From celebrity-studded parties, to the tear gassing of protesters, to lots and lots of young voters, mobile reporting using new technologies was instrumental to our coverage. During the conventions, I was hoping that our audience would come to chooseorlose.com and feel a sense of excitement from the ground through dynamic, up-to-the minute coverage. I think that between the Twitter feed, live mobile-to-web Flixwagon reports and blogs that took over our site during the conventions, we accomplished that.

RNC Street Teamers with their Twitter feed

I don't think that any of the aforementioned reporting methods would have stood particularly well on its own. None of them provide a lot of depth, but taken as a package, the audience can get a pretty well-rounded picture of what's going on and become directly engaged in following a story as it unfolds, rather than just having it all tied up with a pretty bow, after the fact. During the conventions, our "tweets" sent from reporters' mobile phones provided teasers to what they would be covering ("Just interviewed a 19 year-old from Chicago who won't be voting for the Illinois Senator this year") or just immediate observations from the ground ("Hillary appears at roll call and moves to skip procedure and nominate Obama! Place going wild.") The live, mobile-to-web video coverage fleshed these out by providing the sounds and sights of the conventions, and then round-up blog entries like this one contextualized it all.

One of the biggest benefits of using these on-the-fly technologies is that it allows for a small, nimble crew to cover a lot of ground and get their work out to an audience quickly, without being burdened by cumbersome equipment or even having to depend on a feed truck. It works really well in situations like the conventions where a lot is happening at once. At each event, it seemed that 90% of the action was actually going on outside the convention center buildings, and the five Street Teamers in Denver and five in St. Paul managed to capture a lot of that. They got on-the-fly interviews with celebs from John Legend to Jessica Alba, politicos from Bill Richardson to Bob Dole to Rosa Clemente, major news personalities such as Fox's Shep Smith, and of course lots of young delegates, volunteers and protesters. Even their coverage from inside the convention halls was different from the mainstream reports, in that it provided a peer-to-peer, unscripted glimpse of the conventions up-close.

Street Teamer Anthony of Florida Gets Tear-Gassed, Live from the RNC

The difference between our coverage and that of the mainstream networks is striking not just because of the technology, but also because of what we captured. While the major news networks of the world were safe in their on-site studios, our team was literally on the streets getting the under-reported stories. This was particularly true at RNC, where the thousands of protesters and, more importantly, heavy-handed police reactions, were not well-documented by other media outlets. In one particularly dramatic live-to-web clip, which you can see above, we witnessed one of our reporters going through the physical reaction to being tear-gassed while covering a protest.

The most dramatic example of how our mobile coverage played out was on the final night of the Republican National Convention. While thousands were preparing to cheer McCain's speech inside the convention center, our Wisconsin reporter, Charlie, was hot on the trail of an anti-war protest gearing up outside. His "tweets" began...

• Anti war protest @ capital starts with 2 arrests 02:17 PM September 04, 2008
• **The whole world is watching, protesters chant **@ police 04:52 PM September 04, 2008
• Protest on the move 05:40 PM September 04, 2008
• March goes 2 Marion and University 06:01 PM September 04, 2008
  

At the same time, we were watching Charlie's Flixwagon reports, wherein protesters, bystanders, and reporters alike, were being rounded up on a bridge. With smoke bombs visible in the background, Charlie told our audience, "We were just told that this is an unlawful assembly, and we must move Southbound or be subject to arrest," and then...

Nothing.

An hour or so went by with no more Twitter or video reports, and we realized that Charlie had probably been arrested. After many calls to local jails, our suspicion was confirmed around 12 AM. Despite his media credentials, Charlie was carted off to prison and separated from his equipment. If it had not been for the pause in his live, mobile, reporting, we would never have even known to ask. Charlie's arrest, along with hundreds of others, occurred right during McCain's speech, when the rest of the worlds' lenses were focused on the presidential nominee.

Charlie was released from jail around 6 AM...but his backpack full of gear was still inside. The police needed to hang on to the video camera, tapes and other equipment, "for security purposes." As I type, his equipment is still being held in St. Paul and our attorneys are working on getting it released. If the police had it their way, his footage from the protest would still have not seen the light, and by the time it came out, it would be "yesterday's news." Fortunately for us and our audience, Charlie was reporting live from his cell phone, and we all witnessed another side of what was happening in St. Paul while John McCain was accepting the presidential nomination.

One of the main components of Knight and MTV's big citizen journalism experiment, Street Team '08, is MOBILE. In our case, the already loaded term has many meanings...our project includes mobile phones, on both the production and distribution sides, and mobile journalists, or those young, carefree reporters-on-the-go with no need for an office, who you keep hearing about.

