George Allen's Blogger Talks
I recently had a chance to interview Jon Henke of QandO blog. As you may know, Mr. Henke is a talented operative who was Netroots Coordinator for the George Allen Senate campaign. This was one of the first high-level GOP campaings to embrace the blogosphere. Enjoy ...
ML - Jon, thank you for joining us today. You were called on to run the e-campaign for Sen. George Allen. By that time, he was already being attacked in the media -- and in blogs --- for the macaca gaffe. Many pundits were recommending he bring on someone to coordinate his e-campaign. With that in mind, can you talk about the importance of having a proactive
e-campaign from day 1?
JH - I would argue that the value of blogs changes over the course of a campaign. Initially, blogs can make major contributions by shaping narratives among the 'Influentials' (bloggers, journalists, pundits, etc), generating positive attention for their candidate and attracting activists. Towards the end of a campaign, with narratives already established and candidate-awareness taken care of, pushback and information distribution are the more valuable functions of a campaign blog.
If a campaign doesn't engage the New Media early on, there will be three major problems:
1) Unfavorable frames and narratives will be free to develop in the media seed-bed of the blogosphere. Once developed, they become conventional wisdom and are very difficult to rebut.
2) The campaign will sacrifice the opportunity to develop their own narratives, or to frame upcoming issues for the Influentials.
3) Once the campaign does enter the blogosphere, they will face an uphill battle to cultivate credibility, interest, activists and notoriety.
ML - Some have speculated that before you came on board, Sen. Allen was the first candidate to be "Punked." The bottom line is that, going forward, all candidates must realize that anything they say might end up on YouTube. Can you speak to this new phenomenon?
JH - If the blogosphere represents the democratization of news, then YouTube is the democratization of video. It's no surprise that the two would work hand in hand. Campaigns need to understand that a story is more powerful than a statistic, and a narrative more powerful than a story. Similarly, a picture is more powerful than a story and a video more powerful than a picture. The problem (and opportunity) for campaigns is not simply that they will be subjected to more scrutiny. That's been true for a long time. The problem (and opportunity) is that people now have access to visual reinforcement of the statistics, stories and narratives.
That's why it's so important to tell the stories and develop the narratives early. The 'macaca' incident was a big story because the left had spent many months trying to tell a story about George Allen, while the Allen campaign essentially ignored it. When the 'macaca' video was released, it fit the extant narrative (which, by the way, journalists had spent months reading about). Journalists could simply throw the roof on the story, because the house had already been built by the New Media.
ML - The internet isn't just for Senate campaigns. What tips do you have for local campaigns or candidates? To what extent should they be using this technology?
JH - It's important for campaigns to understand what their target audience is. Are they blogging for voters, for activists, for other bloggers or for reporters? Is the audience national, statewide or more local? Campaigns can use this at every level, though the focus will necessarily be different. At the Presidential and Senatorial level, you probably need a very prominent blog, manned by a coordinator who knows the blogosphere very well. At lower levels, you need somebody who has a good relationship with the State blogosphere. In every case, the person responsible for the blog needs to know how to blog effectively, how to generate attention and how to focus the campaign message on the target audience.
ML - How did you get involved in this business, and how did you get picked to head up the e-campaign for Sen. Allen?
JH - I began blogging in mid-2003. Like most bloggers, I did it because I had something to say. Naturally, I'd like to think the Allen campaign chose me to head the online media efforts because I'm a good writer with a good reputation and a strong grasp of blog outreach ... but I would rather not attribute my opinion to the Allen campaign leadership. You'd have to ask them.
ML - Much of what you did was serve as a press secretary to bloggers. How do they differ from traditional media, and how did that change your tactics regarding approaching them?
JH - The most important distinction between bloggers and reporters is that bloggers are under no obligation to report what you say ... or even report on a subject at all. In fact, bloggers may just report on their impressions of what you said. Reporters are generally limited to the available facts, whereas bloggers deal more explicitly with interpretation. That's important, because the interpretations that emerge in the blogosphere -- narratives, conventional wisdom, memes -- invariably color the stories that reporters end up writing. By the time the conventional wisdom is established, however, journalists may not even be aware that it’s just an accumulation of the perspectives of bloggers and pundits.
"Macaca" is a perfect example. The day before Allen said 'macaca', nobody had heard of it; a week later, the conventional wisdom was that it was a racial epithet. Bloggers established that frame by repeatedly drawing a connection. The media just followed their lead.
