After reading The Boys on the Bus and The First Campaign back-to-back, I noted a plethora of marked differences between how reporters covered campaigns in the 1970s compared to how media and citizen journalists cover the current campaigns of 2008.
Again and again, Timothy Crouse discussed the camaraderie and angst of pack journalism leading up to the 1972 election, and some of that same angst exists today. But to me, one of the most notable differences between then and now is that the bus boy journalists had far fewer mediums through which to convey their stories — namely print, television, and radio — and their work was published at set times every day — in morning or afternoon newspapers or during the evening news. Though not obvious in 1972, these limited mediums and solid deadlines gave presidential candidates a leg up on the media: They might not have known what was coming, but they most certainly knew when it was coming.
The power of the Web changes all of that. Anyone — not just credentialed reporters — can follow a candidate, recording his or her comments for use on blogs or YouTube. And unlike the boys on the bus, this material can be pushed out to the public at any moment, not just when a morning newspaper gets tossed on a front stoop. Credentialed reporters, too, use the instant gratification of the Web to both research and post their own material — even at cruising altitude, flying on a candidate’s Web-connected campaign jet.
Candidates have clearly learned to work this angle to their advantage, as is evidenced by Hillary Clinton’s cheeky flight attendant announcement last January:
The never-ending news cycle forces journalists of all kinds to constantly keep an eye on the latest posts, and rather than working on in-depth stories over long periods of time, they’re under more pressure to post as soon as possible.
Even when a credited blog does post something, it isn’t necessarily taken seriously as Robert Scoble explained in The First Campaign:
Scoble says that as a blogger and avid reader himself, he starts out reading something on a blog with a high degree of skepticism. ‘If DailyKos reports that Hillary Clinton is going to do X or Barack Obama is going to do Y, I’m going to be skeptical about that because it’s only in one source. DailyKos is usually pretty accurate, but sometimes they mess up,’ he says. ‘My skepticism starts out real high, but over the course of twenty-four hours it goes way down. If a campaign sees a rumor and it’s not true, they should fight it instantly … If you’re not media hip enough to understand that stories go from blogs with five readers to the front page of The New York Times in forty-eight hours, then you don’t deserve to be part of this process — especially at the Super Bowl level.’
In a funny way, this relates back to the boys on the bus, when reporters clamored to find out what the AP headline would be for the next day, fearing for their jobs if their own headlines were too far off the mark from that of the AP. But while bloggers link back to original sources of news and discuss that news at length, they also see the traction gained from posting news before the rest of the blog “pack” — or by contributing something unique to an existing bit of already-posted news.
At times, I grew a bit nostalgic thinking of The Boys on the Bus and their equally-timed stories. It’s a sure bet that our media will never digress back to those days, but there’s real value to be found in what Crouse described as the womblike conditions and inescapable pressures of the pack.
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