Via MixedInk blog

the next Democratic presidential debate on CNN is taking the innovative step of letting voters submit their questions to the candidates by uploading a video to YouTube. This seems like a move toward a more democratic primary process, and it certainly is an improvement on just having Brian Williams or Tim Russert (or their staffs) write the questions.

The problem is that ratings and comments have been disabled on the site where you view questions that have been submitted. So, we (the voters) can’t register our support for questions or tell how popular a question is. CNN gets to choose which questions to ask from among thousands, and they don’t have to choose the ones we like best. They’ll be able to find questions they would have asked anyway, more or less, only the questions will come out of the voters’ mouths.

Essentially CNN wants to look as if they are open to viewer suggestions, but aren’t ready to commit 100 percent just yet.

Hey, it’s a scary wild ride with an upside down loop in the middle. I know it’s scary. But here’s the thing — if you act like you aren’t afraid and then chicken out at the last minute, its worse than if you just admit you are afraid of the ride in the first place and don’t wait in line.

This goes for all things Web 2.0. If you are ready to make the plunge into user-created content or being guided by the former audience, you have to be prepared to heed their collective judgment as if it were from a corporate boss.

This goes even double when it’s over something like a presidential debate. CNN doesn’t OWN the debates. This is a public good — it’s for the people, always has been and always will be. In the past the public ceded ownership over the debates to media companies like CNN because we needed a top down system to organize and implement the debates and we wanted someone we could trust to ask hard hitting questions. But we are slowly reaching a point where that temporary ownership can be relinquished back to the people — the sole owners of presidential debates.

To put it more comically, here’s an article from a National Lampoon writer on this very subject (confusing ownership with stewardship).

Give Control to Get Control

Okay, campers, time to try something new: today we’re going to shut our eyes, cross our fingers, tighten our sphincters and put our brands in the hands of our consumers.

Oh, wait. That’s not new. The consumer already owns our brands. We all know that— we just don’t say it out loud very often. Don’t you hate it when we make that mistake— when we confuse stewardship with ownership?