Interview with Andrew Rasiej: Founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and Techpresident.com

Founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and <i>Techpresident.com</i>, former Dean consultant

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Andrew Rasiej: Essentially, open-source politics is the acknowledgement that the citizens of a city, county, state, or country can solve far more problems for themselves than any single elected official. The thing is, the Internet is really a reflection of what exists in the real world but with certain facilities that are more efficient and easier. In political life, an organized minority is always stronger than a disorganized majority. And organizing is easier on the Internet.

Mother Jones: What should candidates be doing that they’re not, and why?

AR: They’re not making authentic video. They think every time a video camera’s pointed at their face it’s television. They still think that the technology department is a separate department in their organization; they don’t realize that technology isn’t a slice of the pie —it’s the pan. Technology affects everything. The pollsters should be using the Internet to do polling, and getting more nuanced information than just calling up people on the phone. I could go on and on. With Internet advertising, political candidates generally rely on consultants who get paid a percentage for recommendations of television buys, and there’s no mechanism for them to get any of their royalties for making recommendations on Internet buys. Therefore they’re pretty much missing an opportunity to use Google, banner ads, blog ads, and other kinds of Internet ad tools to get their message heard.

MJ: Are they also failing to embrace the web due to their fears?

AR: Big ones. They’re terrified.

MJ: Are those fears justified?

AR: Sure, if you’re not transparent.

 

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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