Get ready for Rives

National Slam Poetry Champion Rives is sometimes called the world's first "2.0 poet." Combining contemporary technology with ancient storytelling skills, he brings synthesis and narrative coherence to an astonishing range of experience. Now he's doing that on America's biggest story: the marathon campaign for president that stretches from here to November, 2008.

This debut piece, centered around the Democratic candidate debate at Howard University, also introduces a new feature at news.mcclatchy.com: a collection of non-traditional reporting projects designed to bring you political and campaign news from new perspectives: a poet, an artist, a screenwriter and more. Watch the website for new episodes of the project we call "alt.campaign," with more Rives and contributions from a movie screenwriter, a graphic novelist, and more.

There's also more Rives available at his blog, here. Also check out "If I controlled the internet" – his talk at the TED conference.

P.S. This video -- like all the video on news.mcclatchy.com -- can be embeded on your blog or website. (There's a "Post to Blog" link in the "About this video" box.) We're planning to have it watermarked to help spread the word when folks start embedding them.