Tea minus 7 days to Tax Day

If you haven't already filed, there's only a week left before income tax returns are due. If you've already filed, then you might be able to join one of the Tea Party protests of higher taxes going on nationwide.

The Tea Party movement has already spread to several cities - and in checking out their website, I wondered why I hadn't heard more about it.

Was it overt media bias? Partly - and left wing outlets like the Huffington Post are certainly paying attention. But as I like to mention whenever I talk about media relations, there's really no vast left-wing media conspiracy. Often, conservatives and libertarians just don't approach the media with their messages properly framed for a liberal audience (since most reporters are, in fact, liberals). The first sentence on the Tea Party website's About Us section - "A great evil has come upon this nation, and something has to be done" - probably feeds the media's groupthink that the movement is more fringe than freedom.

Settling up campaign debts

The AP is suing Shepherd Fairey for illegally using one of their images for his now-famous "Hope" illustration of Barack Obama. As my favorite journalism professor at UMass used to say, you can't spell "cheap" without AP. The Associated Press wants compensation for the use of their photo.

The compensation claim is difficult. Fairey has clearly benefited from the exposure gained through his portrait, but received little if any compensation from the image itself - since Fairey's goal was to elect Barack Obama, he allowed the image to be used freely. The biggest benefactor of the image was Barack Obama.

If there's any cash left in his $750 million campaign coffers, it might be nice to use some to help Fairey out - especially since the image was the basis for the official inauguration poster and buttons designed by the Obama transition team.

Of course, they might wonder - as I do - why the AP is bringing up the controversy now when the image saw its heaviest use months and months ago during the campaign.

Writing your Congressman in 2009

Some light reading for the previous evening: the Congressional Management Foundation's study on Communicating with Congress. I didn't get through it all but started with the parts for grassroots organizers - that's the part that directly applies to my day job.

Lots of discussion about communicating with Congress online deals with opportunities; the CMF deals with realities. For instance, email to Capitol Hill is so routine that it has lost almost all effect. If you're a constituent hoping to make an impact, it's better to put pen to paper than finger to keyboard; yet citizens are eager to communicate with their elected leaders online because, well, citizens communicate with everyone else online, as well.

It presents daunting challenges for Capitol Hill. A well-funded grassroots campaign can generate calls or letters; an organic movement is more likely to be online. The study offers some solutions, but 535 offices will have to come up with answers of their own.