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On CNN This Saturday
By Matt Margolis | November 11, 2005
I’m confirmed to do an interview on CNN tonight which will air Saturday night on the program “On The Story” between 7 and 8 p.m. EST…
UPDATE: Video:
Enjoy.
Here is the transcript:
CLARKE: CNN is ON THE STORY here at the George Washington University in the center of the nation’s capital and we are ON THE STORY online with our Internet reporter Abbi Tatton. Abbi, what are you seeing on the Internet?
ABBI TATTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we’re ON THE STORY of those off year elections. Victories for Democrats in governors’ races in New Jersey and in Virginia and how the online community is reacting and also playing a role in those victories.
This is my favorite site of the week. The favorite headline. This from the big liberal blogging community, dailykos.com, who said, “Weird. We won. Onward to 2006!”
And there’s a lot of analysis on both sides of what happened this week but a lot of looking ahead to 2006, 2008. How are blogs going to play a role? How are Web sites, Internet communities going to play a role in future elections? How are they going to mobilize and fundraise for different candidates and two bloggers are joining us to talk about that this week.
We have Matt Margolis from Blogs for Bush. He is joining us via Web cam from Boston, Massachusetts, and also Matt Stoller, he is from bopnews.com, fresh from the Jon Corzine campaign and victory in New Jersey. He is joining us again via Webcam here in Washington, DC.
And Matt Stahler, I’m going to start with you. You headed up the online effort for Jon Corzine’s campaign. How do you feel your blog, that Web site, made a difference to that?
MATT STOLLER, BOPNEWS.COM: Well, first of all, it’s great to be here but what we did on the Internet is a tremendous amount of listing (ph). That’s the most important thing that we were able to do. See how the Internet was responding to our message, to the ideas that Jon Corzine was putting out and then through our blogs were able to give some transparency on the campaign and give people a sense of what was going on at the events, at the meetings, all the little pieces of a political campaign that you don’t see in the newspapers and so that’s sort of our strategy is giving people a sense of what it was like inside the campaign and why Jon Corzine was running for governor.
TATTON: Matt Margolis, I’m going to turn to you now. Before I do that I just want to show viewers if this picture doesn’t look like usually what you see it’s because they’re joining us via these Webcams attached to their computers so we can talk to them right their at their computers where they blog from.
Matt Margolis, how do you find campaigns are reaching out to you as a blogger? You’re not affiliated with any campaign but do you see politicians and their staff reaching out to you?
MATT MARGOLIS, BLOGSFORBUSH.COM: Absolutely. What we’re seeing right now is - certainly with me, I’m starting to be getting put on mailing lists from members of Congress and from people’s campaigns and they want to reach out to bloggers. Republicans are, I think they’re seeing a little bit of a problem getting their message out to the media and so they’ve decided the blogs were a real big force in 2004 so we need to reach out to them to get our message out. CLARKE: Abbi, you’ve got a question from the audience. Your name and your question, please.
QUESTION: My name is Sarah Erickson (ph) from Seattle, Washington and with the new popularity of blogs, do you think that campaign strategies will significantly change and if so how?
TATTON: I’m going to refer that straight to Matt Stoller.
STOLLER: Well, thanks. Great question. I don’t think they’re going to change that dramatically in 2006 because television and direct mail are still the dominant media and in 2008 I think that’s actually going to continue to be the case but after 2008 we’re going to see blogs and the Internet communities dominate the political discourse and what that means is money is going to become a lot less important in politics because right now money is primarily used to buy television advertising time, so that’s a huge change that we’re going to see but we’re not quite there yet because the numbers aren’t there.
TATTON: And Matt Margolis, is it something that’s going to grow and grow.
MARGOLIS: I see it growing but I think I agree with Matt that it’s going to take a little more time for it to happen. I think we’re going to see blogs definitely become a lot more powerful force. Trust in the media is getting lower and lower and people look into the blogs to sort of filter out what they don’t trust in the media.
TATTON: Matt Margolis, both of you but starting with Matt Margolis. We see a lot of commentary on blogs. But what are you doing specifically, concrete to help these candidates along?
MARGOLIS: Well, back in 2004, in presidential campaign through my site we were regularly encouraging our readers to go to the campaign Web site, to donate, to volunteer on the local level, show - I see that continuing a lot and I think it’s going - right now we’re seeing the campaigns actually saying now we’re going to go to the blogs. Before it was us telling everyone else to go back to being real campaigns. But now campaigns are start going toward the blogs.
TATTON: Matt Stoller?
STOLLER: Well, what you’re seeing on the left is the creation of new communities online whereas on the right there’s a lot more of an attempt to get message out through the blogs, so that’s kind of what we’re seeing or what I was seeing through the Corzine campaign.
So yeah, that’s what I would say.
CLARKE: It’s a very different world. Thanks, Abbi. Coming up we turn the table. The journalists get to ask me, the analyst, questions about the week. We’re back ON THE STORY after this.
Topics: General |
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November 13th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Try not to sound foolish.
November 13th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
Don’t worry. I sounded like a Republican… only Democrats sounds foolish.
November 14th, 2005 at 6:06 pm
Cool! Good for you Matt. And I’m not joking at all.
November 15th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Is this about you coming out?
November 15th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Matt, I don’t have cable…I wish I could have seen it. Maybe you could stream the video for us unfortunate ones? And Matt, ignore John…he’s so ignorant!