The interesting Ben Smith article in Politico this morning reporting on Hillary Clinton's new auxilliary website, HillaryHub.com, contains plenty of valid points and analysis in regard to how the internet is impacting the dissemination of news from campaigns.
Smith reports, "Not long ago, a campaign had a couple of options for getting out word of a big endorsement: a press release to political reporters, or maybe a calculated leak to a big local paper. But Wednesday morning, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign broke the news of Hollywood icon Steven Spielberg's endorsement on a new website the campaign runs, HillaryHub.com. The campaign later e-mailed reporters suggesting they check the site.
"HillaryHub isn't a typical campaign site," Smith continues. "With a simple, three-column look, occasionally edgy headlines and links to a blend of videos, reports from newspapers and blogs and campaign memos, it's a news aggregator on the model of the Drudge Report. The difference, of course, is that the stories are chosen to depict Clinton favorably and to tweak her critics."
But despite the validity of the technology trend, and the key point made that breaking campaign news on a candidate's website ensures control of content, there's some reported hokum as well from GOP internet/web consultant Patrick Ruffini, who broadly proclaims, "The days of leaking strategically to The New York Times to get a story out are over. When everyone from a reporter to a voter has access to a website like (HillaryHub) -- reporters are going to report it anyway, if it's newsworthy -- what they're doing, and it's smart, is to get it out on their own terms."
True, but the days of "leaking strategically to the NYT to get a story out are over"?... Not by a long shot.
One sees more and more of these overzealous observations every day from the campaign web/internet consultants going just a bit overboard in their rush to throw the MSM over the side.
