Boomerang

(Photograph by Chris Buck,  which appeared in New York Magazine in October 2006)

Ever see an unknown musician at a club and predict that he or she is “going to be huge” and it turned out you were 100 percent right?  When I saw Dave Grohl at the 9:30 Club back in 1989 – he was brutally abusing his drum set for Scream – I turned to my friend and said, “The band is average, but he’s one of the most entertaining drummers I’ve ever seen.”  A year or so later, Dave was in Nirvana.  Now, he’s “all that” for the Foos.   

In my 10-plus years in tech PR and journalism, I’ve had the chance to “call it” early and accurately on things like Napster going legit and using tiny TVs to sell airline tickets.  But only rarely have I had the chance to be “in on the ground floor” of a publication, be it online or in print, and accurately predict its future.  When Business 2.0, Brill’s Content, and The Industry Standard hit the scene, many of us (me included) thought they’d be around for a long time.  Oops.   

I got this one right though: I was one of the first people to make HuffingtonPost my primary stop for snarky political opinion and news.  I was initially led to the site just days after HuffPo went live by then radio commentator and current Senatorial candidate Al Franken, who mentioned on his Air America Radio show a post he did. I went, I read, I returned (daily). I told all my politically active friends: “This is the site we’ve been waiting for.”   

The formula for keeping me coming back every day is simple.  The content – from the minds of Christie Hefner, Harry Shearer, Hilary Rosen, Bill Press, and John Zogby even in the earliest days – was as plentiful as it was wonderful. It’s only gotten better; now the site boasts more than 1,800 bloggers (all of whom are unpaid) writing on an ever-expanding universe of topics.   

HuffPo last week celebrated its third year online and is now a force of nature (consistently top-ranked by both Technorati and Alexa), but back when I first discovered the site it was a tiny little island of ideology.  Most posts had just a handful of comments; nowadays, just about every post has hundreds (sometimes thousands) of comments.  The publication’s new tag line “The Internet Newspaper: News Blogs Video Community” is the perfect descriptor. There’s something there for just about everyone.  

Arianna Huffington, one of the most powerful people on the Internet (and in American political discourse) is seemingly everywhere, selling her new book The Right is Wrong, and spreading her particular, peculiar brand of independent political thinking.  To wit, Arianna will speak on May 19^th at the Commonwealth Club here in San Francisco and you can bet I’ll be there, with the same excitement I had when I first saw Dave Grohl play that little stage at 930 F Street.   

With among the lowest approval ratings of any President in U.S history, Bush’s political problems aren’t going away any time soon. His most recent communications push to convince the American public that nuclear energy is the solution for our global warming is what, for me, makes him such an impossible and frustrating leader. I can only image what it does to his numerous communication aides who rally daily trying to control, and having to defend, the Bush brand.

As many bloggers and journalists have pointed out recently, the first problem is that suddenly Bush, a.k.a. Mr. There’s No Such Thing as Global Warming, has stated: “There can be no solution [to global warming] without nuclear power.” Um… okay, so there is such a thing as global warming? For real?

My issue is not about content – many experts have agreed that nuclear is a direction worth exploring – but cadence. Hearing Bush promote his nuclear energy strategy on NPR, I was struck, as I have been so many times before, at the staccato ineffectiveness of his speech patterns. These are subtleties and will be hard to “hear” in a blog, but next time you listen to Bush speak, take notice and you’ll know what I mean.

His main message is “nuclear power is safe.” Given that, for a variety of obvious and historical reasons, many people hear the word “nuclear” and think “death, destruction, war,” you’d think Bush would want to come off as reassuring, confident and ready to educate. But instead, by talking in his distinct whine, speaking too quickly and emphasizing the wrong words, Bush manages to make nuclear sound even scarier that many already believe it to be.

It’s not easy to change adult speech patterns, granted, but this is so fundamental: Speak slowly. Speak clearly. Emphasize, in this case, the words “is” and “safe.” Have some empathy for your audience; learn to listen even when nobody else is talking, to compromise, to persuade and to convince. Most of all, please learn that you can’t change a person’s mind simply by hammering them on the head with a message over and over – that only dulls the noise.

These days politicians don’t own their own political campaigns. The days of political candidates sending one-way messages to the public are over. Today, anyone with access to the web can spread an idea like wildfire among millions. For instance, the popular anti-Clinton ad posted on YouTube clearly illustrates how one person can have a huge impact on the political landscape.

For several weeks the public didn’t know who created the clip. On the Internet, any creative mind can post to his or her heart’s desire about pretty much anything. The web allows any passionate (and clever!) individual to completely undermine the traditional roles of authority. I take that back – passion and cleverness are not even requirements to have an influential digital voice. All you need is an idea and membership on a social networking site. When the Internet provides a platform to reach millions of viewers with something as simple as a video or an e-mail, there is no denying the power of social media.

Although politicians also leverage social media to bolster their reputations, they are no longer in complete control of their image, brand, or for that matter, digital content. (In case you didn’t know, the same is true for corporations.) Only time will tell how social media will continue to level the new political playing field. In the meantime, I’ll be checking out MySpace’s Impact Channel to read what Hillary and Obama have to say on their personal profile pages. I would like to check out Rudy Giuliani’s page, but at this point the only way to access his content is to send a “friend request.” Wait though: I’m not ready to enter that level of political networking — I mean, social networking — just yet.

Blog Video Podcasting News reports that the Washington Post is inviting readers to mash themselves into a video with political reporter Dana Milbank. The site provides a series of clips of Milbank asking a series of questions. The idea is that creative readers videotape themselves answering the questions. It’s an unexpected departure for a rather traditional news organization. Those of you with a political sense of humor will enjoy these immensely.