Crazyworld

In in the interest of full disclosure, yes, I am a reporter. Been one for nearly a decade now.

So I was pretty shocked while watching an online stream of the lastest so-called "media availability" held by embattled Gov. Mark Sanford today in Conway -- not far, incidentally, from where House Republicans are spending the weekend at a retreat where impeachment is almost certainly going to be a topic.

After speaking about transparency and openness, Sanford didn't take any questions. In fact, he blatantly told a reporter for The State newspaper, "I don't work for you."

It's hard to put personal feelings aside on this one. But I'll try.

Last I checked, reporters paid taxes and most, if not all, register to vote. They tend to take their civic responsibilities seriously.

Last I checked, many reporters were more informed about the processes of government than the average man on the street and, sometimes, even elected officials.

Last I checked, elected officials should look at EVERY reporter -- from the smallest weekly to the largest daily -- as virtually thousands of people rolled into one. People as in taxpayers, constituents, residents. It's a bit of advice I got from an editor at the first weekly I worked at after college. The Internet only exponentially increases a news organization's reach.

Last I checked, millions of people still rely on news organizations to not only report information, but to do so in the larger context of how that information is presented. (Sanford complained that The State reported on his current conflict, and not as much on the records his staff pulled on past administrations and even sitting lawmakers.)

Last I checked, newspapers still employee people in this state, pay taxes of their own and have to deal with travel budgets. Many of those travel budgets are shrinking or in some cases being eliminated -- and they are wasted when media outlets send reporters all over the state for press conferences in which the person speaking refuses to answer any questions.

Last I checked, Elected Office 101 taught elected officials never to pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrell. Or, today, has access to unlimited space online. Why? They'll never get the last word. Ever.

And, last I checked, every reporter is keenly aware that it's not always obvious ethical or other infractions that must be avoided -- it's the appearance of impropriety that can cost a someone his/her credibility.

Perhaps, governor, that last part is the most important lesson of all.

If you haven’t had to deal with this question yet — and still have more than a year or two left before you retire — then you will, and sooner than you’d probably like.

The blending of personal and professional life is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. And based on comments I’ve heard from people in a variety of other businesses, I’m not alone.

As a journalist, I have a few extra concerns, but we’ll get to those in a bit. Let’s talk about the general implications of this sweeping societal change first.

It can be gradual or abrupt, liberating or jarring, and either help facilitate your career or end it.

If you’re reading this — which, if you’re not a regular Herald-Journal/GoUpstate reader, you probably found through Twitter or a link on someone else’s blog — chances are you’ve heard horror stories about people losing their jobs because of a stray comment on a social networking site like Facebook. You’ve probably heard of college students cleaning up their online profiles or deleting them completely before looking for their first job. You may have your own experiences with someone you haven’t talked to in a decade or two tracking you down on a social networking site, posting a “Remember when...?” story and then had to offer an uncomfortable explanation of it to your colleagues.

But, you’ve hopefully also heard about people using social networking to find a new job, to build relationships with customers, clients or colleagues and perhaps even used blogging as a therapeutic tool to share your thoughts with anyone in the world who cares enough to listen.

This public-private dichotomy came up not too long ago during an interview with former Clemson University professor Mihaela Vorvoreanu -- who’s now at Purdue -- about research she had done on social norms she’d observed among a specific group of college students on Facebook,

“It’s becoming a major issue in society — one that I haven’t quite figured out yet,” she said. “Are you an employee 100 percent of the time? From a personal perspective, I don’t think most of us are paid enough to consider that. On the other hand, something you say …will be associated with your employer. So it’s hard to figure this out. But both sides have valid points.”

Olivier Blanchard also touched on this in my recent story about businesses using social media:

“Obviously, you want to be careful who speaks officially for your company — and those lines are getting blurred,” he said. “If I have a blog, and it’s not a company blog, but people know I work for company x, and I say something offensive… Even if I have a disclaimer, I’m probably going to get a call from human resources.”

Everything you post becomes part of your online identity.

So, even if you’re off the clock, you’re not. You’re a representative of your company -- or, rather, a potential representative. Your personal brand has become assimilated by the brand you work for. (More on this point in an upcoming post.) And the vulnerability an organization might feel in having its employees freely interacting on the world wild web comes with it.

Ideally, as the social web continues to grow and expand, old-school thinking at companies that could intimidate or otherwise limit a person’s ability to express themselves online will die out. If it doesn’t, the companies home to such thinking probably will.

In the meantime, Big Brother may not be looking over your shoulder, but the person who signs your paycheck may be. Companies have begun forming policies for using social media technology, but the more they try to muzzle their employees, the more likely they’ll get bitten in the process. If that’s not happening now, it will. Each successive generation is more and more acclimated to using the social web as a free forum for conversations. It’s only a matter of time before the iPhone generation outnumbers the Baby Boomers in the workforce. (That’s not to say there aren’t some very forward-thinking Baby Boomers online. I’m generalizing.)

And then, there’s me. Or rather, people like me.

Journalists. Reporters. Agents of the MSM.

Reporters, as you know, are supposed to always be objective. I know, I know. I can hear the laughter through the screen. But really, we try. And most real reporters do a good job of presenting an accurate portrayal of a situation. There’s an old saying in this business that if all sides are mad at you, then you did something right.

Well, as journalists, we should be aware of and attempting to make the best use of new channels of communication. After all, that’s what we’ve been trained to do: communicate.

But the blurring line between the public and the private is all the more dangerous for us.

On one hand, social media is a great way to build relationships with potential new readers and sources. I’ve done it for a while now — slowly but surely. But I can’t even begin to count the number of times someone has told me, “Don’t tweet that.” Don’t give someone a reason not to trust you. Don’t sacrifice your credibility. Those are all valid concerns.

Journalists have long had to divorce themselves from their personal feelings when covering a story. But now, with social media, it’s almost as if you have to divorce yourself from who you are every time you plug in. With so many people ready to blame the media -- ironically, most of this comes from politicians, or at least people who avidly follow politics, and from other members of the media -- you have to be extra careful.

It’s true even on “safe” topics: If I tweet that I’m listening to Phil Ochs, do I have to listen to Merle Haggard afterward and share that with the world, too?

I think -- I’m hopeful, actually -- that this industry, too, will one day accept that its biggest assets are the identities of the people working in it and evolve from the days of old. You can have an opinion about something and still cover it fairly. It’s just more and more, people expect to know that opinion up front. After all, we (the press) often demand such disclosures from anyone else who dares post content online. And sometimes, the best writing comes from people who wear their biases on their sleeves.

There’s already been some discussion of this, of “coming out from behind the byline.” But it’s pretty controversial right now.

Perhaps, though, for all facets of the communications industry, embracing the social web and using it to facilitate individuality is the most credible approach of all.

Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis stood in front of a verbal firing squad for more than 90 minutes tonight, trying to keep a lid on the fear and anger in the room enough to have a rational discussion about health care.

But in the end, things bubbled over.

I filed my story from the Upstate Family Resource Center in Boiling Springs well over an hour into the town hall, tweeting before, during and after writing it. I figured I had enough material.

The congressman, after all, already had affirmed his belief in the Second Amendment, not to mention the First, Fourth, Tenth and maybe another one or two. He’d reminded everyone that he was a Republican, not a Libertarian. He had tried to convince them he wasn’t pushing a secret plan to force everyone to get vaccinated against the swine flu. He said he didn’t believe health care was a right, but that a Judeo-Christian nation would see to it that people who needed emergency treatment got it. He talked about the need for everyone to have health insurance, because “free riders,” as they are called, cause medical costs to go up for the rest of us. He criticized the current health care bill for not specifically including language that would prohibit taxpayer-funded abortions, and put forth the belief that a public option would drive private providers out of the market. He had, after all, a 16-point list of reasons why he was against the very health care bill that much of the fervent crowd had come to voice their opposition to.

He even said, when asked, that he would opt out of the health insurance program he has by virtue of his office and “join the rest of us” if the current legislation passes.

But he wouldn’t sign an undated letter of resignation to be submitted in case he didn’t. That certainly raised some eyebrows: “Why not?”

So, after I hit my send button, a woman stands up and starts saying repeatedly that she’s afraid of President Obama. Inglis asks her why she’s afraid. And that’s when it started.

“He has too much power!”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Go home, Bob!”

It’s kind of a blur here. Inglis told people to turn off Glenn Beck. He told them to turn off the fear-mongering.

Thankfully, Inglis called me later tonight, on his way home from the “after party” where he met with a dozen or so local Republican precinct chairmen. Just to make sure, I asked him if he used the specific term “fear-mongering.”

“Probably,” Inglis said. “That’s what he does. That’s what Glenn Beck is all about. And Lou Dobbs. I’ve had the misfortune of listening to those shows a couple of times.”

The Beck comment was the last straw for what was left of the 350-plus people who had come to the town hall – the seventh of 12 Inglis is hosting.

Afterward, there was some discussion among the Democrats and less extreme Republicans -- I used the word “moderate” on Twitter, but not everyone agrees with that label -- that they felt too intimidated to speak up tonight.

Inglis said his staff members got a similar sentiment, as several people came up to talk one-on-one with someone from the congressman’s office on their way out.

The atmosphere of fear at the town hall was markedly different than the one on the street, Inglis said. He went door-to-door in a nearby neighborhood before the town hall. (He often does that.) He said that gives him “a more standard distribution of people.”

He tried to explain the difference between being fearful and being aware of problem in order to try to fix it. He said the fearful crowd was predominantly rooted in the Libertarian and Constitutional parties.

“The conservative Republicans there realize that the Constitution is stronger than any president. We have every reason to have faith in the institutions that hold the country together,” Inglis said.

“But when fear takes over and people start thinking the Constitution is not strong enough to meet the challenge of a president they don’t like, you end up with some fairly hysterical reactions.”

Since we were on the subject, I asked him more about Beck.

“I don’t listen often to Glenn Beck, but when I have, I’ve come away just so disappointed with the negativity… the ‘We’ve just gone to pot as a country,’ and ‘All is lost’ and ‘There is no hope.’ It’s not consistent with the America that I know. The America I know was founded by people who took tiny boats across a big ocean, and pushed west in tiny wagons, and landed on the moon. That’s the America I heard on the streets of Boiling Springs.”

He continued: “The America that Glenn Beck seems to see is a place where we all should be fearful, thinking that our best days are behind us. It sure does sell soap, but it sure does a disservice to America.”

Now, given that I’m a journalist, I have an interest in the way the media works and how people perceive it. Lord knows, I can’t tell you how many times people have come up to me to let me know what a liberal rag I work for – despite the fact that many people who actually read our paper’s editorial page call it one of, if not the most conservative in South Carolina. And that’s saying something. So maybe this was giving Inglis a soapbox, but I wanted to hear it.

“If Walter Cronkite said something like Glenn Beck said recently on the air, about the president being a racist, Cronkite would’ve been fired on the spot,” Inglis said. “But I guess the executives of these cable news shows are more enamored with the profits that come from selling this negative message than they are with undermining the faith of people in this wonderful constitutional republic.”

He continued: “There is every reason to oppose President Obama’s health care package. It’s the wrong prescription. It needs to be stopped. But that doesn’t mean we need to abandon hope in America, and say the end is near, and people are going to force us to have immunizations. There’s no reason to go to that extreme.”

I should point out that Inglis is facing a crowded slate of challengers in next year’s Republican primary. If any of those candidates want to call and talk about FOX, MSNBC, CNN, talk radio or even good old-fashioned newspapers, they have my number.

Anyway, Inglis made a couple of final points in our conversation. It was getting late, and I was missing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. ;)

“This is a constitutional republic that can withstand any president I disagree with,” Inglis said. “It withstood Bill Clinton. And if you were a George Bush-hater, it withstood George Bush. And it will withstand Barack Obama. And that’s just because there’s such confidence in the Constitution and the framers, who set up such an incredible system of checks and balances. …It’s inspiring to me to think about that.”

“What you saw tonight was people who had been convinced of this negativism, and are detaching from the communities and institutions that hold us together,” Inglis told me. “And I believe in the importance of strong institutions. I’m not an anarchist. And I’m not a Libertarian. I believe in a strong, smart federal government that is able to meet challenges like 9/11, and figure out how to correct its mistakes from Katrina…”

He lost his signal. (He was, after all, on Highway 11.) He called back and we wrapped up.

“I hope to convince people that there’s every reason to be optimistic, and there is a way forward. And I hope to help position the Republican Party as the party that presents a message that America can fall in love with, rather than a message that would drive fear in order to win votes."

UPDATE (1:46 a.m.): While I was writing this, at least one video clip from the night surfaced. The audio is difficult to decipher, but the crowd's reaction speaks volumes. It sounds like Inglis says "Turn that silly thing off." I'm going on memory at this point, but this was after the "I'm afraid of Obama!" woman and after the congressman brought Glenn Beck into the mix. There were a few people recording, so maybe the whole bit will show up. If so, send me the link (jason.spencer@shj.com) and I'll post it here.

UPDATE (11:09 a.m.): Just found a longer video on Twitter (thanks to @innovator82 for providing the link) from the town hall. Now, keep in mind that this video has been spliced together by someone who obviously wants "Anybody But Bob" to hold this seat. But within the first minute, you can clearly hear Inglis' original comments about Beck -- and the reaction . You can also hear more of the woman who is afraid of Obama. Keep watching to hear some of the audience questions (taken at the beginning of the meeting) and Inglis' answers (from the end of it).

