Interactivity and the Debates

Now that we know who the moderators will be for the Presidential debates: Brokaw, Lehrer and Schieffer (average age 71, and why is that Gwen Ifill ends up with the VP debate, again? and what’s with the ABC shut-out?). Well, the Washington Post’s The Trail reports on how interactivity will be incorporated in the 2008 debates.

CNN raised the bar more than a year ago with the CNN/YouTube debates, ABC News got together with Facebook last November and now the Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the three presidential and one vice presidential debate, has teamed up with MySpace.

But critics are piling on: “This is pathetic,” Micah Sifry of TechPresident told the Post. “It’s like saying, ‘I just bought a synthesizer and all I can think to do with it is play Chopsticks.’ I don’t blame MySpace so much as I blame the Commission, for lack of imagination and courage.”

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