Forget about the Supreme Court nomination battle. President Barack Obama’s reported pick for the seemingly uncontroversial job of deputy chief technology officer is drawing fire.

A pair of consumer advocacy groups sent the White House a letter on Wednesday urging the administration not to appoint Google’s Andrew McLaughlin to the post, a move reported to be in works by several media outlets.

McLaughlin is Google’s director of global public policy. That means he has been “responsible for Google’s worldwide lobbying efforts,” said the letter from Consumer Watchdog and Center for Digital Democracy.

Obama has issued an executive order barring anyone who has worked as a lobbyist in the past two years from serving in a federal agency that they lobbied.

McLaughlin was last registered as a lobbyist in 2007, the groups said — that might soon avoid the two year ban on technical grounds, but it violates the intent of the ban. And the groups note that the statement of organization for Google’s political action committee from March 2009 lists McLaughlin as its assistant treasurer and its designated agent.

A Google spokesman said that McLaughlin was mistakenly listed as a lobbyist in 2007 and that Google filed an amended disclosure form in 2008 correcting the filing when the company realized that he did not meet the threshold for lobbyist, which includes spending 20 percent of an individual’s time in direct contact with members of Congress.

Google has proven to be a bit of a feeder to the Obama White House. Katie Stanton, the White House director of citizen participation, is a former Google project manager. Sonal Shah, the erstwhile head of global development at Google.org, now heads White House Office of Social Innovation.

And of course, Google CEO Eric Schmidt serves on Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Meanwhile, Google is the subject of various federal inquiries and investigations. The latest involves hiring practices among various Silicon Valley firms.

There have been reports that some of the noise about Google’s ties to the White House bears the fingerprints of Google competitors, like Microsoft.

Consumer Watchdog and Center for Digital Democracy officials both said they have no affiliation or financing from Microsoft, or any other corporation.

CDD Executive Director Jeffrey Chester said he first learned of the potential McLaughlin appointment after receiving an unsolicited e-mail with a news article on the subject from a Microsoft “political person.” He said he would have seen the article anyway and has had no subsequent communication with the person.

The consumer groups say their beef with McLaughlin has nothing to do with the fact that he is a Googler.

“The problem is that he has been a lobbyist for the biggest digital marketing company in the world, and we believe no special-interest connected person should assume a position of vital important to the country’s future,” reads the letter.

“It would be just as inappropriate for a lobbyist from Microsoft, Yahoo or any other similar technology company to be appointed Deputy Chief Technology Officer.”

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s inauguration day – and that means media will be going all out. From wires to newspapers to TV and radio, correspondents will be covering every possible angle of the event. And they won’t have a problem finding an audience.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that this could be the most widely viewed inauguration in U.S. history, surpassing the 42 million who watched Ronald Reagan’s first swearing in.

Like everything surrounding the 2008 presidential campaign, the inauguration of Barack Obama dawns with broadcast media swinging for the fences. Not only are the usual suspects bringing their A teams, but cablers as diverse as BET, TV One, Al Jazeera and ESPN are offering live coverage of Obama’s swearing-in. MTV will focus on inaugural coverage in the evening.

“CBS Evening News” executive producer Rick Kaplan, a veteran of every inauguration since 1973, said there is pressure on every network to make sure this one is covered perfectly.

“It’s an extraordinary event, and you want to get it right,” he said. “What everyone wants to do is report in a way fitting the amazing importance of the event. This is a critical period in our country’s history — you want to have your A game on this story.”

One network particularly keen to put its best foot forward is CNN. AdAge said CNN has signed more than 20 sponsors for two days of coverage.

Greg D’Alba, CNN’s exec VP-chief operating officer of ad sales, said the total client list is the largest the network has ever had for any one- or two-day event. “The election trail was more than any of us bargained for in many ways. Our brand became more, our coverage became more, the viewers became more and our users became more,” he said. “This is about the attraction and the empowerment of a brand. It’s no longer about a single medium; it’s about a network.”

Keep an eye on:

• Facing the worst ad downturn in a decade, Madison Avenue is eager to avoid any labor strife in its upcoming negotiations with commercial actors (NY Post)
• In an effort to increase their online exposure without breaking the bank, marketers are looking beyond the biggest Web search engines to find new places for their search ads (WSJ.com)

(Photo: Reuters)

Shepard Fairey's posters of Barack Obama became the iconic image of a historic campaign. After a bit of digging by a photographer and a blogger, it turns out that Fairey's source material was a photo by Reuters' veteran photographer Jim Young.