I should've kept a tally.

Now that we've all had a chance to catch our breath, though, there's a potential lesson to be learned from Gov. Mark Sanford's admission of having an affair with an Argentine woman and the subsequent fallout. Actually, there's probably several. But the one I have in mind involves newspapers.

For roughly a two-week period, nearly every day it seemed there was a story -- or series of stories -- that broke, whether it involved him lying to his staff, his romantic e-mails, his wife Jenny's reaction, his travel, calls for his resignation, his "love story" account of the whole thing, and so on.

If you're familiar with our Web site, you've seen the "Most Read" tab over on the right. News about Sanford dominated that list -- so much, in fact, that I began to wonder if we were really offering readers anything by putting those same (or extremely similar) stories in the paper the next day. Many days, by 10 a.m., there was more breaking news that somehow made stories that were still fresh off the press seem like "old news." Granted, not everyone gets their news from the Web (yet?), but everyone was running with the wire copy, especially once the infamous Associated Press "soul mate" interview broke. If you didn't read it online, you probably heard about it on television.

It's the classic problem that's plagued newspapers since they realized the Internet existed: Do you risk de-valuing the news by putting it up (for free) on your Web site the day it moves, which is what readers want and have come to expect, or do you save it for the next day? I can't help but wonder if "reverse publishing" breaking news in the paper after it had been on the Web meant taking up valuable space in the newspaper with information people already had consumed.

Now, this doesn't apply to everything. Bob Dalton had several good stories in this mix, and I got a piece of the action every now and again. (Here's one.) But what we were doing had a local angle, or involved analysis... It was a different kind of content than what was filtering onto our Web site (and, later, into the paper).

Those are the kind of stories that are best suited for the paper, in my opinion.

Now might be a good time to say I can't speak for our paper or our company, but as a journalist, it's in my best interest to at least be aware of the best channels to use to get the most information to the most people. And everything that's been said about the way our paper handled the Sanford affair could easily apply to nearly every newspaper in the state. (Kudos, of course, to The State, for breaking the story in the first place.)

In retrospect, I wonder if producing more stories like Bob (and some of the rest of us) wrote, and simply supplementing those with bullet points from the prior day's breaking news would have provided the best value to our readers?

It's a question that needs to be answered -- or at least thought about. If there's a better model out there, it could be applied to any kind of crisis coverage, whether it involves a love-struck governor, a serial killer or any other news story that develops over time in rapid-fire daily bursts.

Like I said, I'm not able to speak for the paper. I've actually been encouraged by some conversations I've had about differentiating some online versus print content based on space and the likely audience for certain stories. Extremely encouraged, in fact.

I can see why there'd be reluctance to try a new approach, especially on such a hot topic as Sanford's sex life. It takes guts to risk not putting a story that screams "front page" on... well, on the front page.

But the Internet isn't going away, and the number of people who get their news online can only grow -- whether it's through our Web site, Twitter feed, on their phone or on their computer, whatever. The print to digital avalanche isn't slowing down, and it's best to look for a way to ride the technological wave into the future rather than be buried under it.

You might have seen the Associated Press story this week, "Another 'black man did it' hoax sparks outrage."

In a nutshell, a woman -- Bonnie Sweeten -- accused two nondescript black men of abducting her and her 9-year-old daughter. She was later found at Disney World (of all places).

The AP article is good, but basic journalism practices could have prevented this from happening in the first place. Such hoaxes cause tension between the races at a time when, it seems, that is finally starting to dissipate.

Now, this isn't meant to portray me, as a reporter, or us, as a newspaper, as perfect. I certainly don't read every single crime brief we have in the paper -- though I probably should, as they are often among the most-read items in the paper or on our Web site -- to make sure we always do the right thing.

And, when Susan Smith killed her children in nearby Union County in 1994, a similar scenario played out. Smith gave officers a vague description of a young black man who she said kidnapped her two boys, causing many real young black men in Union to feel uneasy stares and, collectively, to bear the burden of being wrongfully accused. Those feelings don't go away quick. One of my first assignments when I came to the Herald-Journal in 2004 was to write one of the 10-year anniversary stories on the Susan Smith murders. Many a black man still felt slighted.

But here's the thing: People give vague descriptions of suspects (or alleged suspects) in crimes all the time. I still look through stacks of police reports at least once a week. I can't begin to tell you how many times the suspects are listed as "two black males" or "two Hispanic males" or "two white males." Sometimes, that's the extent of the description. Sometimes, you get lucky and the fact that the culprits had on blue jeans or a white T-shirt is included.

One of the first thing they teach reporters in J-school -- and this follows the AP Stylebook, the Bible of the dos and don'ts of journalism -- is that the race of a suspect should only been used when a complete description of that man or woman (or men or women, you get the picture) is given. If a police report indicates a woman says a black man snatched her purse, what goes in the paper is "The woman told investigators that a man snatched her purse..." or something along those lines.

This is done precisely to avoid the painful fallout caused by the Susan Smiths and Bonnie Sweetens of the world.

If a suspect is listed as a 5-foot, 6-inch tall white man, likely in his early 30s, with short blond hair, weighing about 180 pounds with a tattoo of "MOM" on his right arm, then that information could ethically be used in a story or a brief. Why? Because that is a more complete description. There's a much smaller universe of people who are being singled out as having committed a crime.

Often, such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, sometimes with the consultation of an editor, as the level of detail people provide law enforcement with about their alleged assailants varies dramatically.

So, every reporter, print or broadcast, to cover the Sweeten story should have looked at the general description of "two black men," shook their collective heads, and simply printed, "two men."

That's how it works. That's responsible journalism. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of pain.

And perhaps the collective black male community should be just as outraged at those reporters as they are at Sweeten.

When Edward Nixon, youngest brother of the late President Richard Nixon, walked into the ballroom yesterday, everyone knew exactly who he was. His facial features bore a strong resemblance to his brother -- and, yes, he has the Nixon nose. He was calm and willing to speak to everyone. He took questions, stayed late to sign books, and generally seemed to have a good time -- giving a hearty thumbs up when posing for pictures, rather than use his brother's more familiar hand gesture. Nixon, 79, sat down with the Herald-Journal for a brief interview before heading to Charleston. He's hitting several South Carolina cities this week promoting his latest book, "The Nixons: A Family Portrait."

HERALD-JOURNAL: What would people find in your book that they maybe wouldn’t find in a history book?

ED NIXON: Eye witness of history. And confirmed by a lot of careful research. It straightens out a few misnomers and misguided statements by a lot of people.

HJ: Like what?

