President Obama On The "Bloggers vs. Journalists" Question: I DON'T CARE

Last night President Obama held his first press conference as President in prime time. All the usual suspects were present - Helen Thomas was as feisty as ever. ABC, CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, NBC, all the titans of media were there.

Sitting in the front row was Sam Stein of Huffington Post, who was called on to ask a question. Also present was Joe Sudbay of Americablog.

No, they're not the first bloggers to attend a White House press conference. But I think they're the first ones who attended in such a high-profile way and nobody made a big deal that they were there. By calling on Stein, the Obama Administration sent a very clear message that whether you call bloggers journalists or not, their impact is real and the White House needs to reach their readers.

The press conference also demonstrated that some in the mainstream media might want to look in the mirror before they charge that bloggers are "unprofessional" or can't be taken seriously.

Before you take a look at the transcript here, take a look at these two questions and try to guess which was asked by a blogger and which was asked by the Washington Post:

Today, Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-Vermont] announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that, before you turn the page, you have to read the page first.

Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?

OR:

What is your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?

Now, you could argue that both questions are "off topic" at a press conference designed to spotlight the economy and the President's proposed stimulus package. But seriously, A-Rod? You get one chance to ask the President of the United States a question at a time when the economy is in free-fall, the armed forces are engaged with the enemy in two countries and rest of the world is hanging on every word the President utters, and you ask him about a juiced infielder?

So are bloggers journalists? Like President Obama, I don't care. They're important, and that's good enough for me. But if you're looking for opinions from the bloggers themselves, Greg Sargent asked Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas about the newfound clout of the blogosphere and the attention bloggers are getting from the White House, and he said simply

We are media, and should be treated as communications outlets.

Notice he said MEDIA and not JOURNALIST. Maybe because he sees the difference, but I suspect it's because he realizes the difference just doesn't matter as much anymore. Yes, you absolutely need to know if you're dealing with a journalist or not when you work in communications, but media is media. I think John "Americablog" Aravosis added more detail to where the bloggers - at least the liberal political bloggers - are coming from:

While we are media, we're more than media. We are activists and advocates too - akin to the ACLU, the unions, the gay lobby, and more. We're not even partisan media, such as the Nation, in my view. We're far more activist-oriented, and, I'd argue, many of us are long-time political operatives as well (though I've also worked as a professional journalist).

All that is to say that bloggers are a bit of a mutt, and should be treated as such (after all, am I a blogger, a liberal activist, a 24-year-Washington-insider, a gay rights leader, a prominent Greek-American, or a journalist?) . If you corner us off with the mainstream media, you'll be missing out on harnessing our advocacy. But if you treat us simply as activists, you miss out on our media megaphone. In the end, the one thing that would hamper Jesse's job, in my view, is to treat him as a techie. Blog outreach long-since graduated from the days when it was the domain of the computer guy. The computer guy is a genius, but he's not a political genius. The blog outreach person in any organization has to have political and media savvy, and good 'ole activist/organizing sense. He has to be multi-disciplinary, and thus needs to straddle several departments, with a leg in media, political, and even tech (I know, 3 legs).

And most importantly, he has to be connected to what's going on in the White House. It's of no use, to us or the WH, having someone work with us who isn't really authorized to speak on behalf, negotiate on behalf, of the administration. We are here to help, when our interests coincide. But we need someone who's truly part of the WH team, and not simply passing us press releases.

To me, this is why you can't just treat "blogger outreach" as if it were just another PR or marketing exercise. Bloggers don't exist for the convenience of flacks and we shouldn't expect them to adhere to a set of rules simply because they're familiar or convenient to us. They have special interests and special needs. Bloggers have their own turf and it's our job to adapt to them, not the other way around.

Courting the XBox360 Vote?

I may be showing my age here, but I think this is what "too much money" looks like.

Last week we noted unconfirmed sightings of an “Obama for President” billboard in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise. Today we’re able to report that it is, in fact, an official advertisement placed by the senator’s campaign team.

It seems the Obama campaign is advertising in a number of videogames now. Cool, I guess. But just as I think the ROI doesn't justify purchasing an island in Second Life - basically you get an article in a web2.0 publication saying you're in SL, and little more - I'd like to know what the Obama campaign thinks it's getting for its money here.

What's the median age of an XBox360 user? Do they vote? Wouldn't this money be better spent on GOTV in Omaha? An ad buy in a swing state? Jet fuel for O-Force One? Better hairplugs for Joe Biden?