UPDATE, Jan 21: Or perhaps not. A flurry of online interest has resulted in the discovery of another photo from the Associated Press that may be a better match. Read about it at the blog run by Tom Gralish of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered this story extensively.

Our original blog post continues below.

Blogger Michael Cramer created the composite photo above after sifting through countless images to find a match. The poster has Obama facing the opposite direction; Cramer flipped it to correspond with the original source photo.

Young, who took many thousands of photos of Obama on the campaign trail, was pleasantly surprised when told of his contribution to the iconic image. The original picture was taken in 2007 during a Senate confirmation hearing.

"I saw that poster all over the place, all year. For a lot of people it symbolized the campaign. It meant so much to so many people," Young told Philadelphia Inquirer photographer and blogger Tom Gralish, who has led the search for the photo.

"I'm honored, but I'm glad it didn't come out until after the campaign," Jim added. "I think even if I had known it was mine, I would have kept quiet. It would be just my little secret."

Ironically, Young unknowingly took several pictures of the poster on the campaign trail, including one through a window when it was flipped to match the orientation of his original photo.

Fairey, an artist who first came to fame for an altered picture of wrestler Andre the Giant, has said in interviews that he found the Obama source photo using Google Image Search and then "did his thing to it." His "Hope" poster is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

"You’d think a whole bunch of photographers would step forward," said Gralish in his blog post. He compared it to the Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph of a V-J Day kiss in Times Square, which has spurred dozens of people to come forward over the years, claiming to be the kissers in the picture.

More on the Fairey/Young image:

Washington Post graphic about how Fairey created the poster

Time magazine video on Fairey and the Obama poster

Make your own "Obamicon" poster

After much speculation and guess-work, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his former Harvard Law classmate Julian Genachoswski as nominee for chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

Genachowski, who has been Obama’s technology advisor, had been on most people’s guess-list for a new “chief technology officer” post with the incoming administration — though some outlets had called it last week on his FCC appointment.

So who is Genachowski? Well, most outlets believe he should understand the future of media as he’s held several posts at Barry Diller’s Internet media business IACI and he’s previously been a chief counsel for former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, the chairman under former President Bill Clinton.

That experience will help with two big upcoming Internet-related issues. The first is Obama’s ambitious plan to invest in broadband technology expansion as part of his economic stimulus package.

The second more challenging issue is Net neutrality, the idea of an open and level Internet for all players regardless of their size. The FCC chair will be trying to manage the expectations of Internet service providers, content companies and everyday consumers.

But top of the list of his Genachowski’s to-do list will be ensuring the congressionally mandated conversion to digital television on Feb. 17 goes smoothly. Obama aides have backed an idea to delay the planned transition to avoid millions of televisions going blank.

(Photo: Reuters)

Keep an eye:

• Warner Bros. seeks 10 percent cost cut, could mean layoffs - (AP)
• Monster.com is taking a humorous approach in a new ad campaign (NY Times)
• Golden Globes gets smallest TV audience in years - (Reuters)

The superhero finally gets to meet his humble fan thanks to the magic of Marvel Comics.

The comic book setting is inauguration day 2009. And it is the president-elect who is the superhero and none other than the irrepressible Spider-Man who’s the fan.

“…This is your day, after all, and I know it wouldn’t look good to be seen palling around with me,” Spider-Man says as he tries to leave Obama to the limelight.

“Hey, not so fast,” says the soon-to-be commander-in-chief.

Then comes the confession: I’ve been a big fan of yours. The conversation ends with a fist bump between the two men.

Obama, in turn, might get the services of Spider-Man as he deals with multiple problems that have landed on his plate: the recession, the Iraq war and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“The future president’s gonna need Spider-Man,” the narrator says.

Meanwhile, on the cover page, Spidey is seen trying to broker a deal with Obama: “Hey, if you get to be on my cover, can I be on the dollar bill?”

The issue will hit the stands on Jan. 14 as Marvel joins the long list of newspaper publishers, news stations and gold coin makers hoping to cash in on the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

(Picture: Marvel Comics)

Keep an eye on:

• US Supreme Court asks for governement’s view of an appeal by film studios and TV networks of ruling allowing a new digital video recorder service by Cablevision (Reuters)
• CBS expands carriage deals with Verizon (Reuters) and adds new programs on TV.com (WSJ)
• Time Warner’s AOL Web services arm will expand and centralize is digital publishing operations (Reuters)