(Yo, our party is tonight. See you there! - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
So this is fun. Columbia Journalism Review, which recently profiled BOR in their News Frontier database, wrote a story about blogs like ours who organize events offline to connect our readers and generate warm feelings.
Burnt Orange Report, a popular political blog based in Austin, Texas, held its first Republican "debate watch party" in September at The Tavern, a local pub. "Misery loves company," said the post publicizing the event, "and there's nothing more miserable than watching the state you love be destroyed by a self-serving politician."
The bar was filled to capacity with mostly progressive Austinites who came to discuss and jeer at GOP hopefuls over drinks and free food. At the second event in October, attendees played debate bingo, listening for terms like "9-9-9," "border," and "Jesus" in order to check off their squares.
The article also profiles 3 other online news sites that are working to engage readers through offline events. As news moves increasingly into the digital realm, it's fun to see what other ideas websites have for fostering a stronger community amongst readers.
We'll be back with more debate watching in 2012, but in the meantime, be part of our news-making social events by joining us Monday for our holiday party!
Burnt Orange Report Presents
"Ho, Ho, Oops: A Rick Perry Holiday Party" Monday, December 12
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Cuatro's, 1004 W. 24th Street
RSVP on Facebook
We'll have free food and lots of good cheer, and as always a few surprises.
Special Thanks to our Sponsors: Mayor Lee Leffingwell
Council Member Mike Martinez
Council Member Chris Riley
Austin Central Labor Council
We will be collecting goods for Capital Area Food Bank. Please bring at least one non-perishable food item. For every food item you bring, you will receive one raffle ticket into a fun holiday drawing.
Every few years, Burnt Orange Report reinvents itself. It last happened almost five years ago with a major site upgrade that gave our site its current look, and with the expansion of our writing staff from around four regular writers to around eight. In those five years, we've been through:
Special sessions where Republicans raised taxes while creating a permanent structural deficit that is the primary source of our current $27 billion budget crisis
The Boyd Richie vs. Glen Maxey TDP Chair race of 2006
Bob Gammage vs. Chris Bell primary in 2006, and Bell's subsequent run for Governor
The 2007 Speaker's drama, which culminated in the ousting of Craddick and election of Speaker Straus in 2009
The Rick Noriega U.S. Senate campaign
Clinton vs. Obama and one hell of a primary
The election of President Barack Obama
The Bill White campaign, and the accompanying 2010 massacre
Countless Austin city council races, State House races, and more
Throughout the years, Burnt Orange Report has provided an honest, well-researched, progressive viewpoint of Texas politics. We've made passionate arguments, broken news stories, and served as a community forum for Texas Democrats.
Now, we need you to continue the tradition.
KT, Matt and I aren't going anywhere entirely, but our roles are changing. For some time now, KT and Matt have worked diligently on a new design for BOR. Within weeks -- and possibly days -- we'll have the new site layout up and running, and with the new site we want to have new writers. Not just one, and not just two. We want eight or ten writers. We want writers from across Texas, not just from Austin. We want new voices from new backgrounds, able to write and analyze politics from Beaumont to Brownsville, Dallas to El Paso, and everywhere in between.
The qualifications are simple:
Willingness to take on assigned writing
Ability to brainstorm and creatively develop your own analysis
Strong technical writing
A passion for developing the way we think, understand, and act as Democrats in Texas
We will have much more on the future of BOR -- including the new roles KT, Matt, myself, Katherine and others will play -- in the coming days. Broadly speaking, though, know that we have developed a plan to double, then triple, our traffic. We are going to aggressively market our site, expand our readership and -- with that -- hopefully expand our influence in the state of Texas.
All we need is you to lead. If you want to be considered for a writing position on BOR, please send your name, contact information, where you currently live, areas/topics of interest you'd want to write about, and two writing samples of your choosing to phillip@burntorangereport.com. Thanks, and good luck!
