MSNBC and MySpace Team Up To Fight Their Own Irrelevance: Could A Contest Be The Hallmark of an Overdue Awakening?

If you're not of a certain age and disposition (a teenager who likes to take glamour shots of yourself in your bathroom mirror), you may not have noticed the coming of a curious period of internet history called The Decline and Fall Of MySpace. After Rupert Murdoch bought the popular teenager/stalker networking site for several briefcases full of million-dollar-bills, his laissez-faire management let it slide into a somewhat of a virus-infested anarchy. Murdoch, as you might have noticed, has a remarkable ability to ruin most things he acquires. So rather than improve the poorly-designed, but massively popular, website, Murdoch allowed it to sit and rot, full of bugs, glitches, and screaming banner ads, until it began to hemorrhage users to the sleek, relatively virus-free competition, Facebook.

Meanwhile, while MySpace has been carelessly let Facebook suck its clientele away, MSNBC and the rest of the corporate news outlets have similarly been watching their audiences dwindle. Mainstream media have gaped in horror as their viewers slowly realize that the internet is a better, faster, Chris Matthews-free way of getting the news.

It is out of this desperation that MSNBC and MySpace have teamed up to present a contest in which people on the internet compete for a press pass to either the Democratic or Republican convention. It's called The Decision08 Citizen Journalism Contest, and it's the two juggernauts' collaborative effort to give "The People" a voice, in the face of increasing competition from user-created, user-controlled media.

It works like this: the residents of the internet were supposed to each make a video on why MSNBC and MySpace should let them tag along at one of the conventions. The contest was to be judged by Joe Scarborough and his fellow chatterboxes on Morning Joe (America's #5 rated morning cable news talk show!*).

Well, I made a video, and am somehow now a Finalist in this contest. I don't know that I've ever been a Finalist in a contest before, and it's certainly never been one of my top career choices. But I survived the first round, so Joe Scarborough evidently likes me. This is strange, because, judging from some of the other submitted videos, "suck up to Joe Scarborough as much as possible" was evidently somewhere in the Contest Rules & Guidelines, and I made no such attempt. I did, however, claim to know Mitch McConnell's dietary habits, so perhaps that endeared me to Morning Joe and his gang.

The contest is a strange one for me, because I have a tendency to be suspicious of corporate giants like these two. I'm very interested to see what MSNBC is actually looking to do with these "Citizen Journalists." Are they truly seeking to find new, talented young reporters via the internet? Or are they just scrambling for a way to appear "hip" and "with it" by having a token person under 30 on the channel?

Anyway, having gotten through to the finals, my fate is now at the mercy of MySpace. See, picking the Finalists Of The Finalists isn't the job of Little Joey Scarborough and his band of merry morning misfits. For that, they turn to The MySpace Community, which votes this week to determine which 2 of the last 5 of us get to go to the Conventions.

Now, the internet is a dark and terrible place, and the people who dwell there can be cruel. So I'm a little nervous about having them determine my worth. MySpacers can either "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" my video. My final thumb ratio determines whether or not I will get the opportunity to have awkward face-to-face conversations with Famous MSNBC People at the convention (I can ask Scarborough why he's always so mean to Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews why he's such a creep).

If you like, you can go to the site and give me some thumbs in any direction you please (the correct direction, however, is up). You could even give the other contestants the thumb-ratings they deserve.

The bottom line about the contest, however, other than the fact that you should Vote For Me, is that MSNBC and MySpace should use it as an opportunity to catch up with the rest of the internet. The future of media will be in balancing a high level of professionalism with a large degree of user input. MSNBC prides themselves on their professionalism, but are often insulated from viewer voices, while MySpace is heavily user-oriented, but has so little quality control that viruses, spam, and soft-porn have prevented it from being useful. The Decision08 Contest should be the first in a long line of efforts to bring in new, fresh, voices, to encourage outsiders to participate in politics instead of relying on the same tired pundits. Combining careful quality procedures with strong participation from the public will create content that is both interactive and well-done.

Or, at least, it will if you give me your vote.

*this isn't actually quite fair. Sometimes Joe makes it higher!