The Media Responds – Leiberman/ Lamont Primary and Videos

Slate.com published an article today that addresses the issue of how much blogs and videos are influencing the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary between Joe Leiberman and Ned Lamont. This is an issue that this blog addressed a few days ago in an entry titled Is Lamont’s Appearance on “The Colbert Report” Influencing the CT Senate Rate?

Lamont TV
How Web videos dismantled Joe Lieberman.
By John Dickerson
Posted Monday, Aug. 7, 2006, at 1:17 PM ET

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The Lieberman-Lamont race will be the most overread political battle of this cycle. But why wait for the outcome to overread the results? Regardless of who wins the election Tuesday, Lamont’s forces have proved one lesson of campaigns in the digital age: Content is king. Throughout the contest, the challenger’s supporters produced and circulated a steady stream of videos that were witty, powerful, and in a way became the fulcrum of the campaign.

Political strategists in both parties have tried to find ways to use technology to keep voters engaged in campaigns through long stretches, but their efforts to date have been pretty lame. They put a few balloons on a Web site and allow people to send form letters to the editor, buy Democracy Bonds, and post on a sterile message board. The Lamont forces have now shown the better way. (Lieberman’s supporters did not seem to participate in any meaningful way in this new medium.) The Lamont videos were far more effective than tendentious blog posts, and they gave energetic supporters an outlet for their energies (a person can only pound so many yard signs). What’s more, the videos offered a regular dose of entertainment to supporters who were interested but not obsessed.

Here are five of the best Lamont videos:

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4. Colbert on Call. Would you rather read screen after screen of tedious blog posts about Joe Lieberman, or would you rather laugh at Joe Lieberman? Stephen Colbert did several commentaries on the race, all of them favorable to Lamont. No one had to set their TiVo. The pieces were on YouTube the next day and every day thereafter.

Full text of article with video links

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