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Did Fred Abandon the “New Media”?

Jimmie | January 25, 2008 | Comments (0)

Robert Stacy McCain has an interesting, though brief, interview with Roger L. Simon. Simon is the founder and head of Pajamas Media. Much of the interview is on Fred Thompson and his embrace of blogs and what Simon calls “new media” in his campaign. I think most of what he says is on target (and I think it’s cool that he apparently reads Ace of Spades HQ) but there’s something that struck me as wrong early on.

Mr. Thompson “was strong with new media, but then he abandoned it. … I don’t know what happened,” Mr. Simon said, using a term denoting online alternatives to what bloggers scorn as the “MSM,” or mainstream media. “I think some of the misfire of his campaign is that he didn’t stay with that initial impulse.”

Abandoned? My experience is quite different. It’s possible that Simon is a little miffed that Thompson has his “new media” coming out party at PJM but didn’t do a lot after that with their bloggers specifically, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved with bloggers.

Starting about a month or two before the Iowa caucuses I got at least one e-mail a day and frequently more from the Thompson campaign. Most of those e-mails were links to other bloggers and online news stories talking about Thompson. The second highest traffic day I’ve ever had on my blog came because Jon Henke, who was Thompson’s seemingly-omnipresent new media guy, picked up on my blog post about the “silly hat” story and sent it around to other bloggers. Not only were my posts getting read by other bloggers, they were getting read by people in Thompson’s campaign.

Henke wasn’t just pushing stories on me, either. I had several conversations with him on other stories. I know he was a busy guy, but that didn’t stop him from at least dropping me a return e-mail to answer a question I had or to offer me advice on getting my posts out to a wider audience. The Thompson campaign was actually willing to have a conversation with me and treat me as if my blog, which gets far less traffic than any of the PJM blogs I am sure, was an important conduit for information to and from the campaign – just as important as the high-traffic blogs like Instapundit who I’m very sure (based on some links I saw on his blog) was getting the same stuff I was.

The number of e-mails I had in one day from Henke was more than I got in two weeks from all the other campaigns combined. That, by the way, is still the case. I would say, based on my e-mail box, that Fred Thompson’s campaign is the only one on the Republican side that’s been in serious and steady contact with bloggers.

I think, perhaps, that Simon isn’t looking outside his own business (as is evident from his mention of PJM-only blogs). The Thompson campaign was plenty involved with new media (and I didn’t even talk about his YouTube videos), just not his new media.