Got nailed by pinkdome today, who was commenting on the program for a forthcoming meeting of the trade association for lobbyists at Barton Creek:
Panel Background: Discussion of the practical, political and ethical issues arising from real-time news and legislative communications in the process of governing. Included are issues such as journalistic integrity vs. political spin; when online news and opinion becomes leg. advertising requiring disclosure; when blogs and special interest newsletters and RSS feeds become a campaign contribution or a reportable campaign expenditure; and what are the next steps in the e-frontier.
Confirmed Speakers: Paul Burka, Texas Monthly; Mike Hailey, Capitol Inside; Harvey Kronberg, Quorum Report; Ross Ramsey, Texas Weekly
OMG, tell more more about the e-frontier. (My eyes just rolled out of my head at the thought of Paul Burka and Harvey Kronberg talking about e-frontiers.) Burka, a print stalwart that has hated blogs and when he got his own gets freaked out by the comments and Kronberg, who…don’t get me wrong love the QR, but wouldn’t know an e-frontier if it bit him the ass.
Well, our audience isn’t exactly the top editors of Wired or that exec at Facebook who is on the cover of Newsweek, or even the staff of Politico.com. It’s just the lobby, for gawd’s sake. If we can’t stay one step ahead of that posse, we ought to turn in our passwords.
I think I have a pretty good idea of what the e-frontier is, though. It’s when Kim Brimer prohibits lobbyista from sending a written message to a senator asking him to come outside the chamber so that the lobbyist can tell him how to vote on a floor amendment, and sends a text message to the senator’s Blackberry instead.