NIXON: No ‘likes.’ No ‘likes.’ If you read history, and are aware of Nixon, then… As media has made people aware, sometimes they need a straight story to straighten it out. Media is a Latin word that means ‘between.’ Agents that work for one medium or another, you can read tea leaves, you can read palms, you can read crystal balls, but sometimes you look at the real scene, and get the word straight.

HJ: You’re going to China next week.

NIXON: Yes, that’s a business trip.

HJ: What’s the purpose of that trip?

NIXON: I’m a free-enterprise promoter in a country that needs a lot more. It’s already got a lot. It’s overtaking us, in fact. We’ve got to wake up. But 35 trips or so I’ve made over there, I’ve seen from the Mao era… and a very, very primitive type of country. It’s expanded now, under the influence of Deng Xiaoping and the offer to allow farmers to sell their surplus produce on the sidewalks. Unheard of. All of the sudden they took off. And from that point forward, the real world is seeing a China that is coming into its own as a first-rate partner in the world. Therefore, it’s time to wake up. Learn some Mandarin, maybe. One of my nephews is over there now, studying in China. And he’s learning a lot about how they do business. And he’s learning a lot, also, about how to show them how we do business, which is really important.

HJ: How do you think the current president is handling the world stage, or foreign policy or diplomacy?

NIXON: Without enough experience. He’s a very smart fellow, He knows the Constitution very well. But he’s — I think, self-admittedly — in need of advice. Who he calls on for advice is extremely important. If he goes only in one direction, I really have concern that we will end up like some countries in Europe that suffered through it… and returned, but they’re still suffering. And I think the Obama Administration… It’s not the Obama Administration. It’s the Congress. They print the money, or authorize the printing of money. So all through the centuries we’ve seen humans try to make gold out of lead. And now we have political alchemists trying to make gold out of paper. And that’s a very dangerous thing. It can’t be done. It can’t be done for long. Or, if we try to follow what happened in France in 1797, they had to end it… with a war. We don’t need that. Let’s avoid it.

HJ: You mentioned your mother today. She’s often portrayed as a very devout woman. How did she shape your life and your family?

NIXON: My mom was a Quaker lady. The Quakers don’t impose or demand or force anything on anybody. Each individual is responsible for his own being. And what he becomes depends on how his growth pattern, from coming out of a home with strong parents, into schools that teach basic concern for other fellow citizens, or fellow students, and then to grow. And then how we grow depends on what grandparents will tell us about what’s the world made of. Parents don’t have time to tell you all that, but grandparents and teachers do. And once you’ve learned the geography, and the history, and the philosophy, that we’ve grown up with, especially in our own Western culture, that develops into adults who become great leaders.

HJ: You mentioned that strong families are the heart of a great nation. How healthy would you say the American family is today?

NIXON: It’s hard pressed to provide parenting at home when children return home. Child care and things like that, they suffice, but we’ve come in to a point where it seems both parents think they need to work — many probably do — to support the family. And I have questions in my mind, how is it that we have lost that, that thing I enjoyed in the ’30s, through the Depression, when one parent was home all the time? Both parents worked, but that one parent that was home was working, doing laundry, or something else. We don’t want to go back to that, perhaps, but how do we get more parenting at home, through the age of 5 at least, when the kids get into school, and pick up teachers, who get paid to do it? Parents don’t get paid much. Neither do teachers. Not enough, in fact. Because they really are the most important professionals we have. Far more than doctors, lawyers, dentists and so forth.

HJ: Did you see “Frost/Nixon”?

NIXON: I saw the original. And then I took a look at the entertainment. The entertainment is aimed at an audience that wants to be entertained. It’s not so entertaining to family members who know the difference between the real story and what Ron Howard’s put together.

HJ: Do you think history has treated your brother fairly — or will it?

NIXON: It already has. More so, it’s coming around to where we realize now that his knowledge of not only international relations and world affairs, but also domestic policies that he invoked and got started. The only trouble was, he was cut short. Things like the (Environmental Protection Agency), for example. His concern was that, eventually, when you start an organization like that run at the government level, you’re going to have to stay with it and control it from going out of bounds, and shut down industry, which it really has in many cases. Far too extensively. EPA is important. And we need it. But it needs to have more good sense, common sense, applied to how they act.

HJ: You mentioned he was cut short. What was that like for you and your family, watching Watergate unfold and his resignation from office?

NIXON: It was not a comfortable time. All of the family grieved over the turn of events. But when you take a very highly developed, self-disciplined man, I don’t care how much self discipline, and how much self-control he has, if you pick on him long enough, the liberals discovered that they could do it, and they broke him finally. So that’s a tragedy — for the country, not for him. That’s why he’s rising above all that tragedy now.

HJ: When you were talking about creating jobs, you said the government should be fostering entrepreneurs, not expanding government…

NIXON: The government should not be a business. It should be run like a business, but it shouldn’t be a business.

HJ: But how do you translate that to a part of the culture that has, through the past several generations, become accustomed to…

NIXON: In other words, why have we become dependents? A nation of dependents. So, on July 4th we’re going to declare Dependence Day, instead of Independence Day. What happened to our self-reliance? Are the kids learning how to take care of themselves, and to develop things, or be inspired to create something new and build it and sell it? Not enough. Some are. Those will be leaders. Those who will be dependents will just take what the government will give them and be happy, I guess. But it won’t be nice.

HJ: Any parting thoughts?

NIXON: I really have high hopes. I really think the president we have now has given us one freedom. And that is, when you fill out a form that asks for race, all you have to write now is ‘human.’ So, racism goes by the wayside now that we have this president in there. There’s no call for racism anymore. There will be those who try to retain it because they’ve come to depend on it. And make a living at it. But we’re humans. And we’re Americans first. Otherwise, we might as well move to Tasmania. I really feel that we have a great future for us in the country as our president becomes educated with real experience. But right now, he needs people who have experience to advise him on pitfalls that lie ahead if he goes the same direction he seems to be going.

HJ: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

NIXON: Good show. Keep them smiling.

So, Tuesday, just before lunchtime, my head exploded.

It wasn't just watching U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis grappling with the best ways to use social media – particularly the current Next Big Thing, Twitter – in front of what he would later describe as a “with-it crowd” of 60 or so people.

The event, on the third floor of the Innovate building on River Street in Greenville, was fascinating, informative and entertaining. Plenty of people there were micro-blogging during the event, their comments feeding onto a screen behind Inglis. (See the 11 pages of posts here.)

But what blew my mind was the similarity in problems that the congressman is facing while exploring Twitter, Facebook and other online watering holes to those I've been trying to come to grips with myself, as a journalist, particularly in the last few months. And this isn't an ego thing. Our industry, moving toward the World Wild Web faster than ever these days, desperately needs not only to master the world of social networking, but find its rightful place in it. I left with a notepad full of ideas.

