media

Spinewatch#It started with CNN’s Campbell Brown holding a McCain aide’s feet to the fire, not letting him dodge a direct question asking for a single example of Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience. And it seems to have started a trend among other corporate journalists: they’re sprouting new appendages that could actually develop into something very closely resembling spines.

Now comes Jay Rosen urging his Twitter followers to point out examples of this phenomenon by including the “#spinewatch” tag in their tweets along with links to exemplary coverage. Because so many journalists follow Rosen, this idea will almost surely spread quickly. By tomorrow morning we’re going to be seeing “#spinewatch” tags everywhere and probably at least one Spinewatch weblog.

As I write this there are 61 Google hits for “spinewatch.” That’s only three hours after Rosen first tweeted his initial “spinewatch#” idea. Wonder what the Google count will be by the end of next week.

Oh, this just gets better. Rosen has created a spinewatch newsgroup on Scott Karp’s publish2.com. The meme has been loosed.

Update: Sunday, 14 September 2008 08:28PM CDT: Dan Gillmor extends the meme with the idea of a companion “spinelesswatch#” tag. Finally got around to watching the pilot for Fringe and not sure yet what I think. Best line, by far, was “excellent! Let’s make some LSD.” But then they injected it. Bad writing, no donut.

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