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Linking the Progressive Youth Movement

Cross posted at MyDD

The media life of the CTYD YouTube video was informative to watch. It's the first time (that I can think of) that a democratic youth operation successfully used new media and the blogs to get out a story that didn't have a coordinated national push already behind it.

The story started as a press release about a CT House vote, leaked into a local media outlet, became a YouTube video, found its way into more local media including a CT blog, became a blog topic here on Future Majority, got diaried at the Daily Kos where it was front paged, and then traveled into more national blogs. What could have been a one day local story was potentially seen by a large swath of online progressives and CT residents, and it worked because CT Young Dems delivered a creative message and also because the story cycled through the local and national blogs. It's a model to replicate, and has been promoted as such both here and on the Young Democrats Blog.

So how we can make it even more replicable? How can local youth organizers increase the reach of their stories? When best practices like this arise, how can they get in front of as many of the relevant eyeballs as possible?

There seems to be two pretty simple solutions:

  1. First, local chapters of youth organizations should actively engage their local blogs.
  2. Second, the progressive youth organizations that have blogs should start blog-rolling each other and reading each other's blogs on a daily basis.

We've all seen the numbers on rising youth turnout and witnessed the explosion of new youth organizations these last 4 years. The progressive youth movement is growing fast, but its still fairly siloed - internally from each other, and externally from the larger progressive movement.

Engaging with local bloggers could build mutually beneficial relationships that link youth organizing to the local netroots and activist communities. These relationships are valuable not only as a vehicle to spread a message, but also in creating a more cohesive local progressive community, of which youth organizing is a vital piece. That's an easy way to link the progressive youth movement to the larger movement.

Connecting via blogroll (or just plain links - not every youth org has a blog) and reading each other's blogs - and more importantly informing members about the activities (and blogs) of partner organizations - will help best practices spread (more) virally among organizations, and give those members gain an understanding of the larger progressive youth movement. (It will also bump up all of our Google and Technorati ranks to boot, which is nice).

I know that the Executive Directors and national staffers of many youth orgs do communicate with each other on a regular basis. However, the progressive youth movement is bigger than those few people, and relying on those individual networks for the exchange of information and best practices can create unnecessary bottlenecks that impede our growth.

I don't mean to suggest that these practices things aren't already in use. There are some exceptions, to be sure. Forward Montana and the state blog Left in the West, for example, are both run by Matt Singer. So in Montana politics these connections already exist. The Young Democrats do a decent job aggregating the blogs written by their local chapters on their national site. In turn, those chapter blogs do at times link up with the local blogosphere or other youth orgs. But these are exceptions, not the rule. But looking around the websites of progressive youth organizations, I don't get the sense that this is happening in any coordinated or intentional manner. Right now its scatter-shot, with some folks adopting these practices and others not. It should be standard operating procedure for all youth orgs.

What I've suggested are very simple changes that offer a potentially large return on investment for what amounts to some quick HTML work and an extra 15 minutes of media scanning every day.

Lists of state blogs and progressive youth blogs after the jump.

State Blogs

Thanks to MyDD, whose source code I cut and pasted to get these state blog links, and to the State Blog Roundup for sparking this blog post. If anyone has a good link to a comprehensive "best practices for engaging bloggers," please leave a link in the comments.

Youth Blogs

This list is slim pickings for sure. Not every youth org out there needs to have a blog (and not every org does, obviously). Some of the blogs listed here are actually group blogs, and some, like YDA, actually have local blogs for each chapter - far more than I could list here.

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May 15th, 2007 5:59am
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use pipes

Submitted by shai (not verified) on Tue, 2007-05-15 08:57.

this sounds like a perfect application for yahoo pipes. we can create many pipes, which aggregate different topics important to people in youth organizations: one pipe for leadership programs, another for discussion of college loan practices, another for voter registration, etc. etc. then we just need to market the pipes to youth organizations, and generate a readership for them.

is that what you’re thinking of?

Simpler

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-05-15 12:13.

Actually, I’m thinking of something much simpler. Simple, blogosphere cirica 2004 stuff. Literally blogrolls, and some good old fashioned reading and cross linking w/r/t the blogrolling. And just adding local blogger outreach best practices into the Communications Toolbox.

Really basic stuff, helping develop personal relationships and cross promotion. Not talking at all about moving people to a third site, or trying to add some major new functionality to existing websites.

While it sounds like a good idea, I’ve personally never been able to make hide nor tail of Yahoo Pipes, and don’t think anyone at a youth org with a really busy schedule could realistically be pulled into using it as a tool as is.

Maybe this is a better way, but as I’m not totally familiar with how it works - nor do I know who would actually do the work and what it would take for an end-user like YP4 or YDA to implement it, I can’t really evaluate your idea.

