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Even in the early days of Huffington Post’s “Off the Bus” citizen journalism project, from before I joined up to contribute the occasional video, Mayhill Fowler was one of the standard bearers. Her writing was prolific and her access to campaign events pretty high as well. Since we were, after all, “citizen” journalists — i.e., theoretically had other day jobs to tend to — I sometimes wondered how Mayhill managed to cover so much of California to report on so many political events for zero pay. I guess that’s one of the perqs of being a self-employed writer or something.

Since shortly after Iowa, I pretty much haven’t heard peep from Off the Bus. Our weekly conference calls died and the focus of the project seemed to shift to these large, distributed projects where dozens of people pore through piles of data to compile a picture. That wasn’t my style, and I had the new MTV gig to worry about (and, uh, that dissertation thing); plus, after Super Tuesday, Georgia went back to being a political wasteland, so it’s not like I have anything good to contribute. I briefly discussed the possibility of the occasional MTV-OTB cross-post, but that withered on the vine.

So it wasn’t until the recent brouhaha over Mayhill’s “bitter” piece that I took a good look at OTB to find out that she has been Off-the-bussing all over the place: from Iowa to Nevada, to Texas, to Pennsylvania now, and of course back to her gigantic home state where she recorded Obama’s latest alleged “gaffe.” Considering her thorough campaign coverage and her sudden fifteen minutes of fame, two questions arise:

• Where the heck can I get the kind of flexible schedule and disposable income to cover the campaign nationwide for a blog that doesn’t pay?
• And if you have that kind of disposable income to travel all over creation searching for the indispensable sound byte, could you not for the love of God throw a couple bills of it toward a decent digital audio recorder?

It’s probably worth speculating whether or not this recent Obama story would have the legs it does had there not been actual audio of his comments about gun-loving Bible-thumping voters. Other media analysts have already talked a-plenty about how the controversial comments of Rev. Wright had been around in print since the campaign began, but the scandal didn’t take off till there was video to splash on the tube. This weekend, the news shows are doing the same thing with Mayhill’s recording, even though they still have to throw the transcript up on the screen because the audio is, as Wolf Blitzer just said on Late Edition, “barely audible.” (Then why are you playing it, Wolf? Oh, right, because just showing the text alone wouldn’t make for a catchy story!) It’d be generous as hell to compare this Off the Bus recording with your typical subway driver announcing the next stop. It sounds more like a message left on Spongebob Squarepants’ underwater answering machine.

C’mon, if you’re going to be a national star in citizen journalism, get your audio in 44.1kHz, seriously. Might I suggest the fairly compact and incredibly flexible Samson Zoom H2? I love mine, even though it never records anything of note that would propel me to similar cit-j fame.

A couple of commenters at HuffPost have brought up the sticky ethical question of whether Mayhill’s act of citizen journalism broke some standards of professional journalistic behavior — something I’m sure will only fuel the local old media naysayers that MostlyMedia likes to track. She went into a private fundraiser where presumably press, cameras, and other recording devices were not allowed. When I was covering Bill Richardson in Atlanta, I was allowed to record his every move and word until he got to a small fundraiser at the end of the day and I was politely informed by staff that this event was not for press. I was welcome to stay, but I could not bust out any cameras or report on the detailed goings on. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this to an editor back at OTB and was told that such protocol was de rigueur at small fundraisers like that.

So, either Mayhill was told something we don’t know, or she assumes such standards of journalism don’t apply to citizen journalists. I haven’t seen anything clarifying what was allowed or not at the fundraiser she attended, so we’ll have to see how that pans out. But it’ll certainly make future old-versus-new media conversations more interesting, I suspect.

UPDATE

Had I done my homework, I could’ve checked OTB editor Marc Cooper’s post on the subject and seen his explanation of the “on the record”ness of this fundraiser:

It was indeed a fundraiser to which the press was not invited. Or if you wish, it was closed to press. Therefore it wasnt on or off the record. Off the record is when journos consenusally agree to witness or hear something on the condition they not report it.

Mayhill, who has given money to Barack, was invited to come to the event by one of the communication staff. They new her in her capacity as a writer for OffTheBus and knew it was quite likely she would write something out of this event.

Indeed, she recorded the event as she sat next to campaign staff.

Let it also be noted that there were approx 100 videocams whirring away inside the room as Barack spoke.

I give this detail for full clarification. Most if not all press was kept out of the room but Mayhill was invited in. She was under no obligation not to report. Obama was indeed more loose lipped than usual. He should be more careful in his choice of words when he is staring into so many video cams, no matter who is holding them.

Well okay then. But I still think, what with all the attention Mayhill’s brought them, OTB oughta buy Mayhill a Zoom H2.