Another example followed the 'macaca' incident. After it happened, George Allen explained that he had just made up a nonsense word and didn't realize it had any meaning. The fact that his mother and sister corroborated that went almost entirely unreported. Various campaign staff and others speculated on what the inspiration for the word might have been (a takeoff on mohawk, a play on a child's nickname, etc). Senator Allen remained consistent that it was a made-up word, yet somehow, reporters and pundits decided that he had "changed his story". Why did this narrative take root? Because Democratic bloggers pounced on every speculation about the words origin and portrayed each of them as "George Allen changed his story again". Repeat it often enough, and the reporters will run with it. After all, he must have changed his story a few times if they keep saying that, right?
That's how narratives get started. So, when dealing with bloggers, it's important -- vitally important -- to think about how the stories will appear, what subtext is being built into a narrative and how you can defuse it quickly. With reporters, you try to focus on the current big story; with bloggers, it's equally important to pay attention to their interpretation of the subtext on stories big and small.
That may be too many words to express a simple idea, so here's a shorter metaphor (which I may regret): reporters are our food suppliers, and we're very interested in what they carry. The New Media, however, are the farmers -- what they're putting into the ground and how they're cultivating it will ultimately determine what the suppliers carry. If the farmers manage to cultivate it well, you can be sure that the suppliers will bring it to market.
ML - Since having a blogger -- or blog outreach coordinator -- is a fairly new phenomenon, how did you define success versus failure? Were there previous campaigns that you looked to for guidance when you were thinking about what you could do to make a difference in the race?
JH - The first thing to know is that blog outreach can be successful even if the campaign ultimately loses, and unsuccessful even if the campaign ultimately wins. The Webb campaign blog outreach was very successful, and that would have been true even if Webb had gotten 10,000 fewer votes.
Much of a New Media campaign's success will never be readily visible, or attributable to the New Media campaign. Who can say for sure why a narrative became conventional wisdom? Other than a few campaign staffers, who knows that a fact mentioned in a news story made it there because of narrative cultivation or a blog post? My own metric was based on who "owned" stories in the blogosphere. Did attention to a story drop off or pick up after an effective round of pushback? Did blogs pick up on your message, or did they pick up on the other guys message? Did your message (or your opponents message) become conventional wisdom?
I don't recall focusing on any one prior campaign as a guide. However, there have been plenty of mini-campaigns waged in the blogosphere -- and well before it, too -- and all of them are instructive, for better or worse. For instance, Howard Dean's ultimate crash and burn was, in my opinion, partly the result of an over reliance on the New Media. He was very adept at bringing bloggers and activists into his stable, but he (and his campaign) failed to understand how the developing narratives can hurt you. He came to be portrayed as the crazy, fringe candidate of the Democratic Party because he was so connected to the rabid, far-left activists. When The Scream happened, it fit the narrative and he never could shake it. The campaign tried to change the narrative, but it was too late. Campaigns should see the fate of Dean's Presidential campaign as both a warning about the power of the New Media, and an opportunity to engage it more productively...or defensively, if need be.
One lesson should be clear, though: you can't start too early, but you can start too late.
ML - I've found that a lot of traditional campaign operatives still don't "get" the internet. Did you face any cynicism from more traditional operatives?
JH - No, I really didn't. Perhaps they were just kind enough to keep it to themselves, but everybody I encountered was supportive. That's not to say they were entirely enthusiastic about every opportunity -- there was a lot more I think we could have done -- but I never encountered anything but support from the campaign.
My impression is that the institutional Party apparatus understands that the internet and the New Media is important ... but they're not yet entirely sure why it's important, or what to do about it. They'll be glad to hire bloggers and New Media Coordinators just as soon as they figure out who to hire and what to do with them.
ML - Enough about campaigns. When we talked in Richmond, you said you believed the liberals are ahead of us. Why is that -- and what do conservative and libertarian bloggers need to do to catch up?
JH - The most important thing the Democrats have had going for them in the New Media is the fact that they were a minority party. Minority status has a unifying effect on people; they share the same political enemy, so they all face the same way. Meanwhile, because they were in power, Republicans were easy targets. It's more fun to storm the castle than to govern it.
Now that the GOP is a minority party in Congress, they're in a much better position with the New Media.
