Gavin Newsom Gabs on YouTube
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom found a new way to deliver his State of the City speech. He’s doing it on YouTube, all 7 1/2 hours of it:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been crafting his State of the City speech for months and will debut it today - all 7 1/2 hours of it - on his very own YouTube channel.
The format allows the tech-savvy mayor - who has more than 10,000 Facebook friends and whose official Web site has received 27.6 million hits this year - to reach a wider audience and speak directly to anyone who’s interested without the filter of the media or grumbling from critics.
“We have a lot we want to share, but it gets filtered,” Newsom told The Chronicle. “To do an address that’s unfiltered, what better way to do it than on YouTube?”
It also allows the wonky, long-winded Newsom to leave no detail on the cutting-room floor. The mayor’s staff will release the speech in 10 chapters this week, and each one is about 45 minutes long. Health, education and the environment are the subjects on tap for today.
“My critics will say, ‘It’s 7 1/2 hours - typical,’ ” Newsom said.
The benefit, he said, is that the format allows him to delve deeper into topics. Ending homelessness and panhandling would always make a traditional State of the City address, he said, but improving the food stamp program probably would not.
There will be people who actually watch all 7 1/2 hours, and they won’t all live in San Francisco or even in California.
“Newsom Expounds on State of the City on YouTube”
I live in San Francisco. I’m debating if I should allow Gavin to seize my brain for 7.5hrs. What a bastard…