Veep by text-message? This time they may get it right.
Who can forget the front page of the New York Post about this time four years ago? You remember, the screaming headline that proclaimed Dick Gephardt as John Kerry’s choice for vice president.
Turns out it that Kerry had actually picked John Edwards, the former presidential candidate who has been back in the news lately. The very morning the Post’s editions were distributed throughout New York, a commenter on an aviation site broke the news about the correct choice. After he saw decals with Edwards’ name being added to Kerry’s campaign plane at Pittsburgh Airport, he posted the information on a message board. Minutes later, vlogger Xeni Jardin, who was traveling through Pittsburgh, snapped a picture of the plane on her camera phone, then posted the photo on Boing! Boing! The news spread throughout the blogosphere before Kerry and Edwards could comb their hair. Kerry quickly released a statement announcing Edwards as his running mate. Most news organizations turned to the Internet to find the correct information about Democratic ticket as they scrambled to disavow The Post’s embarrassing blunder.
Looks like Barack Obama won’t make the same mistake. He plans to send a text message. The move will not only add thousands of cellphone numbers to one most detailed political databases, but may even increase voter turnout.
Garrett Graff, an editor at Washingtonian magazine and Howard Dean’s former webmaster, describes the strategy and the growing role of text-messages in politics, in an excellent Op-Ed piece for The New York Times. Graff is the former blogger at DC Fishbowl who back in 2005 became the first blogger to receive White House press credentials.
