My journey for the election season

This campaign season was a fun ride as a political blogger. Here are some articles from my mediamensch blog. The first article about the primary very accurately makes some predictions about the candidates, their strategies and tactics and choice of Vice President. This journey took me from a chance personal encounter with John McCain in January to being recognized on the cover page of Salon Magazines, OpenSalon.com website on election day.

"Editor's Pick" of my articles on Salon Magazine's Opensalon.com


Blog post from May 8, 2008

Andrew Kaplan Viewpoint - Presidential Primary and Social Media - Who is Engaging Best Wins!!

Here is a post about my encounter with Howard Dean and my discussion about a lack of a facebook strategy..Less than one hundred people turned out for this rally and only a about 10 were under the age of 30.
Blog Post from July 2008

Politics - Howard Dean "Register for Change"

Blog Post from January 19, 2008 (two days before the SC primary). This is my story of a personal encounter with John McCain and how I ended up asking him a question about technology and competitiveness among the members of the "crowd of supporters" at a town hall meeting.

Politics, John McCain and Me

March 28, 2008 On the trail listening to Bill Clinton campaign for Hillary, early in the NC primary. At that point NC was heating up as a battleground state for the democratic nomination. This was also the first time I actually was in the "press" area as a blogger. There is also a reference to George Clooney in this piece. I had worked on his film Leatherheads as a featured extra and was able to be part of his press conference prior to the movie release. It was my first time as a blogger being in an official press conference.

My first Press Coverage Bill Clinton Campaigning in NC

Media Mensch Radio Show - BlackTurtle Media - Neal Thurman

Today's guest for the show on March 21, 2008 was Neal Thurman, VP, Audience Relations for www.blackturtlemedia.com.

Andrew Kaplan, host of MediaMensch, and Thurman discussed the development of the site for the young creatives, the creation of a citizen journalist blogging site for soccer which was sold to Yahoo. and his past non-profit project for linking inner city children with books called www.in2books.com

Listen to the Radio show at www.blogtalkradio.com/mediamensch

Making a Wish - 300+ Bloggers Help an Author Live Her Dreams

I have been working closely with Julie Ann Shapiro marketing her books, Jen Zen and the One Shoe Diaries and Three Drop Pennies. Most of what we do is on Facebook and my facebookenthusiast blog. While my world revolves around mostly business, Julie's world revolves around authors and writers.

Today, we are posting this special article which Julie has written to support an author battling cancer whose book is just being published.

300+ Bloggers Support a Writer Living the Dream

In a practical world, there are dreamers and there are realities called bills. Many of us writers know how hard it is to have that dream and responsibilities but we chase that dream because it’s so much a part of us we wouldn’t know life if we didn’t have it.

Can you imagine having that dream of seeing your book finally published after many years of struggling and then you get sick? It’s too uncomfortable and too scary to think about. Yet, it happened to one fine writer, Patry Francis. Her book the Liars Club came out amidst the diagnosis of cancer. During a time when she should be celebrating she has to heal. Now over 300 bloggers are lending their support for Patry Francis.

http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Diary-Patry-Francis/dp/0452289157/ref=ed_oe_p

Leatherheads - The Clooney Project and MediaMensch Link Up

One of the interesting things about writing a blog and being on this journey are some of the unexpected opportunities to meet people you would not ordinarily come in contact with.

One my blog and in my e-mail, I decided to experiment and create an automatic search for news on George Clooney or Leatherheads. Every few days, I would see an alert with a posting coming from a website called "The Clooney Project". The Clooney Project is a site which seems to do a great deal of research to blog or write about anything related to George Clooney.

After filming in Statesville, NC. I was quoted in an article regarding the film "Leatherheads". Also in the article were pictures from the film set from the newspaper of a police officer in the movie in authentic 1920's uniform.

When I went to The Clooney Project to read the article, it occurred to me that I have a great picture of George Clooney directing the film in Greensboro, NC. The shot has him looking through a camera to set up a shot where the fans are entering the stadium for a championship football game.

I contacted the editor/owner of "The Clooney Project" and told her it would be great if we could "cross-promote" each others blogs. One of my goals when I started blogging about six weeks ago, was to become a well known professional blogger. One of the secrets of doing this is gaining credibility from being linked to credible sites.

An article was posted on The Clooney Project with a link back...

Another step in the journey is complete.