Much has been made of the contrast between Obama's address to the Arab Nations two years ago and yesterday's address. That is -- the contrast between the speech made two years ago and the speech following Tahrir and Bin Laden.
Little has been made of a most subtle yet perhaps more compelling contrast: what constituted a newsroom two years ago --pre in-house Social Media Strategist-- versus what constitutes one today. Government 2.0 Correspondent for O'Reilly Media, Alex Howard's coverage of the speech focused on NPR's Senior Social Media Strategist, Andy Carvin's live twitter coverage of the event. Its offers a glimpse of live blogging and microblogging at its most cutting edge as well as a glimpse of where newsrooms are headed.
It offered glimpse of the Middle East response to The President's speech as well. Tweets that were loathe to acknowledge the empathy, humility, humanity generosity and compassion --not to mention debt relief-- being extended their way. Was it a glimpse of the disconcerting reality that we previously lacked access to?
The Politiku below were selected from the Middle East Politiku I've been curating over the last several months on the new Politiku Tumblr. Politiku and themes are selected from an open submission pool. Most were written and posted during the Tahrir protests and following the US Navy Seals removal of Bin Laden.