CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
April 24, 2008 – 3:03 a.m.
Top Lawmakers Try to Turn Blogs to Their Advantage
By Eric Pfeiffer, CQ Staff
The four congressional leadership offices now all employ full-time staffers who serve as liaisons to the political blogging world and help their party’s lawmakers stay in touch with the ever-growing online activist community.
Campaign and congressional offices have been testing the waters of this new medium for a few years now, but lawmakers and their staff are still learning the lessons of how bloggers and the traditional press differ.
Many have already learned the hard lessons of how bloggers can complicate things for a national figure such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., or even take down a once-promising politician such as former Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who saw his hopes for a presidential run dashed by the so-called Macaca video that made its viral rounds of the web. But they also are learning that bloggers and online activists can play a crucial role in promoting each party’s agenda on everything from the Iraq War to last year’s battle over child health care legislation.
The four new media staffers all say they operate largely independently of their offices’ traditional press offices. But outside bloggers do often interact with regular press secretaries and spokespersons. So, while crossover between bloggers and journalists is becoming more common, the congressional outreach online has become its own established and growing entity.
The largest such operation may be in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ’s office, where Karina Newton, who has been with Mrs. Pelosi of California for seven years, serves as the Director of New Media. Along with Newton, Pelosi’s “web team” includes New Media Adviser Jesse Lee and Erica Sagrans.
“The evolution of politics on the internet has allowed people to engage, affect, analyze, discuss, applaud and dissent from their government in ways that were unimaginable 10 years ago,” Lee said.
“After decades of citizens feeling more and more detached from their government, the Internet is allowing that trend to reverse, and nowhere with more passion and brilliance than the blogosphere,” he said.
Much like a traditional congressional press shop, Newton and her web team send legislative, news and issue updates to a list of bloggers who have asked to receive the information. In fact, Newton says many bloggers are on the Speaker’s regular press lists as well.
The Speaker’s office also has hosted several “blogger alleys,” coinciding with events such as swearing in day, and the day the minimum wage increase went into effect, where bloggers can come to the Capitol to cover specific hearings or events. Lee serves as the liaison to bloggers and is the primary author of a blog, “The Gavel,” on Pelosi’s Web site.
Nick Schaper plays a similar role as New Media Adviser for House Republican Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio. (See Schaper’s Twitter page.
“We understand the importance of embracing technology, and all types of media including blogs, in helping to spread our message to the widest possible audience,” Schaper said.
He said his first priority is investing time reading blogs, particularly those with a conservative bent, to know what’s being discussed. Schaper said he occasionally conducts blogger outreach to other House Republican offices, organizing blogger conference calls that have included high-ranking members of Congress, including Boehner.
Of course, there can be challenges to conducting press outreach with a community that often views the methods of traditional journalism with skepticism. But there can be benefits for participating lawmakers as well.
Top Lawmakers Try to Turn Blogs to Their Advantage
Schaper notes the role conservative bloggers played in bringing attention to the ongoing fight over congressional earmarks that resulted in a legislative victory for the Republican leadership last fall, which resulted in Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey of Wisconsin allowing for increased debate over proposed expenditures. He said the earmark debate was generating upward of five thousand daily visitors to his blog on Boehner’s Web site, an unusually high amount for a government Web site.
Jon Henke, a former independent blogger, and later an adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, launched one of the first and most successful blogger outreach operations on the Capitol Hill, one that has served as a template for other offices. Henke has since transitioned back to the private sector, but his replacement, David Hauptmann, continues the effort in McConnell’s office.
“Sen. McConnell felt that an area where Senate Republicans could improve our communications was with the blogosphere, which is why we’ve worked hard to put interaction with bloggers on the same footing with TV, radio and print,” Hauptmann said.
He maintains a list of more than 100 bloggers and sends out daily updates targeted to conservatives that includes news items and links that may be of interest to them.
Hauptmann hosts a weekly blogger conference call that has previously included Republican Sens. McConnell, John Cornyn of Texas, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. He says the senators are genuinely interested in the grass-roots interactions, noting that even if you take the cynical view and see them as only using the medium to promote an agenda, it still shows the enhanced clout bloggers now have in Congress.
The early interactions between bloggers and members of Congress often begin very cordially, with bloggers sometimes initially appearing star struck. But that feeling doesn’t tend to last very long.
For example, on a recent Senate blogger conference call, Sen. Lindsey Graham , R-S.C., made an appearance to discuss what he considered ongoing progress in Iraq. The bloggers on the call were receptive to this argument, but quickly changed the subject to pepper Graham with questions about judicial nominees and whether or not he was on Arizona Sen. John McCain ’s short-list for vice president.
Quinn Hillyer, a blogger with the conservative American Spectator Web site, engaged in a somewhat heated exchange with Graham over whether the so-called Gang of 14 was really beneficial, and whether judicial filibusters were constitutional. The Gang of 14, which included Graham and McCain, was the group of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who struck a bipartisan deal in 2005 in which Democrats promised not to block certain of President Bush’s judicial nominees in exchange for heading off a threat by then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to bar the use of filibusters – a deal that rankles some conservatives to this day.
But rather than be annoyed by questions from a highly opinionated blogger, Graham seemed to genuinely enjoy the rhetorical sparring match, responding in kind to each of Hilyer’s debate points.
Hauptmann says it’s that passion that makes dealing with bloggers more fun, but oftentimes also more challenging, than dealing with your average reporter.
“When working with new media, it’s important to understand that you can’t treat bloggers like journalists,” he said. “For journalists, it’s their job to report. But bloggers have to be particularly interested since that’s why they blog in the first place. It’s therefore important that you have an interactive relationship with bloggers to know which issues interest them. Only then can you provide material that is effective.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been following the bloggers for a few years now and has actually written a number of his own blog posts on sites such as Daily Kos and the Huffington Post.
“The blogosphere and other emerging sources in the New Media are tremendously important ways for the American public to find out what’s really going on,” said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.
Top Lawmakers Try to Turn Blogs to Their Advantage
Reid’s Director of Internet Communications, Murshed Zaheed, does not rely on a master list of blogs to get his boss’s message out. Instead, he has a number of “must read” blogs and Web sites that he follows each day.
When a particular issue or narrative catches his attention, he’ll then reach out accordingly. Zaheed also conducts blogger conference calls based around specific issues, with the conversations being on-the-record, unless otherwise specified. Zaheed says Reid views bloggers as knowledgeable and an important community in the country’s political discourse, and that he has been engaging with bloggers going back to when he first became Minority Leader.
Zaheed’s focus includes the larger, national political blogs, but also the smaller, but increasingly influential, state blogs, which are focused on local issues and races.
All four new media directors say they produce regular blog reports for their offices and work with other offices in their own outreach efforts. The interactions can often go both ways. Newton says she has conducted “blogger training” sessions for congressional staffers and that bloggers often send in tips and important observations to her office.
A recent example was during the scandal surrounding former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the firing of several U.S. attorneys. As the House Judiciary Committee began to make documents related to the cases public, the liberal Web site Talking Points Memo posted links to the documents online and recruited thousands of readers to sift through them looking for pertinent information.
Pelosi also recently posted a question to the Yahoo! Answers forum seeking ideas for possible legislation related to global climate change. Her question received thousands of responses.
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