Obama put the entire State of the Union on Medium before his speech

Usually, the first time we see the text of the White House State of the Union is on a site like The Washington Post — a news organization that's given a copy beforehand but can only put it up once the speech has begun. This year, though, the White House has cut out the middleman and gone straight to Medium, publishing President Barack Obama's address shortly before he started speaking. You can read the whole thing now, or watch the speech live online; afterwards, Obama will be meeting up with YouTube stars to take questions from fans. A Medium post is a little more dignified than the intelligence community's Tumblr account, but it's yet another example of the administration spreading its news across social media platforms.

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I’m pretty happy with almost any move that gives the finger to the status quo.

By mjrtom on 01.20.15 9:37pm

not sure how this is giving the finger to anyone? Its typically released a few hours before the speech.

By dbw1977 on 01.21.15 10:21am

Never heard of Medium before now, what’s it synonymous with?

Good to be able to read this even though being over in NZ it applies to me to a far lesser degree, it’s still very interesting and good that, as you say, they’re embracing our modern ways.

By KnightNZ on 01.20.15 9:39pm

It’s a platform/publisher (plasther) website.

By Kirielson on 01.20.15 9:48pm

From the guys who helped build it.

There weren’t many traces of our prototype in Medium, but that was pretty understandable—it had evolved into a very different product. Ev explained that he felt there was a need for meaningful writing on the Web. There wasn’t a place for people who wanted to write something more substantive than a tweet. Blogs, while better for long-form, required a certain savviness to get up-and-running. Successful ones required constant care and feeding and typically focussed on a single subject matter. New ones lacked an audience. He went on to say that people sometimes just have one thing to say about a subject, not something every day or week. This is what Medium would solve for.

By fede777 on 01.20.15 10:06pm

Thank you.

By KnightNZ on 01.20.15 10:20pm

Isn’t the address always put out a few hours before the event so stations can have their closed captioning ready ?

By pavelbure on 01.20.15 10:08pm

Not to the open public.

By Citizen85 on 01.20.15 10:13pm

Closed captioning is typed as it’s aired.

(From a NBC Broadcast Engineer)

By joshkuhn on 01.21.15 12:00am

I had planned on watching, but ended up with other things occupying my time. Sat down for a moment saw the medium post and read a good deal of the speech (most of it in our president’s voice.) This is the way forward for the potus to connect with his constituents agree with his policies or not. Good move Obama.

By constella on 01.21.15 12:23am

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