Purple States: Republican and Democratic Primaries

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 4, 2008 -- Purple States gives Americans -- of all backgrounds and beliefs, ages and affinities, red and the blue and the in-between -- a chance to experience and interpret politics for themselves, in the company of their fellow citizens.

During the primary season, Purple States TV will film a team of citizen-journalists -- a 23-year-old florist from Iowa, a laid-off manufacturing professional and libertarian from New England, a 33-year-old Baptist mother of three and former teacher from South Carolina, an art gallery director from Florida, and a grandfather from southern California who lives with his daughter and his Mexican-American son-in-law and works for AT&T -- as they report on the primaries and caucuses held in these five states.

The Purple States videos will tell the story of the journey these five citizens take -- together -- through the primary contests leading up to Super Tuesday. Viewers will see the process of selecting a new president through the eyes of these individuals: the Iowa contest from the perspective of California, health policy from the perspective of someone who sells insurance and someone who has to manage without it, candidates being asked to respond to the concerns of ordinary citizens, and citizens having to explain their emerging preferences to the other members of the team.

NYTimes.com will offer this series as part of its op-ed coverage of the primaries on its online Opinion page. The team's professionally-edited reports will also be aired on local television in key markets, and will be seeded into major social media sites.

The full series will be available here, where the public will have a chance to connect with the citizen team, upload their own views and videos, and see raw footage. The Purple States citizens will use new media tools to engage each other, their home communities, and the on-air and on-line public in a dynamic conversation with and about the presidential candidates, and a collective exploration of the issues of greatest concern to Americans.

Purple States' vision is to leverage this innovative concept to become the first and the premier citizen-driven news show on television and the internet.

Purple States LLC was created and is managed by Dr. Cynthia Farrar. Dr. Farrar is nationally-recognized for her work in orchestrating non-partisan conversations among randomly-invited citizens who are given a chance to consider policy questions with input from each other and from experts. Building on this experience, which includes extensive work with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and local public television, as well as teaching political theory and practice at Yale University, she devised the Purple States synthesis of old media with the connectivity of the internet to make democracy accessible and engaging to large numbers of Americans.

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