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The Net Difference

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2004 by Noah Rubin Brier

Byline: NOAH RUBIN BRIER

For the better part of last year, politicos believed that the Republicans would have a whole lot more money to spend on the 2004 election than the Democrats. By October, President George W. Bush had raised $50 million in the third quarter alone, amassing a $130 million war chest by year-end. In a mid-2003 briefing with a Bush insider, "We were told one of the great advantages Bush would have this year would be that he would outspend the Democratic nominee [by] between 3- and 5-to-1," says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at University of Virginia.

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What Sabato couldn't foresee - nor could anyone else for that matter - was the role a groundswell of Net-savvy political activists would have in permanently altering the presidential campaign fund-raising game.

In November 2003, some 300,000 supporters of Democratic candidate Howard Dean clicked "yes" in an online poll, bidding that he opt out of public campaign funding. They told Dean they'd ante up the money he needed to make a run at the Democratic Party nomination. They kept their promise, setting new fund-raising records. Sen. John Kerry took Dean's cue four days later. That was it. Dean catalyzed, for the first time, the power of an online community engaged in politics, and in turn helped to change the face of the presidential election. But setting records for funds raised alone couldn't save Dean from his campaign's weaknesses. However, history will show that he helped launch a different kind of political revolution.

"Bush had $125 million to Gore's $45 million during the run-up to the 2000 conventions. That's how it was supposed to play out this time," explains Joe Trippi, who ran Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination. "George W. Bush raised $214 million and Kerry raised $182 million. Without the Internet, this election would not have even been competitive." As millions vent their views on blogs, political dialogue has taken on a life of its own on the Web. But it's more than talk, it's wildfire ideology backed by serious money. Organizations such as Move On are a sign that the Internet is likely to be the next frontier for political fund-raising, gathering huge amounts through its online network of politically engaged individuals. Clearly, the Internet is showing the potential to be not just a political juggernaut, but an information and opinion fertilizer whose harvest is cold hard cash.

To better understand the Net's political audience and impact, American Demographics partnered with comScore Survey Research and polled 1,785 Internet users about their consumption of political information across the media spectrum. The survey, fielded in August 2004, paints a picture of plugged-in political information gatherers. Television is the No. 1 source for political news, with 44 percent or more of respondents indicating they fairly often or often use network, cable or local TV as a source for political information. Newspapers, word of mouth, radio and online news sites followed; all were used often or fairly often by at least 29 percent of respondents. Two sources, blogs and chat/forums, fell below 10 percent usage in the fairly often or often category.

But significantly, 11 percent of respondents said they used blogs as a source of political information sometimes, fairly often or often. Blogs, short for Weblogs, are updated frequently and generally include the blog author's opinion, like a personal Op-Ed page. "All you really need is an Internet connection and a computer and you've got a soapbox. You no longer have to have tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of readers to be publishing on the Internet," explains David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati, a Web site that tracks blogs. CNN contracted Technorati during both conventions to help the cable network follow what was going on in the blogosphere.

"The blogosphere to me is a very good thing," says Victor Navasky, publisher and editor of The Nation. "There are all these ideas floating around out there and it doesn't cost a lot to get your message out. If you believe truth will ultimately win out over falsehood, it's nice to know there's a way of getting it out there." At the beginning of September, Technorati was tracking well over 3.5 million of these personal Web sites.

"What's going on is that people are writing about what they care about," says Scott Rafer, CEO of Feedster, a RSS search engine that's popular with bloggers. "Sometimes far beyond their expertise, sometimes well within it. There's never some 'let's fill up the real estate of the issue and no more' situation."

Democrats recognized the growing influence of blogs and tried to capitalize on it at their convention at the end of July. Jay Rosen, chair of the journalism department at NYU and author of Pressthink, a blog that deals with the press and often focuses on issues of politics, was one of roughly three dozen accredited bloggers at the convention. For his site, he interviewed Rod O'Conner, CEO of the event. "What I found was they had subtly redefined the convention," explains Rosen. Organizers thought of the convention as "a powerful jolt that you could use to send a message to the country through a variety of media," and not just something that went out on network TV.

Retail Industry

The Net Difference

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2004 by Noah Rubin Brier

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