(Just saying hello again to our evening readers. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
I'll begin this post by saying that there's no particularly easy way for me to explain everything I've felt about politics and life this year. I'm sure you've noticed that I've all but stopped posting on a regular basis on Burnt Orange Report and to an extent, I apologize for that. But given that it is coming up on my personal 7th Anniversary of officially writing here, I suppose it's better to have stepped away from politics for a while rather than to have burned out completely which, in this year, would have been easy to do.
Writing this post is as much for me as it is for the Burnt Orange Report community. So with that I offer the following as an update of where I was, where I am, and what the future may hold.
The Backstory
I think it was about a year and a half ago in partnership with fellow writer Matt Glazer that I began thinking about where I wanted to take Burnt Orange Report. Out of that discussion came the establishment of the first BOR office on East 5th Street in Austin. A number of months later we upgraded those offices in the same building alongside the establishment of Matt's new company GNI Strategies. While the beginning of great ideas for BOR, it was the start of the clock that has been continually running on my vision to redevelop this site. Similar to the TexBlog PAC which had a lot of great ideas for the cycle, things never really happened as planned. As a result, this past June I made the decision to discontinue BOR's office space when GNI Strategies was looking to expand. Once again BOR went virtual.
A Changing Outlook
I guess it was sometime in late spring, after the primary as well as my dad's successful election as Mayor of Fredericksburg that I began to think about what was next for me in politics. Unlike the previous three cycle, I didn't have any candidates I was particularly looking to work for or support- not that I needed to since I was working for ActBlue.
And as the summer wore on, my outlook on politics, especially Texas politics soured. Development deadlines for the next generation of this site slipped and while other writers were excited and hopeful about electoral outcomes, mine was decidedly pessimistic. I found it a bit incongruent to express my negative & contrary opinions on politics at the same time that I was supposed to talking to people about the awesome new ideas of what BOR was going to do and why they should support the development of that. So as a result I did nothing, discontinued our office space, and largely stopped writing with the philosophy of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". (I'll admit, that's a terrible philosophy for someone who started writing because of antagonistic reform oriented politics. I totally caved to 'The Man' on that one.)
Employment?
For those who don't know me well, my passion for politics is only about a decade old. Yes, for someone that's turning 26 next month that's still a big chunk of my life, but growing up my interests were space and science. If not for the aftermath of the 2000 election I very easily could have ended becoming a total nerd and/or geek, gone to MIT, and fulfilled my destiny to be the first man on Mars. (Come on, Armstrong on the Moon, Musselman on Mars... made sense to me). But I ended up tracking into UT's Government program where I later discovered (too late) a love for urban studies, GIS, maps, data, and geography in which I ultimately minored.
All that's to say, as much as I love politics, it's been in my life plan at some point to return to college and do graduate work in the urban studies/geography world. So when I started feeling the way I did about politics, I started wondering if the time to change directions had come prematurely.
These thoughts culminated with a mutual agreement last week to take leave from my primary employer ActBlue through the remainder of the election cycle. So while I'm 'unemployed' as of today, it's a bit of a misnomer. Many political operative types are self-employed and go through periods of random income levels throughout the year. This decision is actually an opportunity for...
The Future!
Yes, the future- the stuff that matters! I've decided, after a number of frank conversations with writers, colleagues, ActBlue, and trusted friends, that even though November 2nd is probably going to suck, there is a bigger picture here for politics in Texas. After all, with BOR now being a 5-time "Best of Austin" winner and myself apparently one of the Top 50, nay, Top 10 Most Influential Democrats in Texas it's pretty clear that in the infamous words of Monty Python, "I'm not dead" quite yet.
I'm taking time off from ActBlue to focus on moving ahead with the redevelopment of Burnt Orange Report (more on that soon). If possible, I'm going to try to get health insurance for myself for the first time in years and look at expanding that to the BOR staff via TexHealth. With any luck, we'll expand our political reporting and infrastructure and who knows, maybe I'll finally be able to do this as a full time job (because to the contrary of many people's beliefs, it never has been).
Alongside all this, I'm finally going to break down and learn how to drive and get a car. After all, to do a number of the things that I want to in the plan for the new BOR, it just won't be feasible with only my trusty bike, the less trusty CapMetro, and otherwise sad transit infrastructure in Texas.