Deep breath. Start at the beginning. Write about the Inglis event. That's the easy part. Hopefully, we can explore several of the themes touched on more in the coming months.

Tuesday, it seems, not only shattered stereotypes but opened Inglis' eyes to the kind of people who use social media – and what they can use it to achieve.

Living online no longer means living in your parents' basement, anonymously posting rants about whatever pisses you off. (It hasn't for a long time, but that idea is still catching on. See: Newspaper message forums.)

It means being a professional, making contacts, marketing, branding, organizing, mobilizing, being up to date and up to the minute on anything and everything that's going on around you. Yes, it can be overwhelming. Thankfully, there are some apps out there to help manage the information flow. Personally, I like TweetDeck, but I haven't experimented too much beyond that yet.

And, to the congressman's apparent surprise, social networking actually facilitates human contact. He called it “reversing the 'Bowling Alone' concept.”

Inglis had recently returned from a House retreat where he was told to “Go home and get your kids to give you a tour of Facebook.” But he's been on Twitter a couple of months now – every tweet has been his own, he said, not posted by a staffer – and when a recent article on TheHill.com lifted quotes directly from tweets, instantly granting him a couple hundred new followers, it was time to reach out and ask for help in designing the way his office uses social media.

(It was pointed out that following someone does not constitute a political endorsement. That's important. Just to drive it home, keep an eye out for Christina Jeffrey of Spartanburg or Andrew Smart of Greenville, both of whom have said they will run against Inglis on the Republican ticket in 2010.)

Part of the challenge comes in navigating the collision of new media with old media.

“The benefit of a general circulation newspaper is that it forces you to read stuff you don't like,” Inglis said. “People go to their news islands, and are never challenged about their opinions ... and they get further and further away from the mainstream.”

For example, he said, at a recent “Let's Talk” luncheon in Spartanburg, he ended up with two bankers and three people who wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. Those three turned off the bankers, Inglis said, and that's who he needed to hear from.

One of Inglis' concerns with social media is that he'll end up hearing more from outside the mainstream – and the potential political and ethical ramifications of that. What if someone in the Ku Klux Klan follows him on Twitter? What if he unknowingly follows someone in the KKK? What if the person in the KKK doesn't advertise the fact but only talks about bunnies?

He also has the gut-wrenching challenge of keeping “official” and “campaign” communication separate – a task that has become more and more complicated as technology makes it more and more easy to communicate.

Because the advances in technology carry with them their own expectations.

“Transparency is not an option any more,” said Trey Pennington with Showcase Marketing in Greenville. . “... It's like putting your pants on in the morning.”

Phil Yanov, a writer and blogger, added that “Twitter has reduced the cost of listening to next to nothing.” Further, he pointed out that the 140-character limit on Twitter causes people to focus their points and creates economy in communication.

“When somebody's writing a letter to the editor (in a newspaper), you wish to God they were limited to only 140 characters,” he said.

The general consensus was that Twitter carries with it the expectation of authenticity. The uncensored, unmoderated, fast-paced exchange of ideas forces honesty and in some ways, could help return us all to the idyllic world of the 1950s – if you do something wrong, everyone will know about it by the time you get home.

(There was also a concern about how to separate the personal and the professional, given how sites like Facebook and Twitter can blend the two. I've found myself in this gray area a lot lately.)

“I really do believe that social media is a chance for us to reconnect with our community,” said Pennington, who admitted to somewhat harassing the congressman over the last few weeks for not responding to tweets directed at him. “Bob Inglis isn't the answer to our problems. We are the answer.”

Pennington has helped establish a Social Media Club in Greenville that has 301 members, and one in Columbia that has 216 members. He's been working on the idea in Spartanburg. This city's first Social Media Club meeting is slated for Tuesday, Feb. 17.

It's unlikely that Inglis – or any congressman, for that matter – could respond to every e-mail, Facebook post or tweet directed at him. The sheer volume versus time constraints work against that.

But Mihaela Vorvoreanu, an assistant professor of communication studies at Clemson University, suggested setting aside a night every now and then for a “burst” of engagement, for chats, for answering questions. Inglis liked that idea and said he wanted to try it.

Vorvoreanu – Dr. V, for short – has studied social media and some of the social norms that develop because of them. When Inglis was asking for the best way to reach and interact with constituents, Dr. V told him not to worry much about Facebook at this point. You can respect other people's space by staying out of it, she said.

Inglis was concerned about the demographics of Twitter, whether devoting too much time to it would leave people out. He threw out the idea – perhaps a glimpse of a larger strategy peculating in the GOP? -- of getting access to cell phone numbers to send out text messages to people in his district, particularly African-Americans. That didn't go over too well. Nobody likes spam.

Geno Church, the word of mouth information officer at Greenville-based Brains on Fire, pointed out that, “If you get into the social media game, it needs to be a long-term game.”

“People are excited that the congressman is using these tools,” he said. “No matter how far Bob Inglis goes down the rabbit hole... this is a step toward more accountability, transparency.”

Edit: Changed title at 9:34 p.m.

It’s been a while, I know.

At first, it took a few days to decompress, to go over in my head the whirlwind three days photographer Alex Hicks and I had just experienced. And then, as often goes in newsrooms, things happen, stories break, meetings pop up and suddenly an entire to-do list is on the back burner. But now, almost two weeks after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, here goes my take on the slice of history we were able to be a part of.

I had grand plans for our coverage of the event. We were, for lack of a better term, “embedded” in a group that totalled 65 people. The trip was hosted by the Spartanburg County GOP. It was the first planned trip I’d heard about late last summer, and jumped on the chance to be on board. When Obama won, the number of actual Republicans on the bus dwindled, and we ended up with, I’d say, a pretty diverse group. Probably 50-50 Republicans and Democrats.

Going in, I knew the paper was planning a special section. I wanted to profile everyone on board, even if it was just a couple of paragraphs. I wanted to get to know everyone, their life stories, their reasons for going to Washington, their political views... everything. I wanted to tell stories about the teens who were going, about the senior citizens, about the Republicans, the Democrats, any possible way to slice the bunch so as to bring to light another angle, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to pass around my laptop and let people blog about the trip right there. Collect all the voices.

It might have been a tad overambitious.

On the eight-hour ride up Sunday, Alex and I began talking about our game plan. We’d met some of the people on the bus beforehand, which made things easier. We knew that Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was a free-for-all, with the various families and friends and other groups splitting up, scattering around the capitol. So, the first order of business was to find a family (or a couple of families) to tag along with. That was the easy part.

By the time we got to our hotel room, we began going door to door, collecting -- again, for lack of a better term -- “family portraits” of everyone, so we’d at least have that. Get names. Get faces. Get to know everyone.

We were lucky that first night. Got about 4.5 hours of sleep. Suffice it to say, the crushing realization of the time crunch we were going to face made blogging and micro-blogging (via Twitter) the first casualties.

