Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, the guy who thinks President Obama is "sort of God" and writes articles that reveal his infatuation, wants people to think he doesn't use Twitter because they hear enough of his nonsense already. Here's what Meacham said on C-SPAN:

I'm not. I feel that if anyone wants to call me, I'm available. I don't. We have it on the Web site. And I think it's a fascinating phenomenon. But I figure that the people who know me certainly have to listen to me too much anyway, at least that's their view.

That's one theory. Here's another: Meacham knows Twitter is a powerful tool for holding journalists like him accountable when they cross the line from informer to cheerleader.

Accuracy In Media used Twitter to direct outrage toward CBS' Katie Couric earlier this year when she accepted a journalism award even as journalist John Ziegler was harassed and cuffed for trying to ask questions about why she deserved the award. And last week, both Playboy and Politico retracted stories after "tweetstorms" related to a Playboy article that fantasized about raping conservative women.

"Twitter has POWAH!!!" liberal blogger Tommy Christopher, who was fired by AOL's Politics Daily for helping expose Playboy's vile story, wrote after Politico pulled its blog post. "[T]his episode shows the power of teh Twitter to get things done. Nice job, Tweeps."

Christopher also gave Twitter users credit for pressuring Playboy to pull the article that Politico had linked. "So, yes, this is a free country," he wrote. "A country where people are free to speak, and where others are free to voice their strong disagreement. This case is a great example of both, and a showcase for Twitter as a means to amplify the voices of the aggrieved.

Top media dogs like Meacham have seen the power of Twitter and fear it. While Newsweek and other major media outlets have embraced Twitter as a new tool for broadcasting their content, their leaders by and large don't want a presence on Twitter because they don't want to be held accountable. They would much rather hide inside the Ivory Tower, where they don't have to hear the angry online mobs who are sick of liberal bias in the media.

[Cross-posted at Accuracy In Media]

Kotecki Leaves Politico, FishbowlDC.

Videographer (and funny guy) James Kotecki is leaving the Politico for non-journalism endeavors, a tipster tells FishbowlDC.
>UPDATE: Mike Allen notes that he's going to the Cypress Group.

Tweetminster and Tweet Congress - Where Twitter and Politics Meet, Mashable.

Tweetminster is one of those services which clearly shows why Twitter’s simplicity and versatility makes it the swiss knife of communication platforms. While the service itself might not be interesting to you if you’re not closely following British politics, the idea and the implementation are great.

As an effective deployment of a modern media strategy, I want to share a recent example engineered by, among others, the Washington State Republican Party putting the hammer to Barack Obama after a *major* gaffe while campaigning in Oregon. I've been given exclusive insight on how this all went down.

Let's dig in...

On Monday at 2:23 PM, Ben Smith of the Politico.com broke the news of Barack who-needs-experience-when-we-can-have-hope Obama making a major gaffe on the campaign trail when he admitted having no knowledge of the Hanford Site, "a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in south-central Washington operated by the United States government."

Ben embedded the following YouTube video of Barack's gaffe which was uploaded anonymously by a brand new YouTube user, IRFSA8654. Natch.

Blogs4McCain.com quickly picked up on the video.

With a hat-tip to Blogs4McCain, Michelle Malkin picked up on the story and added valuable context to the argument by noting that John McCain had been asked the same question and knew all about it. Typical experience wielded by The Mac.

Someone must have tipped off the Associated Press because they were next to pile on Barack.

Today, Fox News' Major Garrett carried the package, added some context, and had this to say:

=PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT=

Republicans immediately pounced on this as a sign of Barack Obama's inexperience as a national candidate. Saying -- how could you not know anything about the Hanford nuclear waste site? It's the best known, most contaminated one in the United States. It's one the Department of Energy is spending almost $2 billion a year to clean up. Those clean-up dates are going to be missed. There's a huge negotiation in the state of Washington about how to extend those deadlines. It's a big issue there. How could you not know anything about it?

So while the Obama campaign says it is genuine and disarming, Republicans fire back -- it's inexperience. And that's going to be one of the core divides in this general election campaign. Barack Obama's genuineness, his likability, his willingness to talk straight with voters vs. Republicans saying he may be able to do all those things but if he's not experienced enough, how reliable a President is he actually going to be?

Small issues, small incident in this town hall in Pendleton, Oregon, but it's going to be something that will be playing out in the campaign throughout.

Today, MoveRed.org, the "youth coalition (ages 16-28) of the King County Republican Party," released this stinging video pulling it all together:

In my opinion, the case-study above shows how you can take a national candidate making a mistake on a local issue and turn that into a national news story. And the best part is that this is just the beginning of this story getting out.

The Washington State Republican Party has just blasted an email to its list asking them to "forward the message" and help make a donation to keep it coming.

Indeed, Porridge, to all of those who had a hand in this one. You're making us proud.

[Cross-posted at TechPresident.]

Mike Allen of the Politico reports on a new study by the E-Voter Institute which confirms what we've known all along: The Internet is the modern campaign trail, and you need to be working it if you're a political candidate (if you want to connect with folks, that is).

You don’t have to be a blogger to be involved. A study to be released by the E-Voter Institute this afternoon found that heavy consumers of online political information have “high rates of activism” that include e-mailing friends and family about a candidate, contributing online and attending events in response to e-mail.

“We detect a trend here,” the authors report. “In the old days, activists had to go somewhere to show their interest in a candidate or cause — attend a rally or fundraiser, participate in a phone bank at a campaign office, write a check and drop it in the mail.”

Now, though, virtual activists in what the report calls “the new political landscape” are telling their MySpace and Facebook friends about campaign rallies and candidate positions.

“While candidates have focused on collecting e-mail addresses, we see the rise of the online social networks as a way for the peer-to-peer communications that grassroots activists strive for to get their messages out,” adds the study, which is called “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear: Change Is Accelerating in the Political Landscape.”

The only thing I'd change about this report is changing every use of the word "new" to "modern." How much longer can folks seriously call this stuff new?

James Kotecki, a.k.a. EmergencyCheese on YouTube, is likely a well-known personality for this crowd. And James' appeal as a citizen journalist and YouTube "guru," dispatching his advice to candidates on how best to connect with the YouTube community, has doled up its fair-share of press from the mainstream media.

But now, James... is the mainstream media. At least, sort of. And its his experience jumping from "Citizen Journalist" to "Journalist" that I wanted to include in this space through an email interview with James.

The quick background is that James went to the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa as a paid freelancer for one of our favorite stops, the Politico.com. You can see all of the products of his experience on his YouTube channel.

Find the interview after the jump.