So while the the lyrics of Sic Semper Tyrannis by Mae may express the lack of hope I've felt about this fall's election, I do have to thank Matt & Phil for filling me with the requisite political anger to return to writing. I also have to thank Mean Rachel who made 5 excellent observations on her 5th Anniversary of blogging; they are all worth reading but I was struck most by her 4th point.
4. If your heart is in the right place, write it.
There's no sense in being controversial for the sake of controversy. But if you feel that your heart is in the right place, don't ever let anyone tell you not to write something. You won't get in trouble for writing about something you believe in, even if it might make someone else mad. And if someone does get mad at you, chances are they weren't someone you'd want to know in the first place.
So I'm back, and while we may not always agree, together we'll build a better Burnt Orange Report and a better Texas. I invite your involvement, critiques, thoughts, and observations in the comments on this post as well as on future announcements about the specifics of how we can make these words a reality.
Coming back from Netroots Nation, we've had an extremely busy week talking about statewide candidates. We wanted to take some time this morning to look back at our major stories, both to give everyone a chance to catch what they may have missed, and to put some context around larger stories that have developed recently:
TX-Gov, Republican Edition: Kay Bailey Hutchison Stumbles Into the Governor's Race
Yes, Senator Hutchison's campaign announcement was the most dominant story of the week. But did anything get through? Rick Perry -- who has previously been described as a "cyborg" here at Burnt Orange REport -- stepped on every day of her campaign announcement. Moreover, it's hard to get excited about a candidate announcing, for the twelfth time, that she is going to run for Governor. Even the press started getting nit-picky this week with Senator Hutchison, proving her initial roll-out to be highly ineffectual and raising the question: does she even stand a chance against Rick Perry?
Michael began the week discussing an issue with the Tom Schieffer that goes unnoticed among the general uneasiness of his support for former President Bush -- that is, his actual stances on policy. From Michael's well-written post:
The rate of current events convince me that the basics of a campaign infrastructure will materialize and improve. But I'm not convinced that this will happen with all of the campaign. I worry that a full-blown Schieffer campaign will not offer any true policy proposals to the people of Texas.
Meanwhile, another possible candidate -- Ronnie Earle -- met in Austin with the Texans for Obama group. Katherine was in attendance, and wrote strong reviews of Earle in her post -- going so far as to say that "it appears that he's already considering the shape of a potential bid: a strongly-grassroots, supporter-driven campaign with an emphasis on personally connecting with the voters." However, that didn't make him immune from the same policy concerns Michael had raised about Schieffer, as Katherine wrote:
Earle enumerated several key issues on which this prosperity-push would focus, namely education, jobs, health care, transportation, and the environment. However, he demured from offering specific policy proposals, repeatedly stating that he wasn't a candidate yet.
No one really likes to talk about policy specifics in August of an off-year, and if given the choice, we'd prefer -- right now -- a candidate with a strong narrative that was able to go out and persuade donors that his or her campaign is serious enough to be investing in. But speaking broadly about public education and law enforcement isn't going to be enough -- and we encourage our candidates, our progressive organizations, our readers, and ourselves to begin forcing more specific discussions on policy in the coming weeks and months leading up to the filing deadline.
The U.S. Senate race is about to get serious -- especially now that Hutchison is officially in the Governor's race, and that she's announced her semi-sort-of-maybe-waffle-not-sure-can-I-take-a-rain-check-on-ever-making-a-decision candidacy, we are going to turn our attention not only to exposing her and Perry's horrific records as politicians, but also to the U.S. Senate race. This week, that conversation centered predominantly around Bill White.
Last Friday at Netroots Nation, White met in Pittsburgh with Texas and national bloggers to discuss his candidacy. Katherine's report on the event included the following positive outlook on the race:
Texas should take pride in having sent one of the most engaging and motivated Democratic candidates to Netroots Nation this year. That would be Houston Mayor Bill White...The Mayor came up to Pittsburgh during the annual gathering to address national bloggers and make the case as to why Democrats can and will win statewide in Texas.
