Ali Sydney Diary

The first seminar here at the Online News Association conference will explore the impact of online media for political campaigns. The panelists are Jim Brady from the Washington Post, Brian Fraley, and Ted Osthelder, consultants for the Republican and Democratic parties.

We’re talking about the 24-hour news cycle and the pressure to have information at all times to feed the beast. It also amplifies mistakes and creates more opportunity for them. It requires more resources allocated to media and monitoring the blogs as well as the major news organizations. It generates enormous resource allocation issues.

Jim Brady notes that Washington Post came under a lot of pressure from its readership to have continually new content on their site. That pressure had to come from the competition from blogs, something that he didn’t mention, but the WaPo reacted by expanding their offerings. Chris Cilizza’s The Fix was a direct result of that editorial decision, and they have also expanded their on-line chats.

Brian mentions that campaigns now have the challenge of being overwhelmed by credentialed media, after having made the decision to credential bloggers. He tells an anecdote of an event where TV cameras could not get squeezed into the media area because of the presence of so many bloggers.

Brady says the relationship between the traditional media, campaigns, and “grassroots media” — bloggers, YouTubers, etc. He wonders if “macaca” now has put every politician on the defensive? They will be less likely to be spontaneous and to work in smaller venues, opting for fewer and more large-scale appearances to minimize the potential for damage.

YouTube will impact the dynamic of traditional campaigning, says Ted Osterheider. Candidates used to deliver the same speech six times a day for weeks in order to get it out to everyone. Now, with viral media, that speech gets very dated very quickly, forcing campaigns to switch it up more frequently. That creates more opportunity for macaca moments.

The Fred Thompson response to Michael Moore sparked an interesting discussion. Brian guessed that it cost $100, but had more impact than millions of dollars in traditional campaigning. He then made a strange assumption that campaigns wouldn’t follow that example by spending a major portion of cash on YouTubes and the like. That touched off a debate about why they wouldn’t, and Brian said that “you can’t ignore the traditional media”. True enough, but there’s nothing to keep them from doing both.

Brian mentions that campaigns use bloggers to get around the gatekeepers of the media. Ted says they use bloggers as a test group. Both are acknowledging that campaigns float things in the blogosphere, which should concern bloggers. Both also acknowledge that risks exists for the campaigns using these techniques, because one screw-up will live forever on the Internet. Ted also warns campaigns that they have as much to fear from New Media as Traditional Media.

Sean Hackbarth from The American Mind notes that he gets little more than press releases with all of this New Media access, and says that he gets treated no better than reporters. I’m sitting with a few reporters (Scott Bauer of the AP among them), and they all rolled their eyes at that statement. Last year, we complained that we didn’t get the same treatment as reporters. His point, though, was that the campaigns don’t really put a lot of effort into cultivating bloggers, and the panel says that bloggers need to do their own cultivating, too.

“Life’s tough — get a helmet.”

Jim Brady also makes a good point about evaluating the sources, and Ted mentions a meritocracy at work. The blogosphere has matured as a market, and the campaigns and the media understand who the players are and tailor their response accordingly.

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