BY: TONY ROMM

It is post-Baby Boomer, post-partisan, post-racial, and most important to voters, post-Bush. And add to that list of awkward hyperboles one new construction: “post-media.”

Throughout the 2008 horse-race, the now-President-elect Barack Obama demonstrated a proclivity toward digital media. In slightly over a year, he solidified a 10 million-strong e-mail listserv, which he used to send personal campaign updates, and a 2.9 million-strong text message database, which he tapped for his vice presidential announcement. And within the first week of his transition, President-elect Obama unveiled Change.gov, a Web site that includes forms for voters to submit job inquiries, comments and concerns. Obama’s advisers have only hinted at how, exactly, the new president plans to evolve that Web site into a White House communications hub this January.

To voters, Obama’s unabashed embrace of new media is promising. It introduces a new and more direct channel through which supporters (and dissenters) may communicate their feelings with the new administration. And if precedent indicates anything, it is that Obama can and will use the medium to its fullest potential. For evidence, look no further than the FISA debate, which disrupted conversations on his campaign Web site earlier this year. Rather than delete the disagreeable remarks, Obama responded to them, defending and explaining his new position on the courts.

To a White House press corps still reeling from its self-admitted failures during the Iraq War, however, Obama’s Web 2.0 governing style introduces a series of new reporting challenges.

At issue is the notion of “ news framing” - the angle from which reporters present an issue. Previously, reporters monopolized this framing process by monopolizing presses and airwaves and selecting which information or stories to distribute through them. Presidents, therefore, were at the mercy of journalists; to articulate a position, commanders-in-chief had to first present their case to reporters, who then transmitted information to the masses.

But much as the Internet has revolutionized desktop publishing - now, everyone is a journalist, and communication is less hierarchical - it has also changed the relationship between the president and the press. The White House has access to the same tools everyone else has, and administrations are just as able to network and report news as journalists. Of course, voters are cynical, and they tend to believe politicians far less than they believe journalists. But new media allow new presidents the ability to assert themselves more forcefully during the framing process.

In the context of the new Obama administration, these “post-media” techniques are doubly powerful. Remember, Obama has a sizable digital following – what many have called “the world’s largest special-interest group.” If he uses his vast databases to spread information about his reforms, circumventing the “fourth estate,” journalists may find themselves in direct competition with the White House’s enhanced line.

Indeed, the presidency and the press have a historically adversarial relationship, one that is contingent upon coexistence: the president depends on media to articulate policy and reporters depend on presidents for information. But there is an equally obvious correlation between the Obama campaign’s embrace of new media and journalists’ inability to get close to the former candidate. The more opportunity Obama has to contact his supporters directly, as the campaign trail proved, the more distant he keeps journalists. In other words, White House reporters should prepare for an information deficit this January.

That said, the press is far from irrelevant under Obama. It is quite the contrary: All the talk about a “post-media” presidency means is that reporters have to work harder for their stories. Journalists are - and always will be - the gatekeepers for truth; while information production and dissemination is a process available to all, presidents included, there is no other social institution more equipped financially or structurally to distinguish fact from fiction. And “Post-media” does not mean “post-obligation.”

For more on this — and other issues related to the campaign and the media — view the C-SPAN/WAMU American Forum by the same name. See the post below for the links to audio and video streams.

Thanks to everyone who supported politics@theEAGLE and attended last night’s American Forum.

If you missed it, here’s the audio link (courtesy of WAMU/SOC)

…and here’s the video link (courtesy of C-SPAN)

Additionally, there will be a special airing of the American Forum today at 11 am on WAMU’s HD Channel 3.

While politics@theEAGLE prepares to re-launch (we’re transitioning, just like President-elect Obama), we have two announcements:

1. Our podcast continues — This week, The Eagle’s staff discusses voter turnout and Obama’s first 100 days in office

2. politics@theEAGLE makes its radio and television debut during the American Forum, a discussion moderated by NPR station WAMU and hosted by American University. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the program itself begins at 7 p.m. It’ll be available live on WAMU (WAMU.org) and C-SPAN (check local listings).

BY: TONY ROMM

n1466850002_30003414_91341 As I sat on the Metro late Tuesday night, drowning out the cheers of elated passengers still celebrating Barack Obama’s impressive victory, I could not help but reflect on my peers’ work. The exit polls, as usual, overstated the Democrat’s strength, but the pollsters’ conclusions were mostly correct: A series of battleground states presumed to be safely Republican switched ideological hands in a matter of hours. Journalists (thankfully) avoided yet another embarrassing projection reversal; every state deemed a win, insofar as the presidential election was concerned, remained that way throughout the evening. And we, as a reporting community, emerged from the night vindicated; many of our personal analyses, the very craft upon which we stake some portion of our reputations, quickly turned from fictions into facts.

