The plan was actually kind of cool: Yahoo! would give citizen editors (you, me, the odd, nervous fellow next door) access to raw footage of the eight Democratic presidential candidates separately answering debate questions on Iraq, health care and education and then allow them to splice, dice, overdub, caption and spread their new Frankenvideos as they saw fit. The interviews taped Wednesday and, after a brief delay–Yahoo! initially prevented users from doing anything but arranging the clips, playlist-style, by candidate or topic–they went live the next day on Jumpcut, Yahoo’s video editing site, with Arianna Huffington offering to highlight the best submissions on the Huffington Post’s homepage. (Co-sponsor Slate, like Newsweek, is owned by the Washington Post Company).
So, one week later, what have the master masher-uppers of America done with all that raw video? Not much. Thirteen of the 25 entries on Jumpcut’s “Democratic Debate Mash-up” page were posted by Patrick Michaels, a bearded vlogger who goes by the handle “presidentkucinich2008.” Nearly all of Michaels’ submissions are clips of “leading candidate” Dennis Kucinich (surprise) talking at length about, say, veganism or global warming–with little (if any) editing, let alone “mashing up.” Of the remaining 12 videos, seven don’t even use footage from the debate: two are interminable, text-heavy anti-Hillary ads; the other five are pro-Romney spots created by someone named “emotionsnpoetry” who seems inordinately fond of crude, Photoshopped images of the Democratic candidates (plus Fidel Castro, Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter) cavorting at shirtless pool parties or competing in donkey-drawn chariot races.
That leaves five “real mash-ups.” (Note the scare quotes.) The first, “Poetwarrior Explains Everything” by poetwarrior62, fails to live up to its billing, merely playing the song “I Can Explain Everything” by T-Bone Burnett over muted clips of Hillary, Romney, Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter. “Stevegarfield” shortens Dodd’s answer on marijuana legalization (he’s in favor) into a five-second soundbite–not exactly rocket science. By default, then, the “best” submissions belong to “mikevogel,” who puts Hillary’s rather robotic laugh on repeat until it starts to sound like a cackle and twice splices Charlie Rose’s question about No Child Left Behind with the massively popular YouTube clip of Miss Teen South Carolina butchering the English language on live TV. I can imagine future anti-Hillary Web pranksters lifting the former, while the latter uses a “dumb blond” to, you know, make some sort of point. Which is more than I can say for the rest of this lot.
Still, it ain’t saying much. The Huffington Post seems to agree; to date, they haven’t posted any clips on their homepage. (Arianna has yet to respond to my email and phone messages; I’ll post her thoughts here if/when she gets back to me.) The lesson for future debates: try the mashups, but don’t ditch the TV. In July, CNN and YouTube combined “new media” techniques with an “old media” platform, allowing users to question the candidates by video during a live cable broadcast; most critics agreed that the show was a success. Maybe “online-only” events will work in 2012. But at this point, most people don’t even seem to know that they’re happening–the “Poetwarriors” of the world excepted.
UPDATE: Just talked to Arianna Huffington. She says that “creating mash-ups was an extra bonus if people wanted to do it. The big thing for us was how many people were going to watch it, and could we get people who would not sit through an hour and half debate to watch. Mash-ups are a lot of work.”
That said, Huffington has assigned two editors to sift through the mash-ups that have been arriving in the Huffington Post inbox since she first called for submissions last Thursday. Apparently, these are separate from–and, hopefully, better than–the Jumpcut submissions. They’re certainly greater in number – “in the hundreds,” says Huffington. Huffpo will reveal the 12 best on Monday. And I’ll be back to review them.
P.S. Huffington also mentioned that the Yahoo!/Slate/Huffpo event garnered 2.9 million “streams” (views of the video) in its first day online, with each user accounting for 4.6 streams – meaning that about 630,000 people watched. Compare that to the 2.6 million who caught the CNN/YouTube debate. Sure, the internet is powerful – but TV is still king.
