Tomorrow at the Politics Online conference in Washington, I’m moderating a panel with Jay Rosen, Jim Brady of WashingtonPost.com, and David Plotz of Slate, on the changes in media in campaigns today. Here are some of my talking points. Please add yours:
* Is it possible to break out of the old media campaign narrative of races, fights, spin, stereotypes? How?
* Political reporting is often not really reporting. It’s about repetition, rumors, spin, opinion, handicapping, predicting, leaking. So the relationship of MSM and blogger/amateur/citizen (whatever we are today) is different. We, the people, can do much of what they, the reporters do. So who should be doing what?
* There’s a new relationship between candidates and citizens. What can it be?
* Can campaigns be conversations?
* Can we question candidates in new ways?
* Can we take over more in the operation of campaigns?
* Candidates have no ways to route around reporters and editors to citizens. What’s good and what’s bad about that?
* Will we end up with more or less spin? Do these new media offer more ways to issue spin or to cut through it?
* What is our new relationship as voters with candidates?
* Is it better that we will see more of the candidates — through their lenses and ours?
* Let’s discuss the danger of the gotcha moment, henceforth known as the macaca moment. Do we need to be more forgiving of gaffes when we hear more? If we want the candidates to be more human do we need to accept their human falliblity?
* What new reporting can we accomplish now with pro/am effort? What new information do we need?
* Can we drive new ways to cover campaigns? What should they be?
* Can we escape the duotone red/blue stereotype and narrative through listening to the subtler views of more people?
* What might the impact on campaign advertising be when we can all see the worst of the ads on YouTube? Better through shame? Or worse through free distribution?
* What will the impact of citizen-made commercials be?
* Discuss US vs European and left vs right experience so far with YouTube.
* What advice do we have for the candidates? How should they be using these new media and how should that affect their campaigns and relationships with us?
* What advice do we have for bloggers, vloggers, et al. What should they be concentrating on?
* What advice do we have for MSM press? How can they do their jobs better?
* Will this this new, open media have a profound impact on campaigning? Write the analysis story a decade from now.
* Can and should candidates carry on this new communication while in office? Will the next President vlog?
I was headed to visit Iain Dale, creator of 18 Doughty Street, the new internet channel of conservative (they try to sell it as “anti-establishment”) political chat shows in London. So I emailed asking him for an address: “18 Doughty Street,” came the answer. Doh. Silly American. It’s an old, Georgian townhouse taken over by this new-age network with a staff of 20 crammed into the front parlors and a studio in the back with seven cameras, two couches, one table, a bowl of flowers, and book cases with cutouts for a couple of the cameras.
On the video (which is long with bad quality, for which I apologize), I ask Dale about the YouTube election and what David Cameron is doing on small TV in the UK. He tells about Cameron making a video about “discovering your inner tosser” and his fears that this would insult the voters. But the target audience got it. He says Clinton’s Hillcasts are just pieces to camera; “she’s not interacting with people, she’s talking at them.” He says that Obama’s site is fresh; I say he’s not saying but Dale argues “you don’t have to say much; David Cameron didn’t say much” at the start of a campaign. “With Obama, it’s almost like a movement whereas with Hillary Clinton it doesn’t seem to be like that.” Dale would love Hillary to be the the Democrats’ candidate; he’s hardly alone among conservatives with that wish. He says that on the Republican side “none of them has got it.” But he argues that Mitt Romney “is getting what George Bush used to call the big mo.” I’d say it’s a very little mo.
Dale believes that Rudy Giuliani can use the internet to get over the objections of some in his party and he also cautions: “But the Republican Party has to be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of the Conservative Party in Britain, where we became so obsessed by one particular issue - Europe - and has meant we’ve been out of power for 10 years. Now if the Republican party goes down this road of obsessing about abortion, gun control, gay rights, those kinds of social issues, I fear for their future because if they’re taken over by these sort of more fundamental groupings you’re not going to have a coalition - and all politial parties are coalitions.”
He advises that candidates should not (like McCain) make their videos too slick. And if candidates have blogs, they should join in personally sometimes. “You’ve got to personalize it.” He says that each of the campaigns should have people following candidates around with cameras like mine and post what happens. He advises that candidates should use humor, acknowledging that “it’s dangerous sometimes… With declining voter turnout, sure everybody would agree that making politics fun is all part of it.” He says candidates should show that they are human, that they have houses and dogs and humor.
He says that Cameron, like Sarkozy, is promising to answer questions that are left on his site and voted up by the audience.
* * *
On 18 Doughty Street, the network, Dale is making at least five hours of live TV a night, five nights a week from 7p to midnight and he’s about to expand into America with a deal to use the Arlington, Virginia, studios of the Leadership Institute, and an offer to use the Heritage Foundation’s satellites. So they will feature more American guests and will rebroadcast their shows so East-Coast Americans can watch from 7p-midnight local time. Dale is amazed — as am I — that no one has done this in America and if he weren’t busy in London, he’d make that American network. Someone surely will.