I don't believe there's any single foolproof plan, though. The Democrats have been successful because they're simply jumped into the game and embraced the very disparate netroots. The netroots aren't always going to be helpful, but they exist and it's better to engage them than to hope they'll fade away.
The Republicans need follow the Democrats lead, especially on the individual candidate level. Broadly speaking, they need to incorporate New Media outreach into their campaigns at the earliest possible time (when blogs can be effective at seeding the ground); they need to monitor the blogosphere to figure out upcoming narratives; they need to provide pushback information directly to bloggers in a timely manner. And they need to remember that bloggers are not reporters -- you cannot simply send them press releases. Here's some blog engagement advice I gave recently at my QandO.net blog:
"For institutions interested in engaging the blogosphere -- and here, I refer to corporations, interest groups, candidates and political Parties -- the key is to understand the incentives at work. Bloggers blog for many reasons, but "to help [insert your institutional interest here]" is rarely one of them.
Bloggers are not...
... reporters, obligated to dispassionately transcribe your message.
... terribly interested in press releases.
... generally interested in being a conduit for your message.
... blogging for your benefit.
Bloggers are ...
... interested in unique insights, scoops, dirt, scandals, access and anything that will enhance their intellect, traffic, stature or ego.
... more apt to criticize "their own" if "their own" is not giving them the other side of the story.
... rarely given the ammunition they could use to deal with news stories and defuse emerging narratives.
To appeal to bloggers, you must figure out what they want -- on an individual level -- and become a service to them. As the old ESPN saying went, "you cannot stop them ... you can only hope to contain them. Treat bloggers as the enemy, and you will be rewarded with an enemy; treat bloggers as valuable constituents -- with individual interests -- and you may be rewarded with allies."
Eventually, Republicans need to develop a comprehensive, long-term engagement strategy incorporating new technologies, social networking tools and narrative development. This can be done at the national and the state levels, with individual candidate campaigns and even with specific policies Republicans want to push. (The Democratic netroots hit the ground running against Bush's Social Security reform proposals; the Republican netroots mostly just watched from a distance) The New Media is still an emergent system, so it's hard to give a specific prescription for the future. But if Republicans don't jump in sooner, they'll be forced to jump in later... and they will bitterly regret having ceded the entire battlefield to the Democrats.
ML: Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
ML - Jon, thank you for joining us today. You were called on to run the e-campaign for Sen. George Allen. By that time, he was already being attacked in the media -- and in blogs --- for the macaca gaffe. Many pundits were recommending he bring on someone to coordinate his e-campaign. With that in mind, can you talk about the importance of having a proactive
e-campaign from day 1?
JH - I would argue that the value of blogs changes over the course of a campaign. Initially, blogs can make major contributions by shaping narratives among the 'Influentials' (bloggers, journalists, pundits, etc), generating positive attention for their candidate and attracting activists. Towards the end of a campaign, with narratives already established and candidate-awareness taken care of, pushback and information distribution are the more valuable functions of a campaign blog.
If a campaign doesn't engage the New Media early on, there will be three major problems:
1) Unfavorable frames and narratives will be free to develop in the media seed-bed of the blogosphere. Once developed, they become conventional wisdom and are very difficult to rebut.
2) The campaign will sacrifice the opportunity to develop their own narratives, or to frame upcoming issues for the Influentials.
3) Once the campaign does enter the blogosphere, they will face an uphill battle to cultivate credibility, interest, activists and notoriety.
ML - Some have speculated that before you came on board, Sen. Allen was the first candidate to be "Punked." The bottom line is that, going forward, all candidates must realize that anything they say might end up on YouTube. Can you speak to this new phenomenon?
JH - If the blogosphere represents the democratization of news, then YouTube is the democratization of video. It's no surprise that the two would work hand in hand. Campaigns need to understand that a story is more powerful than a statistic, and a narrative more powerful than a story. Similarly, a picture is more powerful than a story and a video more powerful than a picture. The problem (and opportunity) for campaigns is not simply that they will be subjected to more scrutiny. That's been true for a long time. The problem (and opportunity) is that people now have access to visual reinforcement of the statistics, stories and narratives.
That's why it's so important to tell the stories and develop the narratives early. The 'macaca' incident was a big story because the left had spent many months trying to tell a story about George Allen, while the Allen campaign essentially ignored it. When the 'macaca' video was released, it fit the extant narrative (which, by the way, journalists had spent months reading about). Journalists could simply throw the roof on the story, because the house had already been built by the New Media.
