I don’t know how true it is, but Julie Bosman reports in the New York Times that Iowans are not paying attention to blogs and that they are still getting most of their political information from mainstream sources and talk radio. The explanation? A much older than average electorate and low internet penetration in the rural areas.
The Iowa caucus may determine the next president of the United States. Most analysts I know think Hillary Clinton will be unstoppable if she carries Iowa. Just yesterday, the Edwards campaign issued a memo trying to dispel the notion that he has has to win Iowa in order to have any chance. But I’m not convinced.
Anyone have any ideas what we can do in the next few months to increase the blogosphere’s influence and penetration in the Iowa market?
Publish a hard copy journal of blog posts. Format it nicely, make it look professional — not just some half-assed one-column mono-text screed. And distribute it for free.
Obviously this will cost something significant, and that’s a hurdle. But we have the same problem with outreach in rural Oklahoma, so I’m interested in any solutions.
All a lot of these people know about blogs is what they heard on O’Really, or they think that the “blogs” written by newspaper reporters are representative. You have to bridge the technological divide, and since you want to reach them, you have to go on their side of that divide.
Short of getting busses together, and riding into rural Iowa like a bunch of interlopers, we could support the blogs that are working hard.
Here’s a list of a few, that should lead to more. Their blogs might be exactly the place to ask your questions BooMan.
Caucus Blogs (Both D and R)- http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/
Iowa Lefty Blogs – http://www.leftyblogs.com/iowa/
Blog for Iowa – http://www.blogforiowa.com/
Political Affairs – http://www.poliaffairs.blogspot.com
Iowa True Blue – http://iowatrueblue.org/
Lynn Sweet (Sun Times) – http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/
Linking to the Iowa blogs is the best thing we can do. By raising their profile we might encourage people in Iowa to read them.
Also, linking to LOCAL Iowa newspapers might raise their awareness of blogs.
Lastly, if any of us have friends in Iowa, we could send them a link to Booman Tribune.
If the Iowa bloggers are expecting the Iowans to use the blog as the answer- they are wrong. The blog is the vehicle. Sure, a relatively rural traditional region will still retain their normal practices but what the blogs have to do is use their tool to involve their readers in all the classic, acceptable methods that are not threatening!
I don’t buy the authors position. There is a welath of potentially exhuberant activists out there in Iowa. That was proven in 06 and they will step up. However, guidance is what is needed. They have to build upon the blog message delivery system and not believe for one second that once posted, their job is done.
One example is local newspapers – the weeklies as well as the dailys. Post and follow up. Institute actions that will get coverage and then push those covering to get out the “Blog” message.
The Times article reeks of Middle of the road manipulative bullshit. No one can honestly deny the success of the blog in the 06 cycle. And that didn’t shrivel up and die in two years.
Local radio! Create settings that will get coverage. Even if it is nothing more than a sentence.
And then- don’t forget the major source of the blog audienc- The students. That is the blogs key!
So, the article leaves me with the feeling that there is an agenda that is not being expresses but that is insidious and must be exxamined seriously.
I just don’t buy it!
In my opinion the blogs main influence will be to help stories get into the papers and on radio.
I think this is important work, but it will be indirect to the voters.
It is all about creating a “buzz”. That is how the blogosphere has impact for this election cycle.
Edwards has worked on the ground game in Iowa.
MSNBC’s First Read says
EDWARDS GETS MUCH NEEDED IOWA LABOR NOD
This is great news. I still think the money advantage is overhyped.
It is also being reported that he is likely to get SEIU in Nevada, California and New Hampshire.
It’s not so much that Clinton will be unstoppable if she wins in Iowa; it’s that any other candidate must win Iowa to disrupt the scripted media narrative that has anointed her the frontrunner. She hasn’t gotten there through actual enthusiastic public support; she has gotten there because the press has been saying that she is the favorite to win since long before the campaigning began. And the press will keep saying that unless and until the voters in Iowa (or another early primary) shove it back up the collective ass of the punditocracy.
I don’t agree that Iowa is a must-win for Edwards or Obama, but if they don’t win it, they’d damn well better mop up in several other states early on, or the sheer force of repetition by the MSM will make Hillary Clinton — who is otherwise the least appealing candidate to the Democratic base — unstoppable because they said so.