18 Doughty has nightly news updates, talk shows (one with bloggers), and hour-long interviews with politicians (even they are surprised they get to talk for so long). They are about to enable viewers — 100 of whom (including a deputy assistant secretary of state in the U.S.) were given video cameras — to upload pieces; the best will be aired each night. The network is getting 1-2,000 viewers at any one time during the live broadcasts plus more viewing the streams and 5-10-minute clips they put online. A huge audience? No. But as Dale says, blogs get disproportional attention in mainstream media and so do his shows. Their commercial asking what the world would be like without America (below) has had 250,000 views so far.
The channel is bankrolled entirely by Stephan Shakespeare of the polling company YouGov. He put up $2 million to fund it for a year and they’re not even trying to make money now. They have no revenue. He thinks it will likely always be supported by philanthropy and aims to be breakeven. I wonder whether such a show in election season in the U.S. couldn’t be profitable.
I asked Dale to figure out how much he’s spending per hour of TV. He figured a quarter of the money goes to bandwidth and the web site. So the $1.5 million that goes into programming produces it for roughly $140 per hour. That is incredibly low. Any executive of any network anywhere would kill for numbers like that.
They manage this because they do things in new ways. When they started, they had two TV pros who only made things difficult, telling them what they couldn’t do. So they got rid of the pros and now they’re making TV.
I’ve found quite considerable interest in the election here in London and just spoke with an editor who said it is higher than he has ever seen it. Tie this with a recent Pew survey that found that 20 percent of people who followed the election online went to foreign sources. So it’s no surprise that we’re seeing incisive coverage of the election coming from over here. See, for example, Gary Younge’s column in the Guardian arguing that money is still king in our elections and wondering whether the internet can or would unseat that.
We have no idea yet what role the internet will play in next year’s presidential election. First, it is too early in the process. Second, the pace at which the medium is developing means that the campaigning tool of choice probably has not been invented yet. Back in 2003 it took Howard Dean six months to compile an email list of 139,000. But that was before networking sites such as MySpace. In less than two months Barack Obama has gathered more than 310,000 supporters on Facebook.com.
What is certain is that the internet will play a vital, possibly decisive, role; and in all likelihood that role will come into conflict with the established kingmakers. Neither trend is new. But the power of money and the modem are both driven by different and, arguably, contradictory forces. At some stage something will have to give. . . .
While these tensions may play out as a battle between left and right, or doves and hawks, they will in essence represent a far more fundamental shift in the relationship of the professional political class with the politically engaged public - a struggle between the popular and the oligarchic, between the bespoke message of the paid consultant and the chaos of freewheeling public opinion. Sadly, it won’t change the centrality of money in American politics - the internet is a crucial fundraising tool. But by enabling thousands of small donors to contribute, it has already proved its potential to provide an alternative funding base. . . .
We should have no illusions about who has the upper hand in this battle between big money and burgeoning activism. At a meeting in New York to support Hillary Clinton last week, organised through Meetup.com, the host told us that since Hillary had the votes of New Yorkers sewn up, all she really needed the town for was money. . . .
It suits the mythology of meritocracy that remains so central to American identity to have young children walking around in T-shirts saying “Future president of America”. But the truth is if your kid really does stand a chance at the top office, he’ll already be wearing more expensive attire. America’s class system is now more rigid than most in Europe, and that sclerosis is given full expression at the highest levels of politics. Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Chicago mayor Richard Daley and Southern Christian Leadership Conference head Martin Luther King all carry the names and job titles of their fathers. Each year the richest quarter per cent make 80% of all political donations. The last time there was not a Clinton or a Bush on the presidential ticket was 1976. This is not democracy, it is dynasty.
Just posted at PrezVid on how the Brits (and French) are doing better in their video campaigning at showing us more candid moments and thus candor, in response to a TechPresident post by Micah Sifry. Another about the ridiculous conservative harumphing about Rudy Giuliani’s life in drag.
Some new posts of note over at my PrezVid vlog/blog:
* My interview with Loic Le Meur, adviser and vlogger for conservative French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, about the amazing video action happening in the campaign over there. For all the attention American candidates are getting in our YouTube election, the video scene in France’s election is far ahead, moreso on Sarkozy’s site than on that of his liberal opponent, Segolene Royal (you supply the accents, please).
* John Edwards tells WNYC’s Brian Lehrer that this is, indeed, the YouTube election … and he’s not bothered by all the hair jokes.
Since I dove right into PrezVid without an introductory post and mission statement and because I’m talking about the YouTube campaign on Monday with Faith Salie on her public-radio show (which has been on my iTunes subscription list for a few weeks; I’m a fast fan), I thought I should answer the questions: Why PrezVid? And what will PrezVid do? Of course, I have many answers:
First, almost every one of the presidential candidates is using YouTube and internet video to open up a new channel to voters. As I said in my Guardian column, this is an eye-to-eye medium that lets the candidates speak directly to individuals on a small screen instead of from a big platform. It lets them control the message and set the agenda and tone. It enables them to bypass the soundbiting of network news (yes, the messages are still short, but you can say a helluva lot more in two minutes than in 10 seconds and you can control what is said).