ML - The internet isn't just for Senate campaigns. What tips do you have for local campaigns or candidates? To what extent should they be using this technology?
JH - It's important for campaigns to understand what their target audience is. Are they blogging for voters, for activists, for other bloggers or for reporters? Is the audience national, statewide or more local? Campaigns can use this at every level, though the focus will necessarily be different. At the Presidential and Senatorial level, you probably need a very prominent blog, manned by a coordinator who knows the blogosphere very well. At lower levels, you need somebody who has a good relationship with the State blogosphere. In every case, the person responsible for the blog needs to know how to blog effectively, how to generate attention and how to focus the campaign message on the target audience.
ML - How did you get involved in this business, and how did you get picked to head up the e-campaign for Sen. Allen?
JH - I began blogging in mid-2003. Like most bloggers, I did it because I had something to say. Naturally, I'd like to think the Allen campaign chose me to head the online media efforts because I'm a good writer with a good reputation and a strong grasp of blog outreach ... but I would rather not attribute my opinion to the Allen campaign leadership. You'd have to ask them.
ML - Much of what you did was serve as a press secretary to bloggers. How do they differ from traditional media, and how did that change your tactics regarding approaching them?
JH - The most important distinction between bloggers and reporters is that bloggers are under no obligation to report what you say ... or even report on a subject at all. In fact, bloggers may just report on their impressions of what you said. Reporters are generally limited to the available facts, whereas bloggers deal more explicitly with interpretation. That's important, because the interpretations that emerge in the blogosphere -- narratives, conventional wisdom, memes -- invariably color the stories that reporters end up writing. By the time the conventional wisdom is established, however, journalists may not even be aware that it’s just an accumulation of the perspectives of bloggers and pundits.
"Macaca" is a perfect example. The day before Allen said 'macaca', nobody had heard of it; a week later, the conventional wisdom was that it was a racial epithet. Bloggers established that frame by repeatedly drawing a connection. The media just followed their lead.
Another example followed the 'macaca' incident. After it happened, George Allen explained that he had just made up a nonsense word and didn't realize it had any meaning. The fact that his mother and sister corroborated that went almost entirely unreported. Various campaign staff and others speculated on what the inspiration for the word might have been (a takeoff on mohawk, a play on a child's nickname, etc). Senator Allen remained consistent that it was a made-up word, yet somehow, reporters and pundits decided that he had "changed his story". Why did this narrative take root? Because Democratic bloggers pounced on every speculation about the words origin and portrayed each of them as "George Allen changed his story again". Repeat it often enough, and the reporters will run with it. After all, he must have changed his story a few times if they keep saying that, right?
That's how narratives get started. So, when dealing with bloggers, it's important -- vitally important -- to think about how the stories will appear, what subtext is being built into a narrative and how you can defuse it quickly. With reporters, you try to focus on the current big story; with bloggers, it's equally important to pay attention to their interpretation of the subtext on stories big and small.
That may be too many words to express a simple idea, so here's a shorter metaphor (which I may regret): reporters are our food suppliers, and we're very interested in what they carry. The New Media, however, are the farmers -- what they're putting into the ground and how they're cultivating it will ultimately determine what the suppliers carry. If the farmers manage to cultivate it well, you can be sure that the suppliers will bring it to market.
ML - Since having a blogger -- or blog outreach coordinator -- is a fairly new phenomenon, how did you define success versus failure? Were there previous campaigns that you looked to for guidance when you were thinking about what you could do to make a difference in the race?
JH - The first thing to know is that blog outreach can be successful even if the campaign ultimately loses, and unsuccessful even if the campaign ultimately wins. The Webb campaign blog outreach was very successful, and that would have been true even if Webb had gotten 10,000 fewer votes.
Much of a New Media campaign's success will never be readily visible, or attributable to the New Media campaign. Who can say for sure why a narrative became conventional wisdom? Other than a few campaign staffers, who knows that a fact mentioned in a news story made it there because of narrative cultivation or a blog post? My own metric was based on who "owned" stories in the blogosphere. Did attention to a story drop off or pick up after an effective round of pushback? Did blogs pick up on your message, or did they pick up on the other guys message? Did your message (or your opponents message) become conventional wisdom?
