Media + Politics Thoughts

8:32 pm EST November 15th, 2008 | Media, Politics | 8 Comments

* 1950s-80s: Right feels put out by the “liberal consensus” and communicate via direct mail and media connected to the church, this becomes a considerable tool in fighting for Reagan and Bush I.

* 1990s: In opposition, con talk radio comes into its own led by Rush. Drudge joins in and Fox revs up.

* Early 2000s: Fox is at full blast, blogs start bubbling up. Liberal blogs become part of force pushing to revitalize the Democrats while talk radio plays defense of Bush

* Today

I think we’re almost at a draw – as far as partisan media goes. I think liberal blogs + Huffington + Olbermann/Maddow are able to affect the national narrative at almost the same power of Drudge + Fox + Right Talk. I think that while the con blogs have a role in the food chain – bubbling up stories for talk radio – their footprint is far smaller than the liberal blogs. At the same time, right talk is slightly stronger than the liberal blogs so it evens out. If you look at strength in the medium, I think the left’s use of the blogs is way ahead of where we are with talk radio (and frankly, I find liberal blogs a million times more useful and entertaining than liberal talk). The con blog flaw is that it isn’t a grassroots medium for them the way radio and direct mail was. The whole thing – especially sites like The Next Right and Redstate.com are playpens for GOP consultants in the Junior Rove Society. If liberal blogs had all been started by the James Carville and Paul Begalas they wouldn’t be nearly as good. Ditto for liberal radio, where there still are too many politicians and comedians. You may hate the content of con radio, but Limbaugh & Co. know their medium.

So the question is, what is the next medium and who will win it? I don’t see either side gaining in talk, cable or blog to the level where the other guy gets creamed. While President Clinton’s media shop was savvy enough to hold off the right wing, I think President Obama will have far more weapons in his arsenal, and the right – as we saw in the campaign – will fight hard but it may end up being a draw. Obama has the bully pulpit and a way of going past the MSM’s filter on things. I’m not declaring victory by any measure, because as we showed the right, there’s nothing so good for innovation as being completely frozen out. Yet, I can’t think of any medium thats in its early stages that doesn’t already seem to be leaning left – including Twitter, Social Networks, etc.

Maybe pamphlets will make a comeback!

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8 Responses to “Media + Politics Thoughts”

  1. Rheinhard says:
    November 15, 2008 at 11:02 pm

    Don’t diminish pamphlets! As Lawrence Lessig remarked in his Netroots Nation keynote (check it out via his iTunes video blog or elsewhere online, it’s worth it), we have the Constitution wrong. The first Amendment says “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the blogs.” Because the blogosphere today is much more like what the founders thought of when they wrote “the press” than things like the establishment press. Todays loud and vituperative blogs are very like the pamphlets of old – brazen, scurrilous, and often wrong, but the founders trusted that out of this maelstrom of competing rhetoric would emerge truth.

  2. Rheinhard says:
    November 15, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    Oh, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am that the same Lessig is an Obama adviser on tech and copyright issues

  3. jr says:
    November 16, 2008 at 2:47 am

    It would be nice if the bookers on the sunday shows weren’t so biased in favor of repubs

  4. SallyMutant says:
    November 16, 2008 at 4:32 am

    It’s interesting that AM radio, an ancient technology, thrived, paralell to blogs and Lib webpages.
    I loves my radio–NPR and KKDA AM R&B Oldies and the crazy AM paranormal talk show stuff that’s on after the right wingers sign off.
    Is there something intimate and special about radio, or is it just me?

  5. SaveFarris says:
    November 16, 2008 at 8:03 am

    The next medium? Holograms!

  6. ed says:
    November 16, 2008 at 9:13 am

    I’m just glad the current medium is at a grass-roots, interactive level which favors my team, and moving away from authoritarian, unidirectional talking points, which favors the Red Team.

  7. Andrew says:
    November 16, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    Telepathy, assuming the mutant-hating right does not stop its development as a medium (no pun intended)…

    Sorry. The comic-book snark just popped up when I read this.

  8. North of 49 says:
    November 18, 2008 at 2:54 am

    It’s not just you, Sally. Me too. The reason for that, as I was told in media school, is that radio engages in a way that visual media can’t, because, in a nutshell, visual media supplies the visuals. Radio is more like printed text; the listener or reader has to do part of the work, actually contribute to the transmission of the message, by supplying in their own minds the visual images evoked by the printed or spoken words.

    Remember MacLuhan? (I do, vaguely.) He said something like this: TV is a cold medium, because you don’t actually have to engage with it at all; everything is fed to you. Print and radio are hot media, because they’re participatory. If you don’t do part of the work, you don’t get the message. (Or something like that.)

    So that’s why it seems intimate and special. Or so I was told.