"New Media" Must Become "Media"

Let’s take a glimpse at the evolution of the role of technology and so-called “new media” in politics. In the early years, there were “Web” departments — for example, my colleague Patrick Ruffini served as the “webmaster” for Bush-Cheney ‘04. The new jargon for this role has become “new media,” which typically serves as an umbrella for all forms of “new” communication, such as the Internet and mobile technology. The problem lies in the fact that we are still using the adjective new, which inherently distinguishes it from other forms of traditional media (i.e. TV, radio, and so forth). Accordingly, the people who oversee new media are called “New Media Directors” and work in “New Media,” while the people who oversee traditional media are given the title of “Communications Director” and work in “Communications” or something along those lines. The bottom line is that not only is “new” media no longer new, but even more importantly, “new” media is rapidly replacing “traditional” media. If the right is going to become the side on the cutting edge, then right-of-center campaigns and organizations must ensure that the separation of traditional and new media comes to an end.

The decline of traditional media becomes clear when you look at recent polling trends. For example, a substantially increasing percentage of Americans turn to the Internet for their news. Moreover, a poll taken in 2008 indicates that nearly 70% of Americans consider traditional journalism to be “out of touch,” and as a result the plethora of respondents use the Internet as their primary source of news and information. Twice as many Americans said they “regularly learn[ed] something about the [2008] campaign from the internet” as they did in 2004. And of course, millennial voters almost universally turned to the Internet as their primary source for 2008 election news.

In addition, there were two Presidential campaigns whose profoud impacts demonstrate the importance of integrating all forms of media. It goes without saying that President Obama ran an incredible web-based campaign, raising two-thirds of its money online and peer-producing 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, and 3 million phone calls. Likewise, Ron Paul’s campaign was almost entirely organized and built around the Internet, using existing tools like Meetup.com to build an incredible yet extremely low-cost national infrastructure. What was the differentiator between these two campaigns and most of the others from the past cycle? They didn’t separate “new media” from their other operations; instead, they allowed it to serve as a sort of circulatory system that fed and empowered every other part of their organization. “New media” wasn’t a part of their campaign; it was their campaign.

The line between traditional and new media is disintegrating, and therefore, separating the two puts the right at a disadvantage. So let’s embrace this change. “New media” must become “media,” and must be embraced as the heart and soul of our campaigns and organizations.

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.