But mobile takes on another connotation for us, in that our audience (14-24-year-olds)--and the technologies that they prefer--are themselves mobile, portable, ever-moving entities. We also know that our audience often consumes, and even produces, many types of media at once. A Pew study released back in January gave us even more insight into where and how they have been consuming news, in particular:

...most internet users do not go online for the sole purpose of learning about the campaign. Rather, a majority of web users (52%) say they "come across" campaign news and information when they are going online to do something else. This practice is particularly prevalent among younger web users: 59% of web users under age 30 come across campaign news online compared with 43% of those ages 50 and older.

Therefore, it became apparent early on that we must embed our Street Team's work into as many places, and across as many platforms in our audience's media landscape, as we could. There were two reasons for this: (1) to increase consumption; and (2) importantly, to increase awareness and cross-marketing of the availability of that content on other platforms (most notably, on mobile devices.)

Now that we are several months into the project, we thought we had conquered, or at least tackled, most forms of new media. Our Street Teamers' work appears regularly on mobile video carriers, a mobile wap site, several websites, and on-air via MTV's broadcast networks.

Then, a few weeks back, I was approached by an MTV colleague about a whole new area of distribution that, I have to admit, I had hardly considered before: THE VIRTUAL WORLD. I'm talking about something right outta web 3.0 : a 3-D, interactive, virtual reality experience where one can have a "second life" via their avatar persona--a walking, talking, digital version of their better selves--online.

I am pretty tech-savvy, but this is one area that I really have not explored. I can barely keep up with my real life! Who needs a second one? My colleague assured me that our audience, apparently, does. In fact, they are coming to MTV's Virtual World droves. There must be something to it. After all, even CNN has a virtual news world.

So, the THINK Building, a virtual election headquarters of sorts, broke ground in MTV's Virtual World this week, and I must say, it is really cool! Any member of Virtual MTV can drop in to watch Street Team videos and talk politics. Next month, we will begin bi-weekly, interactive meet-and-greet sessions with various Street Team '08 reporters from all over the country (or, at least, their avatars). Meanwhile, one roving promotional crew per candidate will roam the virtual world to get the buzz going about the election, hold rallies for their perspective candidate, encourage dialogue about the election and promote these Street Team '08 events. All of this activity will be building up to a big get-out-the-vote event and party at the THINK Building on the day before the elections.

I am eager to see what kind of response this new phase of our experiment gets from our audience, but I am even more curious as to whether this activity in the virtual world will translate into real action at the polls on November 4.

As part of our overall Choose or Lose campaign, the strategy of the MTV/Knight Street Team has always been to have a team of local reporters - one in each state and DC - bring to light the election issues that affect young people in their state and that are not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, and using the media that young people are most familiar with.

And we're excited to share that the Street Team is part of the "youth quake" phenomenon in 2008 where young people have demonstrated overwhelming interest in the election. Indeed, CIRCLE reports a record breaking turnout of 6.5 million 18-29 year-olds voted in the 2008 primaries.

Throughout the primaries, a number of issues have recurred with young people, whether it be gas prices, the environment, education or the war. Yet, one statistic has broken through, and it is that MTV Research recently reported that nearly 70% of 18-29 year-olds personally know someone who has fought in Iraq, a staggering number that uniquely defines this generation.

So we believed that it is of vital importance to hear the stories of our young soldiers returning home from war.

As more and more young veterans transition to civilian life, Americans must confront a new set of veterans' issues. Because of their diversity in viewpoint, location, and background, the MTV/Knight Street team has a particular ability to uncover the vastness of young veterans' issues. Young veterans are attempting to handle the scars of war, be they as visible as a missing limb or as hidden as post traumatic stress disorder.

So, on July 4 Independence Day, MTV2 will present a special Choose or Lose day-long "takeover" in which short and long-form programming will engage millions of young adult voters to honor - and elevate the issues - of the more than one million young men and women who have served on the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to special video messages from Senators John McCain and Barack Obama to honor young veterans, we will learn of young veterans who now actively support and those who protest the war those who continue to honor the soldiers are still fighting no matter their position. Difficult questions are being raised - is the military keeping its recruitment promises college assistance? Does the military take post traumatic stress disorder concerns seriously? Each Street Team member finds a different angle through which to explore the many layers of what our young veterans face both here and abroad.

Throughout the day on Friday, several video reports from Street Team members featuring veterans' stories will be aired and will be available on our online and mobile platforms highlighted above.

The spirit of July 4th - Independence Day - reminds us of the great sacrifices that were made for this country to prevail. We hope that the rich history which is remembered on that day inspires young people to take seriously their civic duty and honor those who continue to serve our country and sustain our freedom.

Please check out all of the Street Team Soldier Stories featured online through July 4 weekend.