I'm one of social media and web2.0's biggest fans, but I want to see the numbers here.

However, Christopher Rice pointed me to a tech President piece that tries to explain it:

With users numbering in the millions, XBox Live certainly has the critical mass of active users to make such advertising attractive. In comparison, Second Life never had more than a few thousand active users at any given time. And thanks to their partnership with Rock the Vote, it's possible for any XBox Live user to actually start the registration process right on their XBox. As more states like California and Arizona pass laws allowing complete online voter registration, it's going to be possible to go from seeing one of these in-game ads to registering to vote before you put down the controller for the night.

So maybe gamers are a valuable constituency, though I'm still not sure. I do see some very significant value in the campaign's new tax-cut calculator widget. It's profoundly personal - enter some info and see how much money you'd save with the Obama tax plan versus the McCain tax plan. It speaks directly to the issue most on people's minds - how the economy affects them personally - and it offers the comparison. I'll bet it cost a fraction of the XBox ad buy to develop. They're leveraging their already huge online network to spread the word, and I'll bet they're pitching to mainstream media as well. Here it is.

SO SMART. Watch issue-advocacy groups copy this template again and again next year.

Governor Palin, It's Not a Lecture Anymore.

UPDATE: The New York Times defends itself, says it's been harder on Obama/Biden than McCain/Palin.

So it is spoken, so shall it be done...

I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also...

I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard. I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did.

So said Governor Palin at the VP "debate" last week. The Governor raises an important, valid point about the traditional media - but it seems to me she's under the impression that politics and communication is still a lecture, and not a conversation. This sticking point remains a fundamental reason the Republican party continues to lose ground and will suffer heavy losses in November.

Governor Palin and the McCain campaign have taken "running against the media" to a new level. For example, they've gotten to the point now where they don't even try to challenge the facts the New York Times prints - they simply refer to the Times as "150% in the tank" or a "pro-Obama advocacy organization." But do they have a point? Yes and no.

The Times (and any other media outlet, for that matter) has any number of stories it can choose to print; it chooses to print items on page one that paint Senator McCain in an unfavorable light. While the Times has published items that are critical of Senator Obama, it seems we haven't seen that as much lately. Of course, bias is not the sole province of the Times. Fox News has become the Attack Obama network - and I'm not even including the opinion shows like O'Reilly or Hannity-Colmes. (I put pundits in a different category - they're paid to bloviate.)

The "mainstream" media is and always has been biased. But the bias is not one of ideology. The media has a distinct NEGATIVE bias. It highlights conflict. It reports on problems. It speculates on future problems. It searches out problems, and then to sell papers (or get viewers), it tries to convince you that the problems it finds are really important, even if they're not.

I recall in the not-too-distant past the mainstream media was absolutely obsessed with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, holdovers from the Black Panther Party, whether rural people were "bitter" and the sheer horror of not wearing a flag pin. (I'm pretty sure the McCain campaign wasn't complaining about this - in fact, I expect to see commercials that revisit all of this in the very near future.)

The more important point, however, is how the McCain campaign has chosen to deal with this bias - they're putting Governor Palin in situations where only she gets to talk. No Sunday talk shows. No press conferences. No interviews with Katie Couric. Unless you're a stenographer (or Fox News), no access to the candidate whatsoever. You can't do that anymore and expect to get away with it.

While I absolutely LOVE Senator Thompson's comment to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on this:

Well, Wolf, I hate to break this to you, but you don't get national security experience by being on Sunday talk shows, and that's where a lot of these fellows get theirs.

It misses the point. At the debate, Governor Palin wasn't interested in answering questions. She was interested in reciting pre-approved talking points, and her job was to get in as many of those points as possible - regardless of the situation. She's resigned to the notion that in media interviews "you get clobbered no matter what you say," so she's going to ignore the media and "speak to the American people."

How exactly does she plan to do that? Will she actually talk with voters, or are we simply bracing ourselves for 30-second TV spots?

And more importantly, what if the American people have a question? Is it ok to ask for something a tad more specific than "I'm on a team of mavericks?" Do we submit questions in writing? Do we yell them out at a campaign speech? Do we write them on the back of the check to the RNC and hope you get back to us? For some reason I think we're not going to see Governor Palin do what Prime Minister Thatcher did - thanks to Andrew Sullivan for reminding us "what real accountability looks like."

