Are you passionate about politics? If so, Sunday Soapbox is for you. Political podcasters and bloggers Faye Anderson, Mindy Finn, Micah Sifry and Jacob Soboroff lead our Election 2008 political discussion with you on the Web.
Faye Anderson is a citizen journalist, blogger and public policy consultant. She shares news, information and trends that resonate with African-American voters and political influentials. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology, public policy and civic engagement. Faye blogs about politics for Newsweek magazine's group blog, The Ruckus, writes a daily political blog for AOL Black Voices — one of the Web's largest African-American portals — and contributes to AOL's Political Machine. Faye was featured in the Washington Post story, "Storming the News Gatekeepers," and included in the first scholarly paper about the role of black bloggers and the blogosphere. A former Republican, she is a registered independent (no party affiliation). Faye is a graduate of Stanford Law School and the City College of New York.
Mindy Finn served most recently as Director of eStrategy for Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign. In 2007, Finn was selected by Campaigns & Elections as a Rising Star in American politics and was profiled on the cover of the Washington Post as part of its political "Gurus" series. Finn was also featured in Glamour magazine's series on powerhouses under 40 with top positions in presidential campaigns. She has appeared on Hardball, PBS' the NewsHour and on the BBC, among others, speaking about the intersection of the Internet and politics. Prior to serving Romney, Finn served as director of new media for Santorum '06. She came to that role after serving the Republican National Committee as deputy director of the eCampaign and Bush-Cheney '04 as deputy webmaster. Both of those entities won the Golden Dots for their superior websites. Finn currently works as a strategic communications consultant for political and commercial clients. She resides in Washington, D.C. and originally hails from Houston, Texas.
Micah Sifry is co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, a Web site and annual conference that covers the ways technology is changing politics and TechPresident.com, an award-winning group blog on how the American presidential candidates are using the Web and how the Web is using them. In addition to organizing the annual Personal Democracy Forum conference with his partner Andrew Rasiej, he consults on how political organizations, campaigns, non-profits and media entities can adapt to and thrive in a networked world. In that capacity, he has been a senior technology adviser to the Sunlight Foundation since its founding in 2006. Sifry is also the author several books on politics and teaches a college-level course called "Writing Politics." In the past, Sifry has worked on the issue of campaign finance reform and served as an editor and writer with The Nation magazine. His personal blog is at micah.sifry.com.
Jacob Soboroff is executive director of Why Tuesday?, a non-partisan group working to increase voter participation. In addition to vlogging about our voting system for Why Tuesday?, Jacob contributes video reports about Los Angeles news, media and sense of place to LA Observed, and was a contributor to the PBS series Wired Science, a production of KCET Los Angeles and Wired magazine. In college Jacob was a part-time advance man to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and presidential candidate Howard Dean. He has an MA in political theory and philosophy from New York University.
Laura Krantz is an assistant editor at Weekend Edition Sunday. She came to NPR after finishing her MA in International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. When not reading about politics and foreign policy, Laura is probably outside.
