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I’ve had my words butchered in newspapers before — in fact, almost every time I get newsprint attention, it goes awry. Last year’s AJC story on Young Dems that reduced me to a Guinness-drinking hitchhiker brought back fond memories of the Miami Herald sports writer that thought I was a sycophantic teacher’s pet. I guess it’s appropriate irony that this time around the story is about citizen journalism, so the story itself goes straight to the argument that there’s no monopoly on “good journalism” by people who train as journalists.

I’m not here to critique the original words of a college reporter like I expect them to be perfect. But there were enough complete misrepresentations of my interview answers that I feel the need to correct them, lest I look like a complete liar and moron. I already expect to see this article on my desk after lunch with some red penned comments by my boss, but maybe I’ll get lucky and slip under the radar.

So, let the games begin; care to follow along?

After that, he freelanced in the political communication arena by staying on top of blogs like Techpresidents.com and exploring the political utility of websites like YouTube.

One does not freelance in the political communications arena by staying on top of blogs like techpresident.com (no “s”, just techpresident), one stays on top of blogs because one is a freelance political operative. I was just explaining how I found out about the gig.

Since 2005, Highsmith was a citizen journalist as a part of the 2006 presidential campaign and for CNN.

I wasn’t aware we had a presidential campaign going on in 2006, but it’s a good thing I started early in 2005! And while I have sent a couple of videos to CNN’s iReport website, I don’t think any of them ever got seen, and I certainly didn’t mention that in my interview, so I have no clue how I magically started reporting for CNN. What I did say — via email, so there’s no need to me to remember exactly what I might have said — was, “I’ve already been exploring that frontier for a while, as a blogger since about 1999, a podcaster since 2005, and finally dabbling in video since the 2006 election season; I’ve done “citizen journalism” on my own for kicks, as part of a presidential campaign, and for the news website The Huffington Post. CNN recognized that the wall between consumer and reporter was crumbling when they hosted the YouTube debates….” I guess the 2006 state legislature election season got mashed up with my work this cycle for Biden, and CNN jumped over the period, abandoning its YouTube debate-themed predicate, and took over Huffington Post’s spot as my former publication venue. Giddyup, CNN!

“As a Georgia Tech graduate student, my overarching theme will be technology, whether it be the kind of technology that impacts elections. So really, all I need to do to do my job well is keep my ear to the ground, listen to young voters and their concerns, and always have my camera ready,” Highsmith said.

An ellipsis! My kingdom for an ellipsis! I don’t mind having my rambling sentences truncated, but I’d appreciate the editorial courtesy of a piece of punctuation that would indicate I am not an idiot incapable of speaking in complete sentences. Somewhere in the neighborhood of “elections. So really,” you might actually imagine me saying, “whether it be the kind of technology that impacts elections (e.g., blogs and electronic balloting) or the kind of technology that is impacted by elections (e.g., energy sources and homeland security/military development).” Three tiny dots is all I’m askin’ for.

Anyway. Enough of that nonsense.

After a couple of slow first weeks, things ought to get fired up for the MTV Street Team on Super Tuesday, with a lot of cross-platform promotion of our election coverage throughout the day — stay tuned for details. In the meantime, as Grift mentioned yesterday, he and I will be representing the “new” end of the spectrum of media, along with former AJC man and recent online adventurer Tom Baxter and CNN.com’s John Helton as the more establishment voices at an Atlanta Press Club panel on February 7th. Then for dinner on Friday the 8th, I’ll be joining Grayson in leading the discussion table on electronic politickin’ — and as Prof. Leonard Witt put it, it’ll be “like having your very own American Idol star sharing dinner with you.” Hot, baby, hot.