Writer/producer Carey Lundin’s video/web creation, “Citizen Kate,” inadvertently became news in her quest to learn more about presidential candidates and write about them on her web blog.
The adventures of “Kate,” in reality Kate Soglin, 31, “are meant to be a fun experience, although a presidential campaign is serious business,” Lundin said.
That’s what Soglin learned first hand when she was in San Diego.
According to a story filed by Dana Wilkie of the Copley News Service:
The room was crammed with reporters from real news organizations?the New York Times, the Washington Post, your humble San Diego Union-Tribune. But it was a young blonde in the back, wearing a leopard-print headband, whom John Edwards called on at a news conference following his Sunday morning speech to Democratic state convention in San Diego.
“Who, me?” asked the startled woman, whom we now know as Chicago resident Kate Soglin, host of her own news blog, www.citizenkate.tv.
Then Soglin squealed with excitement, confessed to all that she was “new to this” and asked the former North Carolina senator what it takes to be “a great leader.”
“To be a leader?” Edwards repeated.
No, she corrected the top-tier Democratic presidential candidate, “a great leader.”
And so Edwards spoke of leaders needing to be honest and open, while Soglin nodded vigorously in agreement.
And then followed the typical ho-hum questions from real news organizations?about tax policy and health care plans. But none could quite eclipse Soglin’s “new to this” vigor and excitement.
“You don’t need to be a pundit to cover politics,” Soglin writes on her Web site. “You just need to look cute and ask questions and have a camera to record stuff.”
“Citizen Kate” webisodes are directed and shot by Chris Peppey, and edited by Steve Swanson for the webisode series that will run through the November, 2008 elections. Peppey is the former head of Columbia College’s post department, and Swanson is also a reporter and photographer.
“Citizen Kate” will continue to meet up with candidates Clinton, McCain, Guiliani, Edwards and others, in Iowa, New Hampshire, California and Washington, D.C., or wherever the political winds take them, said Lundin, herself a political maven having produced around 300 commercials for well known and successful candidates.
Lundin’s email is carey@vivalundinproductions.com. See www.CitizenKate.tv.