The excitement and energy of my first Netroots Nation is still with me this morning, and I can't let it slip away without writing about it. So here it goes...
When I got off the plane in Pittsburgh, I just wanted to not waste my first Netroots Nation convention. Though I've written for Burnt Orange Report for over four years, this was my first time reaching out to the broader community in a personal way (I was backpacking in Glacier during last year's in my hometown of Austin). I didn't know how much more there was to desire from my experience.
But after my four days in Pittsburgh, I know how amazing the experience can be. As I stepped off my flight home on Sunday morning, and as I sit here now the day after, I find myself wanting so many things:
I want to go back to Pittsburgh. I want to wake up in our "Texas House" -- where most of the Burnt Orange Report staff and fellow friends were staying -- and take the 77D bus across town to the convention center. I want to have so much fun all day long that I feel sad when I finally have to get a cab back home. I want to stay in that space that held me the last four days, and never let go.
I want to go to a panel. I want to learn more about the work everyone is doing. I want to hear Charlie Cook and Nate Silver and the Pollster.com team talk about trend lines and context. I want to engage in a professional discussion about redistricting. I want to put a megaphone to the entire Momocrats panel and broadcast their message of parent-focused communication to the entire Democratic Party. I want to learn about field work, and ROI, and environmental policy, and the No On 1 campaign in Maine, and everything else. I want to embrace the knowledge and empowerment that comes from listening and learning to some of the most open, honest, and intelligent experts I've met.
I want to put faces to the names behind the screens, and let those faces become my friends. I want to feel inspired by two of our party's best communicators -- President Bill Clinton and Dr. Howard Dean -- and listen to them talk about the importance of framing the health care debate as a "people vs. insurance companies" conversation. I want to meet Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga and Chris Bowers again, even if it is just briefly and if I just feel like a fanboy while I talk to them. I want to meet the folks from DFA, and Media Matters, and Calitics, and Left in the West, and North Decoder, and e.politics, and Pandagon, and the Women's Campaign Forum, and EnviroKnow, and the dozens and dozens of new friends that I got to spend my weekend with. I want to fulfill the true promise of the internet -- strengthening nodes in our networks, to improve the openness of our democracy.
I want to hit baseballs at PNC park, and have drinks in the Warhol museum. I want to enjoy the wildness of Karaoke night and the Altar, and enjoy the quietness of texting with a new friend. I want to go where everybody knows my name...and if they don't, they want to smile and get to know me for who I am, and not how I can help them with their work. I'm terrible at schmoozing, but I never felt like I was schmoozing this weekend. Not once. I always felt like I was making friends, and to have that kind of environment around a large convention with people who (since it was my first one) were mostly online acquaintances is a special, special thing.
In the coming days, I hope to write about some of the major ideas that were discussed at the convention -- most importantly for us in Texas, about redistricting and what we need to achieve in order to maximize our electoral opportunities in 2010. Right now, though -- more than anything else -- I want to thank everyone that made Netroots Nation possible. I learned new things, made new friends, and had one of the best weekends of my life.
To all who made that happened -- my forever thanks. Now it's time to get back to putting all those ideas from Netroots Nation into action.
From left to right: Karl-Thomas Musselman, David Mauro, Katherine Haenschen, Phillip Martin, Matt Glazer.
Greetings from Pittsburgh! Let us begin by saying that Netroots Nation, as always, is an excellent convention, and if our Friday and Saturday are anything like Thursday, then we're in for a non-stop great weekend! Also, we want to thank our regular reader and commenter Randy Bear (follow at Twitter: @RBearSAT) for treating us to an awesome lunch on Thursday -- it was quite good.
