GOP losing the new-media war: While conservatives opine, liberals report

Politico: GOP losing the new-media war
By: Jonathan Martin
July 24, 2008

....(A)s the 2008 campaign progresses, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the absence of any websites on the right devoted to reporting — as opposed to just commenting on the news — is proving politically costly to Republicans.

While conservatives are devoting much of their Internet energy to analysis, their counterparts on the left are taking advantage of the rise of new media to create new institutions devoted to unearthing stories, putting new information into circulation and generally crowding the space traditionally taken by traditional media. And it almost always comes at the expense of GOP politicians.

While online Republicans chase the allure of punditry and commentary, Democrats and progressives are pursuing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, in a fashion reminiscent of 2004. Back then, the Drudge Report and other lesser-known conservative portals played a key role in defining John Kerry and pushing back against criticism of George W. Bush, such as when conservative bloggers debunked documents purportedly related to the president’s Air National Guard service. Just as Drudge and critics of the now-infamous “60 Minutes” report on Bush were able to push stories damaging to Kerry or beneficial to Bush into the mainstream media, liberal online organs are now doing the same, to the detriment of GOP presidential nominee John McCain. (NOTE: The story of George Bush's National Guard service -- or lack thereof -- was, of course, never debunked.)

This week, for example, a young liberal writer named Spencer Ackerman heard that McCain committed a gaffe on Iraq in an unaired portion of an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. Ackerman, a former reporter for The New Republic and The American Prospect who now blogs at the liberal Firedoglake site, posted the transcript and pointed out the relevant portion just after 5:00 p.m. Tuesday night. It was picked up by the Huffington Post two hours later, discussed on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show, moved onto The Associated Press wire overnight and by Wednesday afternoon McCain was forced to respond.

“We amplify its effect and then stay on it,” explains Arianna Huffington, namesake of the popular liberal news and entertainment hub.

But the left isn’t simply promoting its own version of the news — it’s also breaking it. Deploying writers with backgrounds grounded in journalism rather than politics, The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, in particular, have already become a persistent problem for McCain’s campaign, regularly posting negative opposition research and embarrassing videos in addition to advancing damaging story lines against the GOP nominee. There is simply no equivalent on the right to these two liberal-leaning websites....

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