James Kotecki is a recent graduate of Georgetown University (magna cum laude, at that) who has pioneered the video-blogging (Vlogging) movement. Starting with a simple camera in his dorm room in January 2007, Kotecki has made countless nonpartisan videos documenting the American political landscape and, more recently, the 2008 Election cycle.
In April of 2007, James made history by hosting the first ever dorm-room interview of a Presidential candidate (Ron Paul). Since then, he has interviewed numerous candidates, including John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Mike Huckabee.
Kotecki's videos are hilarious--frequently using "pencil puppets" of the presidential candidates--combining an exuberant knack for journalism and interviewing. The amazing part of it all? Kotecki put this all together on a college-student budget, with a cheap camera from Best Buy, common computer software, and most importantly, a lot of "hustle" and hard work. He has been the subject of countless interviews from every major media outlet--from CNN to FoxNews to Al Jazeera English.
You can find his videos, updated daily, on his website. Read this as: we highly encourage you to visit his website--bookmark it and visit it every day!!!
From his website
"However, my goal is not necessarily to “be a journalist.” Instead, my goals are:
- to encourage politicians to converse with voters directly on YouTube
- to talk about political personalities, issues, and trends that don’t get a lot of coverage in the mainstream media, and
- to have fun making funny, entertaining videos. I’m most like a typical journalist when I’m focused on goal number 2, and less like a typical journalist when I focus on goals 1 and 3.
Since I usually pursue all three goals at once, I’ll let you decide whether, on balance, I’m an actual journalist."
“. . .the unofficial political consultant of the Internet generation . . .” - Yahoo! News
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