Trevor Cook

Corporate Engagement finds a new home at Crikey Blogs

I am pleased to announce that Corporate Engagement has been moved, in it's entirety, to the recently created Crikey Blogs platform. We're still waiting for a bright, shiny new banner but I've been familiarising myself with Wordpress and posting to the new site in recent days, so if you wondered why my posting frequency had dropped off, that's why.

Corporate Engagement has been going since February 2004 (itself replacing an original blog I started with in November 2003 on the Blogger platform).

Moving to Crikey is the next step in my blogging adventure and an exciting step it is too.

Crikey is the first media site in Australia to fully embrace bloggers as bloggers rather than as journalists doing a bit of blogging on the side or outsiders being brought into provide some additional content.

The Crikey blogs are real blogs managed as blogs by real bloggers. That's BIG I think. I hope other media sites, particularly the ABC and SBS, might eventually do the same. (update: I should also mention that Wotnews, formerly Plugger, is also very blogger friendly too).

Aggregating blogs in this way and promoting them off a media site (although not an MSM platform) will give us bloggers access to much larger audiences and it will introduce many new readers to the potential of blogging.

So here goes, I hope you will drop by to the new home of Corporate Engagement and give me your feedback.

And if you have any suggestions for posts, please drop me an email ...

Update: More discussion on Crikey Blogs: Public Opinion and John Quiggin

McCain stuffs up on Pakistan

Max Bergmann: Major Gaffe: McCain Said Pakistan Was a Failed State.

McCain just badly misstated the history of Pakistan. For someone claiming extensive foreign policy knowledge, this is simply not acceptable. McCain said Pakistan was a failed state before President Musharraf came to power. That is not true.

Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999 when he diposed Nawaz Sharif - who recently participated in the latest election. The coup followed the 1999 war in Kashmir with India and was due to a power struggle with Sharif, not due to Pakistan being a "failed state." The United States did not welcome the Musharraf coup. Instead the government of the United States imposed sanctions against this action.

Early voter reaction: Obama wins first debate

CBS poll of uncommitted voters:

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Insider Advantage / Poll Position

Opinions on who won the debate split almost evenly: 42 percent said they thought Barack Obama won the debate, 41 percent thought John McCain prevailed, and 17 percent were undecided.

The poll of 411 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus five percent. The results were weighted by age, race, gender and political affiliation.

CNN/Opinion Research Corp.

found that 51 percent thought that Obama won, while 38 percent thought McCain did. Respondents were generally impressed: 57 percent said Obama did better than expected and 20 percent said worse, while 60 percent said McCain did better than expected and 20 percent said worse.

One caveat for the poll: the party makeup was skewed toward Obama: 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans, and 30 percent identified themselves as Independents.

Sarah Palin free from 'witchcraft'

NEWS.com.au.

A YOUTUBE video has surfaced showing Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office three years ago.