Readers may remember the headline here Wednesday morning:
Obama-Endorsed Rep. Hank Johnson
to Participate in Segregated Forum?
It was Dan Riehl who tipped me to that story, which originated with a Facebook post from Republican congressional candidate Liz Carter, who had been excluded from an Atlanta political event, the Newsmakers Live forum.
Da Tech Guy jumped on the story and started making calls, and the story was quickly picked up by Georgia blogger Obi’s Sister, by Pete Randall at Peach Pundit, by Red State (with a cross-post at Minority Report) and by Melissa Clouthier at Liberty Pundits.
The denouement? Liz Carter was included in the forum — at the insistence of Johnson’s Democratic primary rivals — and Johnson himself had a mysterious “schedule conflict” that prevented him from attending. As DaTechGuy notes today, the controversy was covered yesterday by Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller and today by the Atlanta bureau of CBS News:
When James Welcome, executive producer of the Newsmakers Live political forum, opened the show Wednesday night, he made this statement: “Tonight we are being called racists all over the web because we failed to invite Liz Carter.” . . .
Jones and Stokes would not to participate in the forum unless Carter was allowed, so the organizers gave her a seat and allowed her to participate.
Furthermore, the story was picked up by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
A political novice running for Georgia’s Fourth Congressional district on Wednesday night demonstrated her social media savvy, using her Twitter account to gain access to a political forum she said intended to exclude her.
“I just sent out one tweet,” said Liz Carter, who is white, a Republican and a long shot to win the heavily Democratic district that represents portions of DeKalb, Gwinnett and Rockdale counties.
Red State also has a follow-up today. Much credit for this belongs to Carter’s campaign coordinator Cheryl Prater, who has been resourceful and persistent in helping make the blogosphere aware of Liz. Credit is also due to bloggers and Twitter activists who saw the news value in the story. A few quick points here:
- “Small” stories can be big news — Too often, political bloggers want to focus exclusively on the Big News: What’s at the top of Drudge? What’s Rush Limbaugh talking about? And when it comes to elections, there is a tendency to pay more attention to presidential politics and Senate races, while ignoring the seemingly minor news about House races or state elections. Also, there is a sort of bandwagon effect, where bloggers don’t like to pay attention to long-shot candidates. For bloggers to allow such prejudices to control their coverage is to forfeit the opportunity to take a seemingly “small” story that might otherwise be ignored and turn it into big news.
- The blogosphere is a collaborative medium — As I like to say, “No blog is an island.” The ideal blog story is one where everyone pitches in, contributes what they can, and links together to form a network. On this story, Da Tech Guy played a key role by picking up the phone and calling people until he got some answers. Getting the story linked at Peach Pundit was important, because Georgia political reporters pay attention to that site. My chief contribution was probably to put “Obama” and “segregated” together in a headline, an attention-getter that highlighted (a) the national implications and (b) the man-bites-dog angle. The point is, everybody did their small part and — in Army of Davids fashion — it added up.
- New Media can lead to Old Media coverage — Putting enough blog heat on a story can compel the mainstream media to pay attention. The mere fact that a story is already being discussed on blogs and Twitter adds to the news value. When the story involves a political campaign, it is incumbent on the campaign to make reporters aware of the blog coverage: “Hey, look, this story is already on Blog X and Blog Y and it’s all over Twitter. Don’t you think you should take a look?” And it helps if the candidate’s grassroots supporters are also doing the same thing, so that the reporter is getting the same story sent to him from six or 10 or 20 different people.
It should be emphasized that New Media alone cannot win an election. A candidate must still raise money, buy advertising, give speeches, shake hands, and do all the other basics of campaigning. Online media aren’t magic; they’re just one more tool in the toolkit.
Nearly all campaigns now recognize the value of New Media, but not all know how to engage effectively online, and examples of effective engagement deserve to be studied. The story of Liz Carter and the Newsmakers Live forum is a good lesson.
