Washington diary: Geeks v hacks

By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

Now I know how it must have felt to be a carriage-maker visiting a car manufacturer, a radio engineer spending the day on a TV production line, or a silent movie producer in the age of Talkies.

The express train of progress has left the station and I am left standing on the platform, waving goodbye.

YouTube wants to build a "community of eyeballs"

What has produced this queasy sense of redundancy mingled with inadequacy is a radio feature I have been working on (who said wireless was dead?), about the ongoing tussle between the new media - bloggers and citizen journalists - and the old media - people like me.

The feeling washed over me like a sobering wave of salty water when I went to visit the corporate headquarters of YouTube in California.

San Francisco airport is the gateway to Silicon Valley. Down the road is Stanford University. Across the Bay, Berkeley. Over the hills, the headquarters of Google. This is Geek Mecca.

Except these geeks don't wear anoraks. Most of them look as if they've been working out. And some of them are rich as Croesus.

'Community of eyeballs'

Number 1000 Cherry Avenue in San Bruno, YouTube's headquarters, looks like the regional Internal Revenue Service office or a branch of Homeland Security. It is distinctly unglamorous.

Hillary Clinton turned YouTube embarrassment into a plus

But inside the corporate art is classy, the canteen serves organic Asian Fusion cuisine - free of charge - and the basement den looks like a cross between a college common room and an IKEA playpen. There is an edgy mural, a pool table and a scattering of beanbags.

Sinking into one of them is the affable Steve Grove, a fresh-faced, 30-year-old former journalist with the Boston Globe who joined YouTube a few months ago as its head of news and politics.

He and his press minder Aaron (yes, YouTube feels the need to employ a publicist) don't like the term "editor" because that would imply a degree of political control or direction. And YouTube, as Steve explained to me, is all about the "community of eyeballs".

He sees himself more as a curator of video information stored in a vast museum, refreshed every single minute by seven hours of video uploads.

Dismantling power

In case you think this all sounds a bit pretentious, you should listen to the campaigns vying for the White House.

Democrat Barack Obama has been serenaded online

Seven of the 16 candidates announced their candidacy for the 2008 race on YouTube. Every single candidate has a channel posted on the YouChoose 08 site.

Ron Paul, the Republican candidate who describes himself as a libertarian, may be a long shot for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but he has the highest number of registered subscribers, about 34,000.

"Don't be too surprised," Steve told me. "His libertarian views gel perfectly with those who think the internet is all about dismantling the power of the few!"

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who regularly battle for the highest eyeballs factor.

You want citizen journalists? How about citizen surgeons? Ben Bradlee

Since 2004, when the hapless Howard Dean made history by using the internet to recruit supporters and harvest funds, the campaigns have all appointed new media teams, who are getting increasingly adept at using YouTube to further their aims.

For instance, one of the most-watched items this year is a clip of Hillary Clinton singing the national anthem, woefully out of tune. Vintage YouTube, it is funny and more than a million people have logged on to watch it.

Instead of cowering and cringing about the fact that Hillary can't sing America's most important tune and hiring a voice coach, the campaign posted a mock appeal in which the senator invites her supporters to compose a campaign anthem.

"I make you a solemn promise," she intones with senatorial seriousness, "only to sing it in private... unless I win!" And she erupts into peels of laughter. It shows a squishier side of Hillary and more than 600,000 eyeballs made the effort to watch it.

Voting with mice

YouTube is the cyber equivalent of a collective farm, without the grind, hunger and terrible food. It is all about "the community", a word you hear often among the bean bags of 1000 Cherry Avenue. The collective of eyeballs decides what goes on the front page by voting with its mice.

Online video is likely to feature prominently in the 2008 election

Steve's dream is to coax the eyeballs to the ballot box. In America, young voters are notoriously absent from the polling station.

So, YouTube has a permanent "register to vote" icon in its bottom left-hand corner. You cannot actually complete registration online - yet - but you can at least fill out the forms and then mail them to the state legislature.

Steve is confident that 2008 will be known as the YouTube election and that the website will have contributed massively to the engagement of younger voters. He himself admits that his hope may be misplaced.

The common refrain is that youth has tuned out of politics and political news. The numbers still prove the point. In 2004, eight million Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 voted for a new president. In the same age category, 24 million voted for American Idol.

Reporters with access

YouTube is only a part of a much bigger revolution. Don't forget MySpace, Facebook and an army of bloggers ranging from the shrill to the shrewd. The internet has fuelled the democratisation of information and the proliferation of opinion. It has unleashed an army of citizen journalists, all itching to replace us tired old hacks. It is all about YOU, folks. YOU are having a field day. Aren't you?

New gadgets bring new expectations

The process is gloriously messy, it is irreversible and it harbours the risk that people will only flock to the news and opinions they want to hear, not the ones they have to hear in order to become well-informed citizens of a functioning democracy.

But even Steve Grove admits that it doesn't spell the demise of the traditional journalist. I am happy to report that I have not yet been asked to retire. We from the old media soldier on, clutching our Zimmerframes. As Ben Bradlee, the legendary former editor of the Washington Post put it: "You want citizen journalists? How about citizen surgeons?"

As the opinions and rumours in the blogosphere mushroom without checks and balances, consumers of news will continue to rely on newsgathering organisations like the BBC, ABC, NPR or the LA Times.

We have bureaux, field reporters and, not to be under-estimated, access to men and women in power. I am sure some of you will howl with indignation at this assertion. But don't count us out yet. We're on the next train.

Matt Frei is the presenter of BBC World News America, airing at 2300 GMT (1900 ET / 1600 PT) every weekday

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