That’s OK. Still lots of stories to tell.

Later that morning, we got off our bus and attached ourselves to a group of nine people from Spartanburg. A couple of families plus a few non-related individuals. By the day’s end, they were all friends, though.

We knew everyone who was going to the S.C. Inaugural Ball needed to meet at Rep. Bob Inglis’ office by 3 p.m. We’d hoped to bounce around between some different groups, but as the day progressed, it became obvious that a tighter focus on a smaller number of people would make for a better story. (At least, I think it did.) It took awhile, because I kept looking for “the moment.” Maybe it would be the children getting to see the Lincoln Memorial (which they couldn’t, up close at least, because when we were there the stage from a concert the day before was still being dismantled). Maybe there would be some great mother-daughter bonding. Something. It took time to realize that there wasn’t going to be some shining moment to tell a story about. The entire day, the series of little moments, that was the story. Occasionally, strangers would begin talking to one another, or someone would spot a person from Spartanburg that they had no idea was in DC. Little moments.

Monday was crowded, but nothing like how it would be in a mere 24 hours. (Less than that, actually.) I’ve been to DC a few times, and it’s a cool town. It’s also always been cold. Never been in the spring or summer. This time, the entire reflecting pool leading to the Lincoln Memorial was frozen. We saw a guy with a giant tank of coffee strapped to his back, and we grabbed a cup of hot chocolate from a street vendor. I gained a new appreciation for hats and gloves. We hit a couple of exhibits, the best one being photographs from the civil rights struggle -- and that was the one room we went to where flash photography wasn’t allowed. But it was still an exciting experience. I looked at the police report filed when Rosa Parks was arrested, and chatted with the young black woman and her daughter next to me about it. We weren’t just seeing it through different eyes, we were seeing it through different lenses.

(I should point out how struck I was by the various children in the group who, when asked if they’d studied this civil rights figure or that in school, the answer was most often, “Not really.” Maybe some Martin Luther King Jr. love on his birthday, and a couple of short lessons during Black History Month, they said. That, to me, spoke volumes.)

Alex and I decided to break off from the group around 2 p.m. We actually ran into one of the families I’d written about the week before shortly after that. I’d been carrying around my laptop all day in hopes of finding some time to write. (I think, at that point, I still thought I could blog or Tweet.) I called Spartanburg GOP Chairman Rick Beltram, who was coordinating things, and told him we were on our way to Inglis’ office. I’d figured that would give Alex time to go over photographs and me time to start writing the next day’s story. Once back at the hotel, we’d only have an hour or two to finish things up and get ready for the ball. But I’d figured wrong. Beltram told me there was a three-hour wait to even get into the congressional office building. Everyone was meeting a couple blocks away. Ok, no problem, right?

I can’t remember how long we were waiting for the bus -- mind you, Monday and Tuesday were freezing, especially to those of us who had lived in the Southeast most of our lives -- but eventually the bus came around, I found a seat, and started cobbling together my notes. There was no room for the bus to park, so it drove around the block a couple of times, waiting for all of our crew to arrive. We got back to the hotel around 4 p.m. I was about halfway done with my story, and Alex was ready to send photos. Panic began to set in when Alex’s laptop started acting up. He had dozens of great shots. I think we were able to transmit two or three by the time the computer was working again. No time for a shower, but we quickly dressed and headed back down to the bus for the ball. Wait, had we eaten anything since the just-add-water eggs at 6 a.m.? No time now.

The traffic going back into DC -- we were staying in the Mount Vernon area -- was horrendous. We got to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, but all the right turns were blocked, and the bus had to park on the other side. Alex and I got off the bus and walked a few blocks to get there. (We could hear a crowd cheering behind an MSNBC stage off in the distance.) I think everyone else on our bus ended up doing the same. Two in our group actually landed tickets to the Illinois ball, which was awesome, I’m told. Again, I had my laptop with me, and again I was too busy to write anything. Alex was shooting photos for the upcoming Spartanburg Magazine, and I was hunting good interviews. I remember we ran into Kim Nelson (former Spartanburg County Councilman Rock Adams’ daughter) at the ball, and we chatted a while. The music and food were so-so -- we’re not supposed to eat at these things, but we decided to throw caution to the wind and have a couple of hor’devours -- and the people who made repeated trips to the free bar seemed to be having the best time. I did land a quick interview with Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bob Inglis and former Gov. Dick Riley. (A week later I opened the e-mail saying Clyburn was holding a “media availability” at the beginning of the ball and would not be taking any questions after that. Oops.)

We got back to the hotel at about 11:30 p.m. I spent some time with a few members of Beltram’s family, who were more than happy to share his childhood secrets, perhaps explaining the way he is today. (I mean that in the nicest way, Rick.) Shortly after midnight, it was time to start writing. Alex was working his photo magic -- his laptop was back in order, at least enough to get the job done. We finished at about 5 a.m., which left us just enough time to get ready for the big day. Alex made a quick run to the 7-11 next door for sodas and chips. Those unmade beds looked inviting, but history was calling. And everything had to be packed and on the bus, because by the time we’d be back on it, it would be past the checkout time. We got on the 6 a.m. bus -- most of our group had gotten on the 5 a.m. bus -- and headed back into DC.

Our plan all along had been to find the largest number of Spartanburg people and attach ourselves to them. Going up, it looked like there wouldn’t be enough tickets for everyone -- the ticketed area was closets to the U.S. Capitol, but even there, the best view was on the Jumbotrons -- so we thought we’d have Spartanburg people to surround ourselves with. But then, a miscommunication, and it turned out everyone had tickets except us. (Between Alex and I, we had been granted a single press ticket, but we declined that because we needed to be together and there was no guarantee that would have placed us near local people.) I’d talked to my editor the night before, and we came up with a contingency plan. There was 100-plus Spartanburg High School students at the event, and most of them didn’t have tickets. So, we’d just hook up with them. No problem, right?

(Only 32 people in our group got tickets -- and many of them weren’t able to get in, anyway, because of chaos and lack of planning on the part of the inaugural committee -- we’d find out later. Most of the rest of our group watched the event on television in Sen. Jim DeMint’s office, and a few others stayed at the hotel and watched it on television there.)

When our bus dropped us off at the Huntington metro station, the driver announced on the speaker, “This is going to be tough.” Huntington was the first stop, so the train was relatively empty when we got on. By the time we arrived at the mall, though, each car was bursting at the seams. When the doors finally opened, people spewed out, with clapping, cheering and chants of “O-bam-a!” going up after turning a corner or seeing the stairs or some other small checkpoint. Already, you could only move in baby steps. I’m talking shoulder-to-shoulder, front to back, just you and a few thousand of your new best friends.