Frankly, I’m getting more than a little sick of presidential elections being treated like the selection of high school homecoming queens. It trivializes what is arguably one of the most important decisions voters make anywhere in the world, and it subverts democracy. I wouldn’t mind seeing a constitutional amendment prohibiting the release of polling figures and electoral predictions in the year prior to a presidential election. Democracy is too important to be hobbled just so some media giants can sell ad space.
I believe that our own andif is still awaiting high speed inernet in Iowa. (Alas, I still choose to be on dial up here in the metropolitan NY area (a financial decision), where nearly everything is available.)
i know you just hate my taste in YouTube.
I don’t care if Hillary sweeps Iowa and is anointed President-to-be by the press… because of a caucus in a tiny state. My vote is not predicated by the corporate media. I will vote for Kucinich in the California primary, unless the Draft Gore movement has enough signatures to drag him kicking and screaming onto the ballot.
Kucinich is the only one who has the moral fibre to press for impeachment, understanding that voting for accountability is part of the job of representing We the People. He also had the best answers for the environmental problem and he would get us out of illegal wars-for-profit.
If the final comes down to Hillary and some Republican scum? I’m NOT voting for her. She wants power for all the wrong reasons. I wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror knowing that I helped turn my country into a dictatorship. No empires built on blood! No dynasties built on greed! No police states built on fear!
I’ve never missed an election, but I do need a reason to vote for somebody. If given the choice between evil and more evil, I’ll leave that slot blank.
I’m a feminist. I’d love to see more women in positions of authority. However, dynastic ties are the worst of reasons to elect someone to a job requiring experience, wisdom, leadership, and creative problem-solving.
I don’t want Hillary to win the nomination because we have built up this fighting machine over the last five years to do the work the Clinton machine refused to do. And I don’t like Hillary’s foreign policy and she’s not my first, second, or third choice on domestic policy. But I will defend her on grounds of her qualifications.
She is extremely well qualified for the job. In fact, I don’t think there is anyone in the country that is better qualified to take over on Day One.
That is not a good argument against her.
AHHHHHH hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!
I’m sorry, Booman, but this is NEWS???
It’s not just Iowa, folks.
It’s about 98% of the population of America.
They see us…quite correctly, on many levels…as a fringe group of overprivileged middle and upper middle class white people with nothing better to do than potshot at the mainstream and at each other.
A cursory look at dKos, MLW or any number of other meta-obsessed blogs…and the more meta-obsessed the more they get attention from the mainstream media because the MSM knows damned well how to publicize the failings of their competitors…a cursory look at those blogs by most of the non-committed, not particularly politically minded voters of this country (the ones that I know, anyway, be they rural, suburban or urban) would turn them off in a HEARTBEAT.
And people like that are in the majority in this country.
The VAST majority.
Bet on it.
Then we wonder why pros like Hillary Clinton and barack Obama do not worry overmuch about whether we “approve” of them or not.
Do the math.
Votes elect politicians.
We have neither the votes NOR the media clout to much affect their positions.
So it goes.
Iowa IS “America”.
Ain’t gonna change.
Not as long as real work has to be done to support the infrastructure.
Bet on that as well.
AG
ReneA (above) reminds us that our influence on the general population has always been mostly via the regular press and our ability to offer perspective and information that it gobbles up.
what will not give it indigestion.
And it makes BELIEVE that it gobbles up some ideas in order to placate us. Which ideas it really just either drops under the table or replaces with plastic facsimile ideas.
YOU know.
Like the food in the window of a Japanese restaurant?
It looks good…in a waxy, plasticky kind of way…but you can’t eat it.
AG
Put up more sites that host bingo games, (where almost everyone wins something), and then slip in some political commentary while calling out the numbers.
Bingo webathons could be sponsored by candidates.
I don’t have much interest in increasing the blogosphere’s influence in Iowa — though if I had a candidate, I’d be interested in what real world measures an outlander could take to help that candidate prevail in Iowa.
But I did just read an article about the difficulty of determining the age breakdown of Iowa caucus goers. This may have some relevance to this discussion.