Lauren Ashburn/Howard Kurtz: At White House, Last Live Shot From Pebble Beach

Kickstarter: Crowd Funding Your Creativity

Kickstarter does what its name implies: It gives creative projects a kick-start through online crowd funding. Entrepreneurs can raise money from independent investors (friends, family, or the general online community) while still retaining ownership over their product. Thus instead of profit percentage, investors receive rewards. Think free copies (of the documentary, book or game) or an opportunity to meet the creator.

Since the recent explosive success of Ouya, an independent TV gaming console, Kickstarter has been making headlines. Projects listed are diverse and often funky. For example, current ventures include 100% organic Beef Jerky and a Bike-in Theater.

Our Picks: Thursday’s Top Political Stories

The day’s most provocative takes:

McKay Coppins says the biting tone of the latest counterattacks by the Mitt Romney gang are no accident. He quotes an adviser as saying, “I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president.” And there’s this: “The Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity.” An ugly campaign is about to get uglier. (Buzzfeed)

An intriguing piece in the Huffington Post says  that Romney “has been confident that he will never be forced to do so, several current and former Bain executives tell The Huffington Post. Had he thought otherwise, say the sources based on their longtime understanding of Romney, he never would have gone forward with his run for president.” But wait–it bears the co-byline of Abby Huntsman. Should a daughter who helped her father, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, campaign against Romney really be reporting on Mitt’s campaign? (HuffPost)

Fox News commentator Ed Rollins, the former campaign manager for Michele Bachmann, rips his former client as “extreme and dishonest” for trying to tie Hillary aide Huma Abedin (Anthony Weiner’s wife) to the Muslim Brotherhood. “Having worked for Congressman Bachman’s campaign for president, I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy  level.” The man does not mince words. (Fox News)

How Journalists Should Harness Crowdsourcing

Journalists should think of themselves as curators rather than exclusive content creators.

In the summer 2012 issue of Nieman Reports from Harvard, Mark Little, founder of the social media news outlet Storyful, explains that journalists should harness the power of the increasingly active audience–rather than hope that readers will passively swallow whatever content is produced, as they did in the past. Storyful uses the hands of human editors and online tools such as Google Maps to validate online accounts in the new “golden hour” of newsgathering – the time when social media is pushing emerging stories to the headlines. Reporters cannot keep up with the 24/7 news cycle alone, so they should learn to curate the ever-growing mass of online content rather than insist of producing everything alone.

Is 2012 Election a Time for “Crisis”?

Peggy Noonan might not be able to read your palms, but the Wall Street Journal columnist thinks she knows how you “talk” and “think” about the upcoming presidential election. She knows, for instance, that you know “that who we pick now really matters.” She also knows why you’re not that excited about the election this year.

Calling the election a “crisis election like 1932 or 1980,” Noonan theorizes that “behind the general lack of passion” is my and your double awareness “that what America needs right now is the leadership of a kind of political genius” and “that neither [Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney] is a political genius.”