Citizen Kate

Citizen Kate is a digital comedy/reality series about a fictional citizen journalist named Kate on the actual presidential campaign trail that has been produced twice, first in 2008, again in 2016.

Citizen Kate interviewing John Edwards in 2007

In 2008, when Obama launched his presidency, Carey Lundin, the series creator who was the Creative Director at Adelstein & Associates, a political advertising firm and owner of Viva Lundin Productions, had written a pilot script and decided to make the titular character real. Kate Soglin, a young citizen journalist, gave us the outsider’s view of inside politics. Citizen Kate was one of the first Citizen Journalists to hit the 2008 presidential campaign trail. She started her video blog coverage on February 10, 2007 at Barack Obama's announcement to run for president in Springfield, Illinois. She filed 90 video reports about the presidential campaign and politics on her web site, CitizenKate.TV, YouTube, Verizon Fios, Brave New Films and other sites worldwide. That series had an estimated 1M+ views.

In February 2016, Citizen Kate again hit the campaign trail, this time two characters, Kate and her half-sister, Alexa Lopez (who is African American and Hispanic) looking for truth, jobs and America's future. The show was put on hold due to the creators' husband sudden passing. The series starred Chicago improvisers Abby Vatterott and Kimberly Michelle Vaughn.

The new series had a stated mission of driving youth voters to the ballot box. The series did a test for their ability to reach youth voters of the Wisconsin primary, releasing PSAs directed at Sanders, Clinton and Cruz voters to BringitWisconsin.gov, a voter ID info site. The series creator, Carey Lundin, president of Viva Lundin Productions, read an article that showed Governor Scott Walker had passed a new set of IDs to be brought to the polls, then failed to promote it. he PSAs Subsequent send-ups of news coverage including "Who Cut the Cheese" about presidential candidate Ted Cruz's refusal to don a cheese hat, have been extremely popular with the Millennial audience.

In 2008, Lundin commissioned Duffy Lyons, "The Butter Cow Lady of Iowa" and Iowa's most beloved person, to sculpt a Butter Head of Barack Obama. When it was presented to the future president two days before the caucus, it became a national story, jokingly cited by Keith Olberman on his show "Countdown" for MSNBC as the reason behind his last minute bump in the polls. Obama's campaign strategist, David Axelrod, joked that "it was the secret to his success." In fact, if Obama had lost Iowa he may not have won the presidency. Citizen Kate hadn't aired the video, but proceeded to air the video on her website CitizenKate.tv to seed blogs and to send notes to reporters asking to be credited. Only Screen Magazine credited her.

Her quest to meet Obama and find out what it takes to be a "Great Leader" landed her on , a site created by Jeff Jarvis, covering the YouTube Campaign 2008. The site identified Citizen Kate as the first Obama stalker, which led to a mention of her in the Chicago Tribune on February 26, 2007. The Tribune story was also picked up by The Economist Global Technology Forum.[1] In April 2007, YouTube's CitizenTube editor highlighted Citizen Kate's "crush" on Obama and demonstration of "serious pluck" in the YouTube Staff Picks of the Week.[2] People have described Citizen Kate as "half valley girl, half Michael Moore", legally blonde, a "YouTube Hottie", an enterprising reporter, and funny.[3][4][5]

Without any experience in either politics or reporting, Citizen Kate attends political events, where she talks with senators, delegates, and presidential candidates in order to uncover the political process. She caught the attention of the media when she attended the 2007 California Democratic Convention in San Diego, where she interviewed Senator Chris Dodd and asked Senator John Edwards a question during his press conference.[6] When Kate asked Edwards for a job, he appeared visibly nervous. The resemblance to his alleged mistress was striking - blond, leopard print headband, party girl, with video camera.

Citizen Kate interviewing Senator Dick Durbin

Citizen Kate also publishes her News & Politics videos on YouTube, along with a written blog about her experience on MySpace. Veoh, the original distributors of the Prom Queen web series, features Citizen Kate on their site each week and launched the first Citizen Kate Channel.