Last week’s announcement by Penguin Press that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will be writing a book on the intersection of social media and government was greeted with such yawns and disinterest that Newsom re-announced it with an email blast this morning, this time spicing things up with some revolutionary rhetoric.
“I’m so excited to finally tell you about a project I’ve been working on for the last couple of years. Just a few days ago, I signed a deal to publish a book about the revolution that’s going on right now in our country and across the world. The social media revolution, that is. Something that all of us, together, are helping to shape. And something that in turn is dramatically reshaping government as we know it. In a phrase, we are at the dawn of a revolutionary change in the way government and the people interact,” Newsom wrote.
Yaaaaaawn! Oh, pardon me, as I was saying, this is really revolutionary stuff. You know, like when Twitter shakes down San Francisco taxpayers for $47 million and prompts Zynga, Yelp, and other tech companies to also extort money from the cash-strapped city government and the services it delivers to the average citizen. Revolution! Storm City Hall and raid the treasury! Viva la Plutocracy!
Hmm, maybe that’s not the meaning intended by Newsom, who is apparently taking his fawning and financially self-serving fascination with Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other well-funded technology companies back into the old-school book form. Or taking a page from President Obama and other author-politicians and using books to raise their profile before making a run for higher office.
Who knows? I exchanged a couple of emails with Peter Ragone — who is handling media inquiries on the project and who was Newsom’s mayoral press secretary before resigning after being exposed for commenting on blogs under fake names – but he didn’t have much to say or have any real answers to my questions, such as how much Newsom is making on this deal.
I was going to send a message to Newsom himself about what he meant by descriptions like this: “The book aims to show how citizens like you can use social media, technology and available government data to cut through bureaucratic red tape and redesign government in your own image. It’s a solution-driven book, intended to strengthen the connection between you, the citizen, and the government that serves you.”
But I couldn’t find him on Twitter to ask the 140-character-or-less question because apparently he is still blocking me, a move he made back in 2009, when he severed the connection between me, the journalist, and the government that serves me because I had the audacity to send him a direct message asking, “Why do you think Twitter is a good communication medium for you?”
Or maybe it was for pointing out (in the Guardian and a TV show I was on at the time) the spelling errors and grammar problems in the tweets by our dyslexic mayor-turned-lieutenant governor-turned-author. Who knows, he never really was a very clear communicator. But I’m sure his book will be great once the ghost writers get done with it, and maybe I’ll finally get an answer to my question.