It was that last part, however, that bothered me long after I concluded this blog’s live election coverage sometime around 2 A.M. Since when do journalists have any personal stake in the stories they cover? Sure, every time we file a report, we risk our credibility. Readers assume every word in every article we pen is accurate and fair — a valid belief — which is why mistakes of fact (and sometimes style) are actually gross breaches of public trust. But political journalists, at least in the past few months, seem to have been referring to something different, some new and daring brand of hubris, when discussing the merits of their own analyses. Slate writer John Dickerson hinted at this new “fifth tenet of good journalism” — fairness, accuracy, transparency and credibility are its precursors, for those who forgot — when he wrote that an Obama loss “would be disastrous for the media and political establishment.”

Putting aside any suggestion that such an outcome would invalidate our industry (and, for the record, it would not), Dickerson is remiss not to question why, exactly, journalists risked losing so much by predicting the future — a feat worth so little. A simple answer would blame the usual suspects — Nielsen ratings, the 24-hour news cycle, inadequate access to the candidates — but those structural limitations do not explain why voters perceived journalists were biased in Obama’s favor, and those excuses do not explain why reporters filed twice as many positive stories about Obama as they did about McCain, as the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported.

Unfortunately, the answer to both quandaries is not profound. From the time both nominating conventions ended until the end of October, 53 percent of all election news — the largest share — focused on campaign strategy and politicking. An equally sizable portion of news consisted of “echo chamber” commentaries - those pieces that seek to explain why reporters were wrong (re: New Hampshire) or, even more arrogantly, why reporters were right (re: this week).

In both kinds of coverage, Obama had an obvious advantage: His campaign was performing well in spot polls (though when his numbers started to decline after the RNC, recall that McCain dominated headlines) and his campaign was easy to access. Contrast that with the utter silence of the McCain club - its gag order on Sarah Palin and its refusal to answer for its untruthful ads, among other instances of suppression. Sagging numbers and rampant skepticism only invigorated journalists to push harder – and, when the questions proved too difficult to answer, to shirk reason altogether and focus on impact, consequence and prediction.

In other words, it was only when reporters tried to preempt news — a task their profession does not exactly prescribe — that their coverage inhered any bias.

Put another way, journalists, who are mostly conscious of their perspectives, perpetuated Obamamania through their poor story structure, not through their undue personal opinions. It is all too convenient to claim that media make news or proffer judgments. But the campaign press, as NYU Professor Jay Rosen has routinely proclaimed, is a “herd of independent minds” – a collection of individuals and individual publications whose combined editorial decisions contribute to the predominance of a news frame.

Taken alone, each blog post or article projecting a candidate’s chances is the (hopefully) benign result of individual editorial judgment. Taken together, however, those once-individual stories and accounts have an undoubted effect on the election. The reportage, the predictions, the opinion polls to substantiate claims and, more importantly, the “echo chamber” post-mortems — all technically “artificial” sources of news — have real effects on the political process. They entrench narratives that do not naturally exist or occur because, as Rosen would say, “journalists tend to forget that the political realities in which [they] are participating.” (for more information on this, read Rosen’s work on “ thinking politically“).

Indeed, issue pieces are not impervious to this sort of after effect, but projection pieces – no matter how inherently apolitical – almost perfectly embody this notion of active participation, the exact opposite of good political journalism. Perhaps, to some degree, that is why Dickerson feared an Obama loss would somewhat invalidate modern election punditry — because the punditry itself has always been invalid.

What is truly unfortunate, however, is that we need post-mortems to remind us what we already know. Journalists only evaluate their writing when it is really convenient or really late. In my case, as I sat on the Metro on Tuesday, it was the latter. I had already covered the election, perhaps subconsciously and simultaneously recognizing my writing’s flaws, and I only challenged my assumptions after the regalia subsided. I feared the hit to my reputation any admission of wrongdoing would cause, so I justified my reluctance on the premise that my writing – my tiny corner of the internet – inhered no bias. I suspect others felt the same.

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BY: TONY ROMM

Barack Obama’s win on Tuesday night was historic, but this post-mortem is no hagiography. The president-elect’s unrivaled ability to engage an electorate, if not an entire generation, is worthy of admiration, but this column offers no such thing. The former Illinois senator’s story is inspiring and his words and ideas are grandiose yet empathetic, but this space does not memorialize his intentions, however great they are. Frankly, it does not have to; better writers than I have already praised Obama’s accomplishment.

Unfortunately (and at the risk of harsh reaction), this analysis is a reality check; a reminder that once ideologically imbibed journalists finish showering Obama with affection, the ever-symbolic sun rising from behind his logo won’t burn through voters’ most painful troubles – at least, not until voters recognize how unrealistic their demands are.

For better or for worse, voters’ expectations are unattainably high, a byproduct of a two-year-long, 50-state strategy that included the introduction of “change” as a public relations tool. Of course, Obama believes his words as much as his supporters do, and voters believe (for good reason) that he will stay true to those pledges. But many of the reforms Obama touted on the trail as essential – those policies, including his health care plan, on which the president-elect refused to relent – must first face the test of a Congress previously in the throes of apathy.

A Democratic majority in both houses should ease Obama’s legislative concerns, but it is hard to believe Congress will always acquiesce to his will. The rubber-stamp majority still risks provoking a Senate filibuster, and worse, appearing partisan and irrelevant – the very two problems Obama’s campaign challenged. If this November clarified anything, therefore, it is that the political atmosphere Obama campaigned against for nearly two years is the political atmosphere he is in fact about to enter, and it is going to take more than a few words of wisdom to escape accusations of hypocrisy and fulfill voters’ expectations.

