Press releases barely out last week announcing the hiring of Beau Friedlander as website Editor-in-Chief, and already new content, expansion and improvements are showing.
"The goal," Friedlander told BlatherWatch, "is to be a place for people to go when news is happening if they want a progressive spin on it."
It's to be a real-time, live stream of progressively-bent news, video, and opinion.
There's not much video up yet on the site, but Sam Seder and Marc Maron's new video show, Maron v. Seder will start up Oct. 1. Here's their interim site with some toothsome videos.
"The on-line part will be talking to the radio part, and the radio part will be talking to a video part all three parts will be creating dynamic content," Friedlander said.
Under the aegis of Air America Media, Friedlander, 39, and a small
staff will be doing it with original content that will include
user-generated material, original reporting, and original video.
"What we're doing here is a stand-alone entity, with the bar as high for the web content as it is on-air." he says.
(photo: Beau Bridges)
News is up, as are a bunch of categorized signature blogs, mostly written by Friedlander and staffer Tim Einenkel. There are other writers, like Louise Hartmann who produces Thom's show and has some writing chops. The contributors' list will be expanded.
Friedlander's a book guy: each blog has a reading list with suggested book titles linked to Powell's. (they sell AAR hosts' books here, too.)
The blogs:
Latest on AAR
guests, daily show postings, very current clips
As Heard on AAR
Edited, embeddable Mp3's of clips of Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, Mark Green, Ron Reagan, Jon Elliot, and David Bender, more.
Guest Blogger
A single blogger or a group blog is featured each week. Up at present is, impressively, Steve Clemons, of The Washington Note.
Editor Posts
Friedlander (who does some live-blogging of Friday's debate) and Einenkel blog: This includes Morning Round-up, a linker begun early in the ayem as a witty, edgy and eclectic First Read, The Note sort of thing.
Host Posts
This isn't very developed, yet, but we imagine this will be one of the less developed clicks on the site. Hosts and their producers have radio shows. They're busy. They're probably relieved as this site gets up and nobody's nagging them any more for on-line material.
Arts & Culture
Book reviews, music and media news, and other bloggy odds and ends.
All Things Green
As in The Earth, not The Mark.
Finance
Money, bail-outs, fiduciary fun & horrors
Ask a Liberal
Strives to be the satirical equivalent of the notoriously unfunny Ask a Mexican. We would hope one day AAL will not only equal AAM, but exceed its tepid, puerile hilarity. It hasn't yet...
This is barely a work in progress --just two weeks in, but if the plans come to fruition (and AAR seems to be willing to spend some money) it'll be a model for what every talk media entity should be doing: 
putting
up original content; edited, accessible podcasts; and teevee shows.
Instead of forcing already overworked producers and hosts to kick out
to the web the afterbirth of show prep.
We can see already that this will be a must read, as if we didn't have enough of those.
(photo: Beau Bamburg)
A literary type, Friedlander was politicized by the dreary years of the Bush catastrophe, (as so many were) and published lpolitical authors and worked in political media
"This is the most exciting time in my life, he says. "I'm not paying attention to anything else."
Friedlander comes from media consulting and book publishing. He was president of Friedlander
and Associates, a progressive media consulting group that provides
custom publishing, guerrilla marketing, activist outreach, web
presence, author representation and conflict mediation.
His independent house, Context Books published lots of award-winning authors, but most famously bought the rights to a book by the certifiably schizoid Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Friedlander edited and nearly published the book when, at the last minute, the federal prisoner pulled out of the deal.
Sounds exciting. I'll check it out.
Now, why don't they put Sam Seder back on the air where he belongs?
Did you read where Fox News seems to have blocked the word "bracelet?" I'm guesing on their blog. A conservative friend emailed that to me but I didn't have a chance to email back and question it. Anybody else know about it?
Posted by: joanie | September 29, 2008 at 01:03 AM
Air America has a finance blog. funny.
Posted by: Terry | September 29, 2008 at 12:09 PM
San Seder is a terrible talk show host. Terrible voice (high-pitched, strained) and can't say two words without punctuating them with "er," "ah," "um," etc. I agree with him politically, but can't stand to listen to him.
Posted by: TerryToo | September 29, 2008 at 07:28 PM