The internet in presidential campaigns

Joe Trippi of Dean Campaign fame, spoke at O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In yesterday. Jay Rosen, of NYU journalism fame, records his thoughts about the ways Trippi and his netizens changed the nature of political campaigning with their effort.

Trippi's message:

"I am out of the campaign, I am not out of the fight." So said the general to the troops. (Read the transcript here.) And a few days later, the chatter at E-tech was confirmed. Trippi started his weblog, Change for America, with its lead post: Still in the Fight.

As influential as Trippi was, there was still plenty of room for skepticism at the conference in San Diego: it was Trippi (and his small company) that appropriated about a fourth of the money contributed to Dean as their "fair fee" for placing ads for Dean (amounting to $7.2 million in fees). When questioned on this, Trippi had already gone on record as saying "it was never about the money."

But there was a deeper irony: Trippi has said that the net is the place for real grassroots distribution of information and the development of alliances. Yet, he has taken a job as TV analyst for MSNBC's cable TV channel. Jay Rosen wanted to ask:

Since you are not out of the fight, what part of the fight can be won by putting Joe Trippi into the game as commentator for MSNBC? And, a follow on question, have you considered how this could wind up a fatal compromise with your great adversary, broadcast politics? Or perhaps you have a belly of the beast strategy to share?

This questions is representative of the underlying relunctance to take too seriously a guy who preaches the "new era" of the grassroots use of the internet after he has made himself a multimillionaire on old-time political skims and has taken a job as a "big media" TV talking-head. If you are interested in the ways the internet is changing the practice of fundamental processes like political party structure and elections, you will enjoy Rosen's entire article.