One surprising thing was at how happy everyone seemed to be. I mean, everyone was in a good mood. Most people had slept little (or, like me and Alex, not at all) the night before, and it was cramped and cold and really, the day had all the symptoms of being miserable. But everyone was happy. Excited. There was a thrill in the air on top of the chill. It was hard to explain. People were counting down the hours -- and eventually, the minutes -- before President George W. Bush would leave office.

When we got out onto the street, we were able to pull ourselves out of the stream of people and take a look around. You basically had to stand against a building, a tree or a street vendor or risk getting caught up in the current. And all the cross streets, in every direction: full of people, sidewalk to sidewalk, just like it had been getting out of the metro station, just more. Lots more. Alex grabbed a honey bun and me a hot dog (OK, OK, two hot dogs) from a vendor for breakfast. I found a cheap toboggan -- a hat, for our northern friends -- and turned it inside out. We’re not allowed to wear anything political, but it was really, really, cold. And everything had Obama’s name or picture on it. We did find one vendor with a box of McCain-Palin T-shirts. She said she’d sell us the whole box for $5. We were going to get them, kind of a as a gag, for Beltram, but decided we didn’t want to lug them around all day.

Throughout the morning, if I had to take my gloves off to write something or record someone, I swear I could feel little ice crystals inside them when I put them back on. We were about 30 minutes ahead of the Spartanburg High School delegation, so we tried to figure out how we’d find them in the massive crowd. We stepped in to the river of people, which was eventually steered toward Independence Avenue. We passed every kind of street vendor imaginable. People had bought cases of hand warmers and were selling them like they were going out of style. We passed a guy selling Obama air fresheners. His sales pitch, and I’m not kidding, was “Smell like Obama!” But you couldn’t really stop and deal with these guys. You pretty much had to have your money ready and hand it to them, get your goods, and continue to be pushed forward. The momentum was unstoppable.

Occasionally, there were places where you could detach yourself from the crowd, stand against a barrier blocking a street, and get your bearings. I had the bright idea of heading toward the Washington Monument (the only other option, really, was to stay where we were). At the time, it seemed logical. When we heard from the Spartanburg High group, we’d try to meet them there. I mean, you can see it from anywhere in the mall. It is the tallest structure in Washington, D.C. So, we got back into the stream of people and allowed ourselves to be carried forward. The next break, when we could jump out and stand still, was around Independence and 15th. We’d soon find out this was the point of no return. Along the long walk, Alex and I started trying to figure out Plans C and D, just in case Plan B fell through. It was looking like finding a small group of Spartanburg people in this sea of people was going to be impossible.

We were corralled into an area in front of the Washington Monument. The ground dipped down, which Alex called a “fishbowl.” Don’t get in the fishbowl, he kept telling me. Don’t get in. We won’t get out.

We ended up in the fishbowl.

It was around this point that I heard from our Spartan High contact. He was with a small group of students in one of the ticketed areas -- about 14 blocks away. He wasn’t sure where the nonticketed students were -- again, a miscommunication, I guess -- but said they likely weren’t going to get in, anyway, and we could still tag along with them. We still had cell reception at this point, but it was spotty, and my battery was draining quick, even though it had charged all night. We’d soon have to resort to texts, as calls quickly stopped going through.

Anyway, the problem then was it would have taken us at least 30 minutes to get out of the fishbowl and probably two hours or more to get back to the point they were at. The inauguration would likely have been over by the time we got back. And people were starting to stake out their position. The stream of people was becoming as solid as the reflecting pool had been. Immobile. It got to the point where literally taking one step forward or one step back would have required a tremendous amount of effort, some negotiating and goodwill -- especially if the person you were trying to go around thought you were trying to get in front of them. We were stuck, and the closest Jumbotron was quite far away. I could generally see it good enough if I stood on my tip toes. If I could feel my tip toes. And the crowd went on behind us as far as I could see.

Still, the mood was good. Alex and I had gotten our third or fourth wind, and we tried Plan C.... Is that what we were on? His idea: Talk to as many people from as many different places and get a single quote: What does this mean to you? Sounded easy. We got through about a dozen people -- interesting people, too, from Birmingham to Los Angeles to New York to DC -- before it became simply impossible to move. I suggested we dig in, watch what we could, and collect reaction quotes back on the bus. (That last part was always a contingency plan. Easy enough for a story, but there was no visual component to this. Alex began shooting pictures of anything interesting he saw. And he got some damn good photos.)

The ceremony was pretty much as you saw it on television, except apparently it was difficult to hear people booing the Bushes. From where we were, it was deafening. And it wasn’t just once. It was every time they showed the 41st or 43rd president (or anyone in their family) on the Jumbotron. Frankly, it bothered me. I mean, I’m all about people being able to disagree with those in authority, but this just felt... wrong. These were presidents of the United States, an office that deserves respect. At one point, I turned to someone booing beside me and said, “This must be that unity I keep hearing about.” He stopped.

The other thing that bothered me was about two-thirds of the way through Obama’s inaugural address, everyone decided they needed to start leaving or at least be making their way to a place where they could leave easily. But it was gridlock. People were claiming their 80-year-old grandmothers had to go to the bathroom or that they had a child with autism who was a few rows away. (Who would let their autistic child roam freely in a crowd of more than 2 million?) But it didn’t matter the reason. No one was moving. Not by choice, really, because we didn’t have a choice. No one did. Until the outer layers of people started moving away, and then the next layer, and the next layer, etc., everyone and their 80-year-old grandmothers and autistic children were going to be stuck just like we were. By the end of Obama’s speech, more people were facing away from the Jumbotrons than toward them.

Around the benediction, the crowd began to shift. It was happening. I tried to pay attention, but by the end of it I was basically letting myself get carried backward. (I was still facing the Jumbotron.) Alex said he kept calling out my name -- we got separated, and quick -- but I never heard him. He even tried to use the flash on one of his cameras to get my attention. But we were separated. And we would be for the next hour and a half, two hours... It gets fuzzy.

That hour and a half was not fun. There was no time to think about what we’d just seen, just heard. There was only 2 million people scattering. Getting routed one direction and then turned around and routed back the way they came. I was able to pull myself up to the signpost at 15th and Independence and light a cigarette -- man, that was a really good cigarette -- but for some reason the only call I could get to go through was to our city editor back in Spartanburg. Nothing else worked. I told him I was at 15th and Independence and he said Alex was working his way toward the yellow line. (That’s the train back to Huntington.) Apparently, he was able to get through to our boss, too. So I asked a military officer where the closest train station was and they said Foggy Bottom, which was a heckuva a long way away. At least, it was when a million other people were all trying to get there, too. My phone had died, or at least cut off because of low power. I was able to turn it back on and use it for a minute or two every now and then, and realized I needed to save those precious minutes. So I went with the flow. The next place I was able to wrest myself from the crowd and grab some standing-still room was a block or two in front of the White House. (Just an aside, every now and then, when I passed a military or police officer, I’d ask them the way to the closest train station. Every one of them gave me a different answer.) Miraculously, I was able to get Alex on the phone at this point. He was at Independence and 15th -- about 30 minutes away, at least at the pace I’d been traveling at. So I waited and we eventually hooked back up, with Alex having an officer call my name through a blow horn. I was just on the other side of the police car. That’s how thick the streets were with people.

