Brian Fuller’s blog on the state of media and communications

Lessons from New Hampshire

Posted on | January 8, 2008 | No Comments


Hillary Clinton “stunned” the Barack Obama campaign tonight in the snows of New Hampshire. Oh really? Two weeks ago, she was a lock by double digits to pocket the Live Free of Die. Yesterday she was near tears and her campaign was in a shambles. Two weeks ago Flipper Romney was pretty much a lock for New Hampshire. Tonight he got his second “silver medal” in a week.
A month ago, I revved up my RSS feeds with a bunch of political blogs. I’ve been following them like a junkie every day, reading everything from the sublime to the ridiculous (”Obama really didn’t say he was JFK.”) It has been an unsatisfying gorge diet of political information that mirrors much of the other “information” that we gobble up digitally every day. It lacks context, accuracy, wisdom and restraint, and it’s all dreadfully written.
The real lesson of New Hampshire? That in a world of limitless information at your fingertips, there is no information. What information there is is generally wrong.
Howard Fineman at MSNBC in a mea culpa of sorts:

“Is this a great country or what? Voters actually decide things!”

Yeah, that’s right.
The problem with media is timeless but worsening, and it began in the 1980s with the rise of cable television, additional channels and, specifically, CNN. When you have to fill that much air time 24 hours a day, you end up with a lot of non-news. A lot of “analysis” about nothing. Talk is cheap. And now we’re finding out online that blogging is cheap too.
So in the past 10 days we’ve been treated to “analysis” of who’s crying, who’s not, who’s wearing what and why and who needs to reshuffle campaign staffs. Oh, and it’s all about “change” too, don’t forget.
And now, we hear on NPR tonight, that “retail” campaigning is over because the big states are coming up. So that means more blather on the boob tube and the boob blogs (probably even this one). For a lot of us, it’ll be easier to recite how a candidate muffed a debate question than how his or her health care plan stacks up against the competition’s.
On the upside, the blogosphere has a chance this election to take back much of the kingmaking power from TV, where image is everything. There’s a ray hope. You just have to find the right bloggers.
I wish us good luck with that while we hold down our day jobs.

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