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Loading ...One of the biggest complaints I’ve had when it comes to political coverage is that reporters seem to get all caught up in insider games of personality, orfwho’s hot and who’s not, of silly battles. They don’t discuss issues from the trees or the forest perspective. They don’t cover deeper strategy. They don’t understand online strategies. All of this is evident in an article yesterday’s New York Times. Written by Adam Nagourney, it’s called Edwards Campaign Tries to Harness Internet.
It is basically a puff piece focusing on celebrity - Joe Trippi and Elizabeth Edwards - and not what they’re actually doing. I doesn’t talk much about the hows and whys of digital political strategy.
Colin Delaney of epolitics wrote an excellent piece on it. A cut and paste from his blog:
Ah, a celebrity puff piece! Now I have a framework for understanding an article about online politics that says almost nothing about online politics. Instead, we’re treated to discussions about how much Joe Trippi knows, how John Edwards and his wife “get it,” …What you won’t see: any discussion of social networking outreach, which the Edwards campaign embraced early on, or on the relative effectivess of Edwards’s videos compared with the Clinton Sopranos spoof and Bill Richardson’s job interview clips. Nor will you read much about online fundraising, a pastime in which I hear the campaigns are somewhat interested. I.e., you won’t see any actual analysis or context, and neither will you see any discussion of the campaign’s one unmistakeable success, their SMS fundraising effort.
Colin nails but good.
Filed under: Internet Strategy, Mainstream Media, New Media Strategy, Old Media, Online Strategy, Public Affairs, Web Strategy
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Jonathan, you’re right, this NYT piece was terrible. Although it did point out that Edwards’ new “Hair” video was “met with perplexed silence from Democrats sitting in the hall in Charleston,” something I guess we can trust Adam Nagourney on, since he did actually attend the CNN/YouTube debate. An op-ed appeared in The Hill yesterday (John Edwards Needs a Netroots Reboot) similarly deflating the hype that Edwards is still the e-candidate to beat, using hard numbers to back up the story. A longer piece on Edwards’ stalled net performance, also discussing what Obama’s doing right with his online strategy, is posted at The Latest Outrage.
Thanks Erik. Your writings are a worthy read. I’ll blog about them.