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Bradley in DC
10-13-2007, 03:41 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/politics/13blogging.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

The Web, Despite Its Promise, Fails to Snare Iowa Voters

Eric Thayer for The New York Times

By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: October 13, 2007
IOWA CITY, Oct. 6 — Jean M. James, a retired art historian, has never read a blog, visited a candidate’s Web site, watched a video on YouTube or lingered over a MySpace page.
“I can’t be bothered,” Ms. James, sitting at a barbecue for Johnson County Democrats, said crisply before burying her nose in a Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker.

It’s not that the Democratic presidential campaigns in Iowa haven’t tried to reach out. Their staffs have bombarded prospective caucusgoers with e-mail and text messages and with recorded voice mail from celebrities. They have built elaborate MySpace and Facebook pages in the candidates’ names, adding thousands of online “friends.” And aides adorned with new titles like “director of e-strategy” talk rapturously of how the Internet is transforming politics.

Yet even the campaigns concede that many caucusgoers in Iowa are happily encased in an old-media bubble, immune to the digital overtures of the modern presidential campaign and much more tuned in to commercials on television than to videos on a candidate’s Web site.

“It’s clearly true,” said Joe Trippi, a senior adviser to former Senator John Edwards, “that blogs and Web sites, and even some of the cool stuff that our team is doing in Iowa, has got less of an impact in Iowa.”

One reason is that the state’s population is older, and so are its caucus voters. According to the 2004 National Election Pool entrance poll in Iowa, 27 percent of Democratic caucusgoers were 65 or older — people less likely to download candidate podcasts, though more inclined to withstand the rigors of caucusing, which can require hours of votes and revotes.

Using technology to attract younger, first-time voters was crucial to Howard Dean’s strategy four years ago, and Mr. Edwards and Senator Barack Obama have tried to mimic it. (Indeed, Mr. Obama in particular appears to have plenty of young supporters, although it is unclear whether they will actually caucus.)

But privately, campaign aides say the ramped-up Internet efforts are intended to build buzz and positive press, with little expectation that they will translate directly into votes. (Mr. Dean, once considered the 2004 Democratic front-runner, finished third in Iowa.)

Though the typical caucus voters here are avid followers of the news, they get their information in traditional ways. They read the morning papers, watch the network news and tune in to the Sunday news programs with the fervor of Washington political operatives. As Brenda Brenneman, a graphic artist from Lone Tree, Iowa, gushed, “If ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’ wasn’t on, I wouldn’t get out of bed on Sunday morning.”

Talk radio, still a hugely influential medium, even reaches farmers out in the fields, whose tractors often come equipped with satellite radio.

But new media?

Even in a crowd of Democrats in the college town of Iowa City, mingling over lemonade and apple pie at their annual barbecue, it was hard to find many people who had so much as heard of the king of all liberal blogs, Daily Kos. (“Daily Post?” one man repeated quizzically.)

Rick Zimmermann, a lawyer in Iowa City, said he picked up two or three newspapers a day but never read blogs or online commentary. “That stuff has never seemed important to me,” he said.

According to a poll commissioned by The Des Moines Register, newspapers and television are still the predominant sources of information for likely Iowa caucus voters.

The poll, conducted by Selzer & Company, a firm based in Des Moines, asked likely caucus voters in May how they got their information, and found that the traditional media were still the favorites.

While more than 70 percent of the respondents said they watched candidate debates, read newspaper articles about campaigns and took in campaign advertisements on television or radio, only about 7 percent visited candidate pages on the social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook.

J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Company, said that while the occasional Internet phenomenon — like the “Obama girl” video several months ago — could trickle down to Iowa voters, it remained a rare event.

“People were hoping to see an explosion of new media — blogs and Web sites — but it really isn’t that strong,” Ms. Selzer said.

Some of the campaigns are realizing that.

Mr. Edwards in particular has embraced the Internet just as Mr. Dean did in 2004, even hiring Mr. Trippi, the Internet Svengali who managed Mr. Dean’s campaign.

In July, Mr. Trippi said in an interview that “you need to use the Internet, blogs, technology, YouTube, to reach out to people.”

Elizabeth Edwards, the candidate’s wife, who is known as a close reader of political blogs, echoed his sentiments. “The Internet is the principal way we are communicating with voters right now,” she said.

But in a recent interview, Mr. Trippi made a slight amendment. “It’s less true in Iowa,” he said. “Iowa is the older generation of Americans in terms of the way it skews demographically. In terms of being wired or connected, Internet penetration is relatively low.”

New Hampshire voters, by contrast, appear more plugged in. Many residents live in the Boston media market and work in the technology industry. And while local blogs are scarce in Iowa, they have proliferated in New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor seeking the Republican nomination, is one candidate whose campaign has relied on old-fashioned methods of reaching voters in Iowa. Mr. Romney has been saturating the airwaves with television commercials in both Iowa and New Hampshire — at least 10,000 spots so far.

“By every measure, Iowa caucusgoers still get their news through traditional media,” said Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Mr. Romney in Iowa. “We still do the traditional postcard and phone call.”

Electrostatic
10-13-2007, 04:36 PM
Ya, I've met quite a few people like that... What pisses me off isn't that they don't research anything on the internet... That's fine, it's their choice. But then they try to turn around and explain how it is that I am misinformed and they no everything quite well, thank you.

Pete
10-13-2007, 04:50 PM
This reads almost like a challenge. Well, actually, exactly like a challenge.

hornet
10-13-2007, 05:31 PM
“I can’t be bothered,” Ms. James, sitting at a barbecue for Johnson County Democrats, said crisply before burying her nose in a Seymour Hersh article in The New Yorker.

can't be bothered to make an informed decision........and people wonder how this country got in the shape it is, ms. james deserves everything shes got coming to her.