Can you talk more about what it would entail and what you see as the pros and cons?

pipes, a basic intro

Submitted by shai (not verified) on Wed, 2007-05-16 04:32.

sure.

one of the easier things you can do with pipes is combine many feeds into one. you can also filter out only the items in those feeds which contain certain keywords. essentially, you can use pipes to recreate leftyblogs.com.

so for example, you can create a pipe which unites all the feeds from young people for, campus progress, the various young dems of X websites, etc. then you can create another pipe which shows you only the items from the first pipe which match the word “student loans”. and another for items which contain either “myspace” or “facebook”. and so on. bloggers from various organizations can read these feeds like any other blog feed - using bloglines or what have you.

you’re right that at the end of the day, this is a problem of habits, not technology. but, if this tool can make it easier for people to adapt their habits, might as well use it.

pipes with drupal is right

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Wed, 2007-05-16 17:36.

another reason pipes makes so much sense is that you can also filter out duplicate posts, you can sort by keyword and the buckets of that content can then get their own feed. the way i see drupal (ie. FM) being so key is that if you aggregate the feeds with a module like leech, you can turn off comments, truncate after 400 characters and have a ReadMore link that sends people back to the original post so that the post author hosts the comment thread.

It all contributes to FM being an aggregator of Progressive Youth Politics as well as a sort of Table of Contents for the scene in general.

echo!!

Submitted by MarkRistaino on Tue, 2007-05-15 11:02.

Mike! I’m back!!

spent some time catching up on FM today… I’m gonna try and sum up your point, tell me if I’m on the right track:

young voters need to create an echo machine of their own if we want to increase the likelyness of pushing our issues and causes into the national spotlight

I totally agree. A few things to consider:

You’re talking about a bottom-up echo chamber, where our media outlets pick and choose content appropriate for their own audience from a larger content network, and then replicate it. So there’s more man-power involved- every content editor out there has to keep abreast of all the content being produced. In terms of work efficiency, we’re already at a disadvantage.

What if, in addition to the blogroll, we aggregated site content to a single place online, much the same way YD does it with their local chapters on the national site? Do you think that would be worth the time?

Third Party vs. Local

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-05-15 12:36.
young voters need to create an echo machine of their own if we want to increase the likelyness of pushing our issues and causes into the national spotlight

This is exactly what I’m trying to say. Thanks for cutting through to the heart of my ramble.

As for aggregating to a single site - I’m not sold on the idea, but I’m willing to hear you sell it to me. Aggregating to a third site takes some of the incentive out of it for each organization - no traffic going to your site, not getting new voices into conversation with your regulars. It also adds additional burdens - you’ve got to promote that site.

It also takes the “local” flavor out of each org. Chances are, if I’m involved with YDA or YP4, there’s a reason. I like what they’re offering, I like their take on things. I’m talking about supplementing that, not supplanting it.

Like I said, I’m not sold on the idea, but I’m willing to listen if you want to pitch it further.

i'm not sold on it either

Submitted by MarkRistaino on Tue, 2007-05-15 18:42.

i’m not sold on it either, but I’m concerned about the volume of applicable content that’s out there. I guess that’s why I come to FM, tho!

I will look into gettting a blogroll on the MFA site somewhere.

Solid Idea

Submitted by Tony Cani (not verified) on Tue, 2007-05-15 12:08.

This is great, I will update the YDA Blogroll to help get things rolling on our end.

Additionally I am pulling together a list of YDA bloggers, not all who focus on youth issues but at least are involved in the movement. I’ll get that to you when I’m done with it.

Great!

Submitted by Michael Connery on Tue, 2007-05-15 12:37.

Great!

I’ve been thinking that this place needs a blogroll … something more than links to all the youth orgs we’ve got in the sidebars.

And when we finish redesigning, I think we’ll have our own version of “Breaking Blue” that will aggregate from other youth bloggers.

Great idea.

Submitted by Populista on Tue, 2007-05-15 14:03.

This sounds like a great idea. You should talk to the folks at BlogPac and see if they’ll sponsor local youth blogs too. I’d be happy to talk to the folks at my local blog MN Campaign Report and see if they’d like to partner on a new Minnesota Youth Blog.

Maybe it could be called MN Future Youth Majority ;) Nah. Maybe MN Youth Report. I don’t know but I’d be happy to design and put that up and talk to local youth people. I’m pretty broke though so I’d need a funding source.

I’d also be happy to help with Breaking Future or Future Blue

So once again. Great idea. Lets do this! The youth vote is crucial and can transform our nation more then anything else if we have a Future Majority of Progressives.

Remember Wellstone - Stand up, keep fighting!

Funding and Youth Blogs

Submitted by Michael Connery on Wed, 2007-05-16 18:36.

Don’t we all need more money, Populista. FM is a totally volunteer effort, as are all youth blogs that I know about (not that many … ).

Thanks for the thoughts, and I hope you stick around and comment some more. And if you do get that Minnesota youth blog off the ground, let us know.