So we made it back to the train station. And we eventually made it to the yellow line to Huntington. When we finally sat down, we realized we had been either standing or walking for eight hours. Suddenly, we remembered we hadn’t slept at all the night before. It was coming back. On the train, we met a guy who was involved in establishing Leadership Spartanburg, so that was interesting, but at this point we were focused on what we needed to do as soon as we got back on the bus and got our equipment.

We were the last ones on the bus. Apparently, it wasn’t allowed to back to the train station, and everyone was taking public buses back to the hotel, where it was parked. Rather than wait -- and hold everyone up even longer -- we took a cab. Not sure what I’d spent the $60 in my wallet on in two and a half days, but between me and Alex we were able to cover the fair with less than $1 tip. We apologized profusely, but the cab guy was nice. We’d told him up front how much cash we had, and he said he’d make it work.

When we got on the bus, everyone cheered. (It was about 4:30 p.m. Technically, according to the itinerary, we were still 30 minutes early.) Alex began going through photos and I began going around and talking to people about their experiences. When I had enough for my stories -- one general reaction story, one on our ticket holders who ended up watching the inauguration on a laptop, or on a television in a cafe outside of the district -- and then the last few profiles I wanted to send, it was dark. It had been for a while. I did my last interview in a Wendy’s with a guy waiting in line. And I was able to charge my phone for a few minutes. Ended up eating a hamburger with one hand, sorting through notes with the other. I think by this point I’d filled up four notebooks. I started writing after dinner. The editors began calling just before I sent my first story... second two soon followed. I’m not sure when everything was filed. I think we were about an hour north of Charlotte.

And then we got home. Alex and I had worked 40-plus hours straight with no sleep. In the last hour or so of the trip, when I could actually socialize with people who were still awake, I told them I hadn’t had a weekend like that since college. Alex, a former Navy chief, told them he hadn’t had a weekend like that since the second time he was deployed to Saudi Arabia.

Yeah.

But it was fun. Exhausting, but fun. Since we’d only had two “real” meals on the whole trip, we met at Outback the next night to debrief, talk about what we’d done, what could’ve been done better or different, and any loose ends we wanted to tie up. I wished we could’ve done more, Alex thought we’d tried to do too much. So I guess we hit the mark, coming in somewhere in the middle.

And part of me was glad we got separated from... well, from everyone. We were sent to tell their stories. But the selfish part of me realized that we had one of our own.

I plan on starting a Facebook group called “Spartanburg 2009 Inauguration Alumni.” I’m open to suggestions for a better name, if anyone has one. But this would be open to everyone from here -- turns out there were at least three school groups from Spartanburg at the event, not to mention bunches of families or individuals who went up on their own. I figure it will get some attention at first, and then die down. But in the years to come, it will be a place to go back to, to reconnect with people, to reflect on the experience after some time has passed... and it’s free and easy, so there’s that.

I’ll post the link in a separate entry a little later on so it won’t get lost in this lengthy post. I realize this probably seemed a little disjointed and stream-of-consciousness and rambling and hectic, but that’s how our experience was.

And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Thanks to The Herald-Journal for allowing Alex and me the opportunity to cover this event.

Photographer Alex Hicks and I just boarded a bus with 54 other people headed to Washington, D.C. The trip is hosted by the Spartanburg County Republican Party, though the crowd is hardly all Republican. I'd guess it's at least 50 percent Democrat. It's a very diverse group, in terms of race, gender, age and party affiliation.

Everyone held hands in the parking lot of Bethel United Methodist Church for a quick send-off.

"On Jan. 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln set the stage for what we're going to see Tuesday," GOP Chairman Rick Beltram said.

State Rep. Steve Parker added, "You are setting a major precedent that Democrats and Republicans are coming togehter for the betterment of our country. ... Let's go see our president!"

Family members hugged their loved ones as they boarded the bus. Despite the freezing cold, this is probably the warmest it is going to be from now until the end of the trip.

The bus is full except for one seat. A few others are meeting their respective families in Washington.

It's a pretty hectic time for me and Alex, who want to meet, talk to, interview and profile as many people as possible. There could be one or two stories from this trip, or there could be one or two dozen. We're kind of playing it by ear. I've got some ideas as to how to give the spotlight to as many different voices as possible.

I'll be trying to post short updates here and at www.goupstate.com/twitter. For the Twitter elite, I believe #scinaug is the hashtag for micro-blogs about the inauguration.

In the meantime, if anyone has any questions for me, Alex or anyone on the bus, post here, and we'll see if we can get those questions answered. Even though there will be subsequent blogs, this is the entry I'll keep checking for questions.

Looking forward to an exciting, but busy, three days. Goodbye, giant peach.

Been a busy couple of weeks. Here goes a few links I picked up off Twitter. I was going to comment more on each one but that's just going to further delay putting them up, so here they go with just a quick description:

The Twitter Wind Storm. A very brief account of one way journalists can use Twitter to reach readers during fast-paced, breaking news.

Five Essential Web Tools for Political Operatives. Still going over some of these, but they sound helpful.

The Internet is TV. Twitter is the Internet. By Patrick Ruffini. Beginning the discussion on the ways people (mostly political) use Web 2.0 versus those who say they use Web 2.0. A really good, quick read that should help generate discussion.

Six Social Search Engines to Start 2009. Still haven't read this one, but it looks intriguing.

And don't forget to check out SC Tweets, which feeds all the elected officials and politicos on Twitter into one handy site. Not only is this a good aggregate, but hopefully officials -- those already using Twitter and those yet to start tweet their first... umm, tweet -- can look it big-picture-wise and determine what's worthwhile and what's not, letting it become part of the learning process of being better communicators.

There's more, but this is the stuff I've left open to remind me to post. Hoping to have a good discussion about the use of social media sites as forms of two-way communication (versus one-way) in the near future. Also wondering how many RNC candidates will stay active on Twitter once one is crowned chairman. And I'll post about the state Republican Party chairman's race whenever I get the interviews completed.

Right now, I'm busy getting ready for the trip to the inauguration. I think we'll be able to give our readers something they'll want to keep. And our online community may be in for a treat. (or tweet). But I think I've secured permission for people on the bus trip to DC to post guest blog entires. Should be a variety of different voices.