Usually, the first time we see the text of the White House State of the Union is on a site like The Washington Post — a news organization that’s given a copy beforehand but can only put it up once the speech has begun. This year, though, the White House has cut out the middleman and gone straight to Medium, publishing President Barack Obama’s address shortly before he started speaking. You can read the whole thing now, or watch the speech live online; afterwards, Obama will be meeting up with YouTube stars to take questions from fans. A Medium post is a little more dignified than the intelligence community’s Tumblr account, but it’s yet another example of the administration spreading its news across social media platforms.
Obama put the entire State of the Union on Medium before his speech
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
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