Every Friday, I take a moment and head over to NewsLadder and see what everyone thinks is the top story at that moment in time. With over 20 NewsLadders now feeding into the core ladder, the story might be from Sustain NewsLadder or Iraq NewsLadder or the Immigration NewsLadder.
However, not surprisingly, right now the top story is from the John McCain NewsLadder, one of our NewsLadders that was developed in conjunction with The Media Consortium.
The top story right now, as voted up by readers, their clicks and their comments is:
It's a very strong piece that outlines to all the choice that our country will make on November 4th and the impact that choice will have on our immediate life, and our children's future.
When I see terrific pieces like this from sites like Alternet, it makes me also realize what a difference this election is seeing when it comes to reporting. Four years ago when I was on John Kerry's Campaign, the new media was really just starting to come into its own. While sites like Alternet have been around for some time, the Huffington Post (and many more things we take for granted like YouTube and Facebook and Twitter) were not.
For that matter in 2004, there wasn't a core site like the John McCain NewsLadder where every day, every hour in fact, new stories are being posted, aggregated, sorted and voted up or down by readers like you. It's these new technologies that in opinion have been partially responsible for the deflating of the Republican chances this cycle.
When John McCain makes a pathetic claim like he did the other night that he would balance the budget in four years, the mainstream media doesn't regurgitate it like a statement of fact, because the swarm of blogging fact checkers wouldn't allow it. (We have just launched a new Economy NewsLadder as well fyi - lots of great articles there as well.)
So hats off to Alternet for today's top story. And if you wish, stop by NewsLadder and link up your top stories, next Friday, I'll write another post and we'll see what we all think is the top story of that moment in time.