Clinton gets formally accused of perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power. But it's one of those threshold moments for the role of the web in our lives.
The Starr inquiry into Clinton-Gate feels like it's been running for decades, but for me there's a more interesting aspect about how people are using digital media to understand its complexities and follow the twists and turns. How American government has continued amidst it all is still amazes me, but the verdict is being declared tonight.
Whatever your politics, the story has become a permanent companion for the hyperlinked generation. There were Monica sites to link to, Bill-we-still-love-you sites to include, new allegations and witness sites, rebuttals and interviews: the complexity of it all really needed the web just to help explain what happened [or might have]. Some of it's frivolous, but some is richly serious, and either way, being able to link back to the sources of the news - to go behind the headlines and let the reader decide for themselves - this has been another step in publishing.
But tonight's threshold isn't about that, it's about the report. We've decided to be one of the mirror sites for Europe. The Special Prosecutor's office seem pretty relaxed with other websites hosting it, and as usual there's an expectation that the US government site will be down as soon as the public access is opened up. It's always like this with a big event; the extra load crippling the server. We get a one hour head start although it's unclear quite when that will begin and as the press room's already crashed there's no information about the status of the information either. All too familiar. Roger will be in the driving seat tonight to grab the hundreds of pages of Starr's summary report and squirt them into HTML. We're not expecting the most gripping of reads, not the most exciting of plots, but a new public right to access has emerged and this is about just that.
