Politicians experimenting with online media

WCAX ran their story tonight about the local politicians including Gov. Jim Douglas and Gaye Symington using web ads in their campaigns.

It was a good piece (of course, I should remind you that I'm in it ... so of course it's good!) that showed several of the different attack ads that the campaigns are using. The focus of the story was really on the attach ads and I'm glad that reporter Kristin Carlson moved it to my point that they need to move beyond using attack ads online and focus on engaging with their constituents.

What it missed was not showing how other candidates like Anthony Pollina and Sam Young are using the web as well -- which is a shame because there is a lot of good work going on locally.

Overall though it's still a time of experimentation.

Take our national politicians for example.

Obama has announced that he'll be alerting the public to his Vice Presidential choice via email and his website provides you the place to do it. Hmmm...interesting that this gets such a news push. Not too long ago a gentleman by the name of Fred Thompson was running for the Presidential Nomination on the Republican side. Well, as we know, things didn't work out for him. How did I find out? Via my Twitter. He alerted his Twitter followers at the same time as the national media and I got my Twitter from him before I got my alert from CNN. Now that's using social media.

Why else would I sign up for Twitter or SMS to begin with? I want to know something before everyone else.

So they are trying something "new" -- going direct to voters through other means that don't include the mainstream media gatekeepers. Except for the fact that all the media have signed up for it by now too (grin). Although I just tried signing up for the Text Alert on my phone -- haven't gotten any notification. I wonder if they are including Twitter in their info...I'm already following him there.