Brad Rourke

Brad Rourke’s Blog

  • Tweets Squeezing Out Rants

    Brian Solis of TechCrunch wrote an important review of an interesting trend in today’s social media world. We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” and I’d argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of…

  • Bully

    Boy, I feel for Abigail Pardou. Why? Here’s how Washington Post’s Marc Fisher sets the scene: As much as any elected official in Washington, Harry “Tommy” Thomas, the D.C. council member from Ward 5, carries himself like a good old-fashioned machine politician. Son of a council member, Thomas is a cheerful and omnipresent face in…

  • Study: Religions Losing Ground

    An important new survey on Americans’ religious behaviors and attitudes was released this morning. The American Religious Identification Survey was first fielded in 1990 and was updated in 2001 and now in 2008. The survey shows that just about across the board, Americans are less religious today than they were two decades ago. From USA Today:…

  • Giving A Presentation

    This morning I am in historic Williamsburg, Virginia giving a talk to the opening session of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s Political Leaders Program. We’re in the Wren Building, which dates to the 1600’s. I feel a little bit in awe. I also want to do a good job. This is the kickoff of…

  • Stamped

    I take a dim view, ordinarily, of the silly habit large organizations have of naming everything. If there’s a big, multi-day story, news networks will give it a name and a logo. New pieces of legislation have to have stupid acronyms that remind the reader of fourth-grade English homework (think of the USA PATRIOT act).…

  • Real World Social Media Workflow — How Much Time Do I Spend Listening?

    Social media maven Beth Kanter has been attending a conference on nonprofit use of technology. One of the speakers was Wendy Harman, who runs social media for the Red Cross. Beth has a great recap of that session here, with these key takeaways: First thing every morning, [Wendy] spends a couple of hours listening –…

  • Looking For Mr. GoodBlog

    My friend Adam Pagnucco, who writes a blog on Maryland Politics called, natch, Maryland Politics Watch, had a fascinating post just the other day. Actually, it wasn’t by him — it was by his wife, Holly Olson. In it, she chronicles the history of her husband’s involvement with MPW and blogging, and announces there are…

  • Run A Local Newspaper?

    Yesterday two things converged that really got me thinking about localism. First, I published my analysis of Rockville Central’s reader survey. It was my first chance to see what the readers of my hyperlocal news site really thought about my volunteer work over the last eighteen months or so. It was very gratifying, and at…

  • Living In Public

    My friend Thomas Kriese pointed me to a piece by a NY-based VC named Fred Wilson. It’s about “living publicly.” There are a lot of ways you might take that term — in this case it describes the state that it seems many of my friends experience these days. With all the blogging, Twitter, FaceBook,…