Americans have not yet seen Govenor Palin's capacity for critical thought - and frankly, thanks to the devastating interview with Katie Couric, many Americans don't think she has any. This decision to quarantine Governor Palin, made by the McCain campaign, prevents people from ever knowing anything else. And it forces people to conclude that a vote for McCain is too risky because a Vice-President-suddenly-turned-President Palin wouldn't address the crisis before her - she'd want to talk about something else.

The fact remains - especially with the Republicans - the mainstream media still asks questions for the people. Republicans don't use the blogosphere the way Democrats do - GOP blogs aren't really a "shadow media" that demands accountability from both politicians and pundits. The conservative blogosphere is set up like an echo chamber for the GOP, sort of the online version of talk radio. In fact, one of the right-o-sphere's biggest bloggers is a radio talk show host.

In this regard the Republicans only have themselves to blame - they've confused "message discipline" with "message control." They haven't fostered the arrival of new conservative voices, they haven't asked for new ideas or support. They continue to rely on 20th Century tools like talk radio and direct mail, and when it comes to campaigning, they equate a diversity of opinion with weakness.

Compare this to what liberal blogs said about Senator Obama's position on FISA. Obama remains accountable for his decision, and he chose to keep the multiple lines of communication open. Message: "I'm transparent and accountable to you." Now the liberal blogosphere feels invested in the Obama campaign, and has transformed itself into the largest virtual ATM ever invented - capable of out-raising even the stunningly efficient Republican National Committee.

The Obama campaign is winning because it provides access to both mainstream media and the public. While it has a messaging platform, it gets significant input from the people in the grassroots social networks it has helped set up, and it reacts to information there. It's how the Obama campaign remains accountable to the people who support it and everyone else. The Republicans don't have that.

Governor Palin and the leadership of the McCain campaign seem committed to an "I talk, you listen" lecture style of campaigning. They see anything that disrupts that form of communication as a problem. That's SO ten years ago.

I'm not a conservative, but I know, like, and work with many. Conservatives have interesting and insightful ideas that they're more than willing to debate, discuss, and defend. I suspect Governor Palin is one of those people.

Too bad we'll never know.

A Really Important Thing Happened This Weekend In Texas

Competing political campaigns and a state political party worked cooperatively with an independent blog - A BLOG! - and its readers to report the results of a party process that will have a meaningful impact on the Democratic nominee for President. From the Burnt Orange Report:

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce that we at Burnt Orange Report will be reporting the results of this weekend’s county and senate district conventions. We will be partnering with the campaigns of both Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama – with the support of the Texas Democratic Party and countless county and local party leaders – to provide you the most accurate, up-to-date vote totals of this weekend’s extraordinary process.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for our community to demonstrate the virtue and value of a people-powered movement.

This is indeed a very big deal.

The Texas Democratic Party has a very complicated process for selecting all of its delegates for the Democratic National Convention. They have a primary, and a caucus, and these rather eclectic "county conventions." However, the responsibility for reporting the results for activities like these has traditionally rested with "mainstream" media - you know, those folks with the resources and reach and professionalism to get the facts straight.

Until now:

The Associated Press had around 1,800 delegates reported tonight. We've brought you three times that amount, documented it all, and have over 72% of the delegate totals across the state. That's the value of a people-powered movement.

We've passed the point where blogs are just these online diaries written by one person or a small group. Blogs serve as community hubs, where communities can congregate and can share information quickly and accurately. They're not the only online community hubs, but the ones run by creative, smart and ambitious people like the folks at Burnt Orange Report are among the best.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting...

Kentucky has a new Governor, and Virginia became a shade more blue overnight as the Democrats gained control of the State Senate by the slimmest of margins. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was re-elected easily.

I was taken by two things - a story in the Washington Post suggesting the immigration issue wasn't the silver bullet some Republicans hoped it would be, and a piece by the Cyber Hillbilly on the importance of blogs in state elections.

On immigration, I think the results are meaningful but I'm not sure Virginia is the state where immigration is the top issue. I suspect there are other states that look at the issue more closely. However, this is clearly an issue that has migrated to the state level, and I think this is where the issue will be influenced by more personal and less abstract perspectives.

As for the CH piece on blogs and politics, he's clearly right. We already know more people are turning to blogs for information about everything. More importantly, people are turning to bloggers who share their world view as a more trusted source of information - call it the Fox News effect if you want, but it's real and that trend will only strengthen.