He has to fill bank accounts, prescriptions and college aspirations too; he has to reform a broken banking industry and salvage America’s sagging international stature, provide more credit to low-income households and revive failing public schools. Obama enters the White House at a time when a series of once neglected institutions demands immediate reform; an ironic moment, at that, when voters are still a little reluctant to care about the issues. Sure, this election’s turnout rate makes a mockery of some generations past, especially insofar as the youth vote is concerned. But what is still unclear is whether Americans voted for Obama the Symbol (and the notion of change and reform it embodies) or Obama the Politician (the man who never disputed the Tax Policy Center’s prediction that his platform would add nearly $3 trillion to the federal debt).

No matter what the answer, Obama was still the strongest of all the presidential candidates, McCain especially. His platform (and his way of presenting it) offered voters a more realistic opportunity for self-improvement. However, the fact that voters (much less, the debate moderators) never pressed Obama on his inconsistencies, no matter how few or arguably insignificant, suggests that the country’s long-overdue political enthusiasm blinded voters, maybe myself included. And, as we all know, excitement to the detriment of substantive political discourse serves no one.

Again, do not misinterpret the point: President-elect Obama will foster reforms of some variety, either during this term or (presumably) the next. But those changes will deliver far less change than what voters desire, purely because Americans’ expectations are, to some degree, grounded in wishful thinking. Their metrics for success and progress are still nested in the notion that presidential elections matter more than school board choices, off-year Congressional contests, periodic gubernatorial races and ill-explained state ballot propositions.

Obama may have acknowledged this limitation during his memorable acceptance speech in Grant Park, Ill. on Tuesday night, but it is unclear how much of it voters heard. If previous presidential contests are any indication, however, the answer is nil; otherwise, we would not have started celebrating Obama’s accomplishments long before he entered the White House.

Thanks to everyone who checked out the blog and visited The Eagle’s main Web site; your feedback has made this live blogging process as historic for us as the election has been for the candidates. We’ll resume coverage tomorrow — offering our final takes on the final electoral count — but, for tonight, we’ll end with this: a link to the candidates’ final speeches ( McCain’s concession speech, Obama’s victory speech).

BY: CHARLIE SZOLD

Claus Kleber has been on his feet all night. If anything, the esteemed German news anchor at least has endurance. We, the American bloggers, have been more or les shuttled off into a corner. Sam Hagerdon, my co-blogger, is wracking his brain to figure whether or not Obama could pick up Indiana too. I’m just sitting here — a bit shell-shocked. I have some serious egg on my face. I really thought that the American people would tack right once they entered the voting booth.

They didn’t. And now, Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States of America.

I call myself a conservative, but this moment is a beautiful moment. This moment means so much to so many people that it is impossible to be sad. The Germans are on their feet chanting and yelling. They are as excited as the AU students. I can’t stop smiling, people can’t stop yelling… is it weird that I want to cry a little? How could you not?

This is America; this is what we do. For eight years the American people slowly became more and more alienated from their government and tonight, the healing can begin. We can, at a moment like this, be hopeful. Let the politics come later — this isn’t the time to talk about them. This is a time to be excited that so many other people are excited. Congratulations to the United States.

MSNBC, among other networks, projected at 11 p.m. that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will be the 44th President of the United States.

AU Republicans are the minority in tonight’s Tavern crowd.

Some Republicans are still watching the election results in MGC, despite overwhelming cheers for Sen. Barack Obama. One of these supporters is wearing a McCain sticker in the middle of his forehead.

“I’m a little bummed out right now,” said sophomore Grant Lloyd, a student in the School of International Service. “I expected Obama to win, but not this badly.”

Lloyd said, at the end of the day, his life would not change much no matter who wins the presidential election.

“I don’t expect my life to change drastically,” Lloyd said. “After next January, I’ll still be an AU student.”

He said he chose to prominently display his McCain sticker mostly as a joke.

“It’s all in good fun,” Lloyd said. “People have asked to take pictures with me and some of the Republicans around have thanked me.”

Another AU Republican said he was pleasantly surprised that MSNBC wasn’t on the main television projector.

Junior Steve Dalton also remarked that the turnout at the Tavern was clearly more supportive of Obama.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but right now it’s not looking too good,” said Dalton, a student in the School of Public Affairs

BY: SAM HAGEDORN

The Presidential race in Virginia is close. With 2.5 million votes counted, Barack Obama is separated from John McCain by less than 13,000 votes. However, the results from Northern Virginia should give Obama the win.

Many residents of Fairfax county commute to work in the District of Columbia. These residents, mocked by a McCain campaign as not being part of “real Virginia,” tend to vote more Democratically than the rest of the state. Of the precincts in Fairfax county, only a quarter have reported so far. That’s a lot of uncounted votes, which should give Obama at least 50,000 more votes.

But then again, the conventional wisdom might be completely off — John McCain might win some of the suburbs of D.C. But things do not look good for the McCain campaign in Virginia.