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Blogs Crashing the White House Gates
By Seth Reznik
In a simple act of calling on a journalist from a blog rather than a paper, President Obama was amplifying the transition from the old closed-door politics to something more open.
(The Guardian)
Monday night's presidential press conference witnessed a sea change in the relationship between new and old media. Barack Obama called on a journalist from the Huffington Post blog. In a sense, this isn't really a recognition that blogs are an important forum for discourse in modern politics - it's more a recognition that "HuffPo", as it is known, which gets up to four million readers a month, is now an official member of the established media.
This is a seismic shift for the media. A blog - a big blog, but a blog all the same - now has the same bragging rights as the Washington Post, ABC News and the New York Times. The old media has known that this has been coming, but the press conference puts the importance of blogs up in lights.
Obama's call is evident of his administration following through on his promise to be open and inclusive to as many different opinions and outlets as possible. Politicians - and the media - can no longer rely on the media to define what is important. A whole range of actors now decides, not least the consumers of news themselves. The command and control grid of media management is out. Authenticity is in.
The Obama campaign's success, powered by Blue State Digital, was built in many ways on the openness and transparency in which it was run, by opening the doors to those people traditionally left outside the inner sanctum of campaign planning and organization. So the campaign didn't just decide its strategy internally. Campaign manager David Plouffe regularly recorded videos explaining exactly what the campaign was doing and why, for everyone to see.
The transition was similarly organized. Thousands and thousands of Americans got the chance to ask questions, make comments and vote on the same from their fellow citizens, with government officials and others regularly posting replies and joining the discussion. The everyday functions of the White House are being brought up to speed too, with the regular presidential address being brought into the 21st century by going on YouTube instead of the radio.
In a simple act of calling on a journalist from a blog rather than a paper, Obama was amplifying the transition from the old closed-door politics to something more open. The death of old media has been greatly exaggerated - but new media's growth continues apace.