We also should make mention of some of our friends we've hung out with a lot, including Ramey Ko, Sarah McDonald, and Rick Cofer. It's been great to have our own Texas group together a lot! While we're a little biased about last year's Netroots convention (held in Austin), this year's has certainly gotten off to a great start. Here's just a snippet of the highlights:
Polling Panel -- We enjoyed an excellent panel from Nate Silver (538.com), Charlie Cook (Cook Political Report) and Charles Franklin and Mark Blumenthal (pollster.com) in the morning about polling. They emphasized the importance of studying trendlines, and how blogs should always focus on the context of a poll -- no matter how good or bad it may be for our side. Both Charlie Cook and Nate Silver had dire prognostications for the 2010 congressional midterm elections (predicting at least 20 losses for Democrats), but the sobering news is simply a reminder of how vigilant we all must be in our fight to support Democrats and Democratic causes.
Redistricting Panel -- Our very own Matt Glazer helped lead a redistricting panel in the afternoon, talking a little about the history of Texas, but more on the importance of the upcoming election. We'll write more about this panel next week -- because of its extreme importance for Texas -- but suffice to say that bloggers and political professionals across the country will be looking to our State House races to see how the balance of power, nationally, could be affected. Also, we learned of a new website -- www.redistrictingfacts.com -- that launched Thursday morning, run by the DLCC, which will be used as a public forum just on redistricting.
President Bill Clinton -- President Clinton spoke at the conclusion of Friday, and he had us all on the edge of our seats. His communications skills are still remarkable, whether that involves planned remarks or spontaneous discussions (as happened in response to a convention attendee interrupting his remarks with some shouts). He is such an incredible leader, and it was an honor -- as it always is -- to hear him speak.
Those are just some of the highlights. Next week, we will write about more, and also share some very, very exciting press coverage we received while here in Pittsburgh (from Pennsylvania reporters!). In the mean time, we will prepare for a busy Friday, where we will hear Dr. Howard Dean speak about health care in the morning, attend a lunch that Bill White is hosting for Texas and select national bloggers, and try to make decisions about more incredible panels throughout the day.
We'll try to update throughout the day -- and follow us on Twitter if you want to know more. In the mean time, our thanks to Michael and Todd for holding down the fort for us while we're gone (and for David for somehow finding time to post as we're at the convention).
Starting tomorrow, I'll no longer hold the title of "Senior Adviser" and I will step back from the editorial and day-to-day writing duties of BOR.
Four years and one month ago, I started writing for Burnt Orange Report. In my very first post, I wrote:
I want what I say to mean something. I want to open up the mind's of those who are resigned to believe that nothing's going to change their world. Passionate persuasion -- that's my gig, because the devil's in the details, but our faith's in what we feel. Our faith asks us to be honest with ourselves, and share what we believe with those we can get to listen.
Today, I wanted to tell you about my latest efforts to engage in "passionate persuasion" and talk about what I'll be doing between now and November 2010.
I moved back to Austin to do consulting work for the Texas Democratic Trust. My work will focus, among other things, on how to help develop online outreach and communications strategies for Texas Democrats, in a way that will support our candidates, our county parties, and our statewide groups and organizations.
The opportunity to move back to my hometown and do work I love is incredible. While in school at Boston, I really missed home. I just missed the heck out of Texas, and especially Austin. My biggest consolation while I was in Boston was that I could always write for Burnt Orange Report. It was my home away from home, keeping me connected not only with the news and stories from down here, but with the family and friends from home.
Writing for Burnt Orange Report, especially in these last two years, has allowed me to continually express my passion for Texas politics. However, now that I am home -- and given the new job that I have -- I don't think it would be fair to continue writing for Burnt Orange Report in my current capacity.
Starting tomorrow, I'll no longer hold the title of "Senior Adviser" and I will step back from the editorial and day-to-day writing duties of BOR. Beyond the obvious personal reasons for this decision, there are some site-related reasons that made me think that now was the right time to change my role at Burnt Orange Report.
KT has hinted at this before: in the coming months, there will be some changes to BOR that will help grow the site significantly -- both in terms of the content we offer, and the audience it reaches. As we make that transition, there will be a growth in the kind of editorial decisions that must be made on a regular basis, as well as a concentrated effort to market the site that I, quite honestly, should not play a direct role in. Additionally, I think it would be unfair if others continued to expect me to post on a daily basis -- something I just can't commit to at this time.