Second, voters in the field are taping everything the candidates do. I say this is good; it makes the campaigns more public. Will we have our macaca moments? Oh, you bet. Sometimes, this will reveal the candidates’ true character. But sometimes, it will merely confirm that we’re all human and all screw up. The question will be: how well will media and the electorate distinguish between the two?
Third, this allows us, the voters, to see the candidates in a new light. Of course, they are still controlled and stage-managed. But still, more exposure to them that we get, the better we can judge both their words and their character. See the change not just in what Mitt Romney said but in how he acted in 1994 versus today (more on that later).
Fourth, internet video helps us speak back to the candidates. The politicians are trying to manage this as well: see McCain with his questions via YouTube. But there’ll be plenty of uncontrolled talking-back: see The Real McCain.
Fifth, this will give us all an opportunity to see the campaign commercials that, in recent years, could be seen only in battleground states. I hope this will put a harsher light on filthy campaigning. We’ll see.
So PrezVid will track the course of the YouTube campaign through video everywhere. We will show you the videos we think that matter — from candidates, from citizens, and from remixers. We will look at how internet video affects the campaign and the country. We will offer criticism and commentary. And we’ll have some fun. And we’ll do that both in blog posts and in vlog shows.
Patrick Ruffini says that campaigns are not conversations and he’ll be surprised to hear that I agree with him. He says:
“Campaigns are conversations.†If I hear this one more time, I swear my head is going to explode. Campaign 2008 already has its most overused cliche, at least among us techie types.
“Let the conversation begin,†blares Hillary Clinton’s Web site. “Start the conversation,†says Chris Dodd’s. “This campaign is about YOU,†proclaims Barack Obama’s. Jeff Jarvis has a new blog on Presidential video dedicated to the Platonic ideal of campaigns as a neverending bull session with the voters.
Problem is, I don’t get the point of this exactly. At some level, this seems like no more than a basic transposition of Doc Searls’ “markets are conversations,†which is brilliant as applied to business because markets are inherently leaderless. It’s trickier to apply this pure and abstract ideal to politics where the voice of the people matters but where voters can and do evaluate candidates as leaders who stand on principle and don’t just do things because they’re popular.
He’s right. The comment I left there:
Actually, I don’t say that campaigns are conversations. In the end, a campaign must be propagandistic: It must be the candidate getting his or her views spread, which includes making your allies spread them for you. The only thing two-way about the Dean campaign was the organizational end (’hey, kids, let’s invade Iowa’). The messaging was and inevitably is one-way, once the candidate has a stand — and once the campaign has begun, he or she better have a stand. I don’t use propaganstic pejoratively; it’s reality.
Having said that, you’re also right that candidates must listen and there are new ways to listen. So they can be more conversational.
But my real point about the use of YouTube et al is that it allows the candidates to act more conversationally, to look us right in the eye on our small screens after we’ve clicked and talk to us quietly, at a human scale, not from a big platform in a huge crowd. Maybe, just maybe, it also allows us, the voters, to be heard better. But we’ll see.
Mitt Romney has the dubious honor of giving us the first presidential commercial of the ‘08 campaign [via HuffingtonPost Eat the Press] [crossposted at PrezVid]:
He says it’s the time for no more “dithering” in Washington. Dithering. Nice verb. We’re all against dithering. The nice thing about having the first ad is that you have no attacks to respond to yet. Just wait.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blog — note how that rolls off the keyboard — has been putting up video of representatives floor speeches against the war. That’s fascinating enough but get how they are posting the video: via YouTube. Here is Pelosi’s own YouTube user page.
C-SPAN has been the place to get source information on video: watch and judge for yourself. Now YouTube can take over that role and not just for limited official events but for source video anywhere. [crossposted at PrezVid]
McCain’s videos may be ready for prime time, but not for YouTube. He doesn’t speak directly to those of us who are clicking; he speaks off-camera, as if this were an interview, or he speaks through music and polished production, as if this the video were intended for the giant screens at a nominating convention. He doesn’t yet understand that this is a conversation, one-on-one. He appears on an antiseptic, white background, nothing like the homey atmospherics of other candidates’ videos; it’s as if he’s trying out for Star Wars, not the White House.
But McCain has one good idea: He solicits questions for his virtual town hall via YouTube. This means that — unlike in Hillary Clinton’s tete-a-tetes — we will get to see which questions he has the guts to answer and which not. I wonder whether they realized that.
: Since one of you asked in the comments, the embed code for the video is here (under “share”).
And, damn, I wish I’d thought of Tim Shey’s line from the comments:
At one point, it looked like he was about to say, “and I’m a PC.â€
: LATER: * To embed this video on your blog (please) cut-and-paste this code:
The resignations of the lightning-rod bloggers hired by Edwards’ campaign is not a good sign for bloggers or for conversation. Now every blogger hired by every campaign — in any position — will have their writing scanned for anything that could offend anyone. Tapioca time.