I don't recall focusing on any one prior campaign as a guide. However, there have been plenty of mini-campaigns waged in the blogosphere -- and well before it, too -- and all of them are instructive, for better or worse. For instance, Howard Dean's ultimate crash and burn was, in my opinion, partly the result of an over reliance on the New Media. He was very adept at bringing bloggers and activists into his stable, but he (and his campaign) failed to understand how the developing narratives can hurt you. He came to be portrayed as the crazy, fringe candidate of the Democratic Party because he was so connected to the rabid, far-left activists. When The Scream happened, it fit the narrative and he never could shake it. The campaign tried to change the narrative, but it was too late. Campaigns should see the fate of Dean's Presidential campaign as both a warning about the power of the New Media, and an opportunity to engage it more productively...or defensively, if need be.
One lesson should be clear, though: you can't start too early, but you can start too late.
ML - I've found that a lot of traditional campaign operatives still don't "get" the internet. Did you face any cynicism from more traditional operatives?
JH - No, I really didn't. Perhaps they were just kind enough to keep it to themselves, but everybody I encountered was supportive. That's not to say they were entirely enthusiastic about every opportunity -- there was a lot more I think we could have done -- but I never encountered anything but support from the campaign.
My impression is that the institutional Party apparatus understands that the internet and the New Media is important ... but they're not yet entirely sure why it's important, or what to do about it. They'll be glad to hire bloggers and New Media Coordinators just as soon as they figure out who to hire and what to do with them.
ML - Enough about campaigns. When we talked in Richmond, you said you believed the liberals are ahead of us. Why is that -- and what do conservative and libertarian bloggers need to do to catch up?
JH - The most important thing the Democrats have had going for them in the New Media is the fact that they were a minority party. Minority status has a unifying effect on people; they share the same political enemy, so they all face the same way. Meanwhile, because they were in power, Republicans were easy targets. It's more fun to storm the castle than to govern it.
Now that the GOP is a minority party in Congress, they're in a much better position with the New Media.
I don't believe there's any single foolproof plan, though. The Democrats have been successful because they're simply jumped into the game and embraced the very disparate netroots. The netroots aren't always going to be helpful, but they exist and it's better to engage them than to hope they'll fade away.
The Republicans need follow the Democrats lead, especially on the individual candidate level. Broadly speaking, they need to incorporate New Media outreach into their campaigns at the earliest possible time (when blogs can be effective at seeding the ground); they need to monitor the blogosphere to figure out upcoming narratives; they need to provide pushback information directly to bloggers in a timely manner. And they need to remember that bloggers are not reporters -- you cannot simply send them press releases. Here's some blog engagement advice I gave recently at my QandO.net blog:
"For institutions interested in engaging the blogosphere -- and here, I refer to corporations, interest groups, candidates and political Parties -- the key is to understand the incentives at work. Bloggers blog for many reasons, but "to help [insert your institutional interest here]" is rarely one of them.
Bloggers are not...
... reporters, obligated to dispassionately transcribe your message.
... terribly interested in press releases.
... generally interested in being a conduit for your message.
... blogging for your benefit.
Bloggers are ...
... interested in unique insights, scoops, dirt, scandals, access and anything that will enhance their intellect, traffic, stature or ego.
... more apt to criticize "their own" if "their own" is not giving them the other side of the story.
... rarely given the ammunition they could use to deal with news stories and defuse emerging narratives.
To appeal to bloggers, you must figure out what they want -- on an individual level -- and become a service to them. As the old ESPN saying went, "you cannot stop them ... you can only hope to contain them. Treat bloggers as the enemy, and you will be rewarded with an enemy; treat bloggers as valuable constituents -- with individual interests -- and you may be rewarded with allies."
Eventually, Republicans need to develop a comprehensive, long-term engagement strategy incorporating new technologies, social networking tools and narrative development. This can be done at the national and the state levels, with individual candidate campaigns and even with specific policies Republicans want to push. (The Democratic netroots hit the ground running against Bush's Social Security reform proposals; the Republican netroots mostly just watched from a distance) The New Media is still an emergent system, so it's hard to give a specific prescription for the future. But if Republicans don't jump in sooner, they'll be forced to jump in later... and they will bitterly regret having ceded the entire battlefield to the Democrats.
ML: Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.
posted by Matt Lewis at 7:50 AM
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