K Street Cafe

Piracy Fight Shuts Down Music Blogs
(The New York Times)
A handful of  music blogs have been shut down by the government from posting brand-new songs and videos without licenses, however, the material is often leaked to them by managers, music labels and artists.

Building a Public Policy Community of “Citizen Experts” Might Require Translation (Tech President)
Discusses a project that the Obama administration is now engaged in to launch an “ExpertNet.”

Add Action to Any Website (Engage)
Engage’s “Multiply” platform allows organizations to add grassroots action tools to any website.

Dealing with the Disaster of Online Critique
(Tech President)
Learn pointers from the Air Force’s “Blog Assessment Strategy” for dealing with criticism online.

Forbes Blogs to Get a Big Upgrade, Every Reporter Will Have One (Advocacy 2.0)
Forbes.com re-launched yesterday, requiring each reporter to maintain their own blog.

Twitter’s Too Much for the Senate (Tech President)
Is the modern media environment contributing to the radicalizing of government?

Bringing Blogging’s Energy to the Department of, Well, You Know (TechPresident)
The Department of Energy launches a new blog, aptly named Energy Blog, aiming to increase transparency and engagement.

N.A.A.C.P. Backtracks on Official Accused of Bias
(The New York Times)
Controversy over truncated video posting raises issues of transparency when blogging.

I’m Maddie Grant, an association/nonprofit industry blogger on social media and online community building. I’m very happy to have been invited to be a regular poster on K Street Cafe.

This is my first post here, so I’m still getting the lay of the land as to what kinds of topics will interest K Street readers. I am an avid blog reader and definitely consider myself a “content curator”; Here’s the kind of stuff I read and write about on my blog.

So I thought I’d do two things. First, I want point you to a few PR/Public Affairs/Advocacy related blog posts I’ve found very interesting recently – and ask you to tell me if these float your boat or not. Check ‘em out.

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A question came up about the new media activities of 501c3 organizations hosting social media platforms for the public (Thank you to Debbie Miller for her assistance with this research):

Question: Can a 501c3 private foundation or public charity put its tax-exempt status at risk by hosting a social media platform?  Specifically, could the advocacy and electioneering activities of individuals and groups using that social media platform be treated as the direct action – or facilitation of direct action – by that foundation of activities inconsistent with its tax exempt 501(c)(3) status?

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