Radio Iowa News Director O. Kay Henderson chatted with Mrs. John Edwards this afternoon about –among other things I imaging– blogging. Here’s a couple of excerpts from her post/transcription:
“It’s just a great medium and I’m really glad to have the opportunity to speak without having somebody say what I meant to say, you know, which happens whenever there’s a reporter between you — or even, honestly, your own press people — between you and the people you’re trying to get to listen to what you have to say.”
“Here’s what the Internet has to offer. It is a direct medium between people. There is no filter. There is no intervention and that is unparalelled. If you think back about the way we used to communicate in a democracy centuries ago where people stood in the town square, handing out pamphlets with their opinions on them — isn’t this the closest we’ve really come to that again? We’ve returned to that which is what we were based on, where people can stand on their little corner of the Internet, handing out their opinions to people who are willing to listen to them.”
One of the first Learfield networks to have a website was Radio Iowa, our state news network in Iowa. That must have been around 1996 and it was created (using Frontpage) by Dan Arnall and Allen Hammock, a couple college guys we hired to help us figure out “this Internet thing.”
“Just imagine, you’re listening to the radio, Tony Snow has been speaking to you as the spokesman for the leader of the free world, and then a commercial comes on with him trying to sell you a window,” Ms. Henderson said Thursday. “He introduced himself as Tony Snow, talked about the travails of remodeling projects, boasted about the 30-year history of this business and delivered the 800 number of the business, twice.”