That being said -- you won't be able to get rid of me that easily.
For a while, now, I've enjoyed writing larger, big picture posts. Some of those included:
Much like Glenn Smith will write big-picture analysis pieces on Burnt Orange Report from time-to-time, I will continue posting ideas, reports, and analysis that are imortant to the understanding of Texas Democratic politics. There may be an opportunity for me to do even better research than I have in the past -- or, at least, to share some of the better research done by others, which could ultimately help all of our conversations about Texas Democratic politics.
Therefore, I'm not completely leaving the BOR community. Like a contributing columnist, I'll still write on BOR. My posts will begin to take a new direction, and I will be posting less frequently -- stepping back from all editorial decisions and embracing a different role in the coming months through the 2010 election cycle.
But I'll still be around. As long as failed and corrupt men and women like Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are in charge of this state, I'm going to be around -- practicing passionate persuasion, and doing everything I can to share what I believe with anyone I can get to listen.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Enjoy the weekend, and I'll see you around.
The Burnt Orange Report is pleased and excited to announce that one of our writers, Todd Hill, was selected to be an Archer Fellow through the University of Texas at Arlington. Todd will leave for Washington, DC next year on January 4, 2010, and return on April 26th, 2010. BOR wishes to congratulate Todd on this prestigious honor.
The Bill Archer Fellowship is a highly competitive and prestigious internship program named after former congressman Bill Archer. Upon his retirement after 30 years representing the 7th Congressional District, Archer wished to leave a lasting legacy both in DC and within his alma-mater, the University of Texas higher education system. The Archer Fellowship is considered one of the highest honors a political science major can receive within the University of Texas school system. Todd will either intern at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, The Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Communications.
The Fellowship, although prestigious, is also quite expensive. Todd is the first in his family to graduate from college and has worked very hard to support himself through college while also co-founding and leading the Mid-Cities Democrats PAC in Northeast Tarrant County. Todd has contributed a number of great blog pieces since he joined the BOR family in early 2007 and we've been happy to have him as part of the Texas Blogosphere. Todd will continue his writing while he is in Washington DC so we look forward to hearing his perspective and following him while he is in our nation's capitol next year.
We here at Burnt Orange Report want to show our support by helping him to raise the funds he needs to cover the expenses of the Archer Fellowship and help him live in Washington while he is away. Todd has set a goal to raise $11,000 before he leaves in January 2010 and is already working hard toward reaching that goal, treating it like a candidate fundraising campaign (naturally).
Burnt Orange Report encourages you to chip in some money and help Todd get to Washington DC and pursue this tremendous opportunity that he has earned. Check out Todd's website at www.hilltodc.com and learn more about Todd's contributions to the progressive movement, the Archer program, and his fundraising goals. We hope you'll consider joining the Burnt Orange team in contributing toward Todd's fundraising goal today.
P.S. Remember, Todd's not leaving until next year, so he's making this a multi-faceted fundraising campaign and BOR readers are not on the hook for all $11,000! Since state PACS can make contributions as well, local ones in the metroplex will be helping Todd out. That also means the TexBlog PAC could help, too. In any case, consider giving today.
And to think that is another half a million visits since last October. So wonderful to pass another milestone as we close in on BOR's 6th Anniversary next Friday. We also passed the 8 million total pageviews mark last month.
This is a quick note to let you know that Burnt Orange Report is getting a long awaited move to a new server today. While there may be some intermittent "downtime" experienced as the Interwebz recognizes the IP of the new server, if everything goes right you wont notice anything.
The layout and look should stay more or less the same (maybe some small style, size, or spacing issues which we'll work out ASAP). The site should end up being WAY faster as a result and I believe that we'll be running on some slightly new code as well.
This isn't part of our eventual site redesign (which can now move forward more quickly) but is part of the "save soapblox" campaign that over $500 was raised from our readers as part of a national effort to ensure more stability in the state blogging network.
