Obama's gimmicky online chat session actually worked.

[jefferson_dem]

The President Will See You Now
Obama's gimmicky online chat session actually worked.
By John Dickerson
Posted Thursday, March 26, 2009, at 7:33 PM ET
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Barack Obama doesn't care much for cable news, but that doesn't mean his administration won't borrow one of its ideas. On Thursday Obama held the first-ever "online town hall," with questions—104,074 of them!—submitted by "real Americans"—92,933 of them!—and streamed live over the Internet. In form, it echoed CNN's YouTube debates from the presidential campaign. In concept, it mirrored the cable network's penchant for using marginal technological innovations—it was community moderated!—to make news out of reporting the news. Fortunately for America, no one showed up by hologram.

It was an effective expansion of the presidential bully pulpit and the latest in a wide-ranging White House effort to talk directly to people. It may be Obama's best gimmick yet—entertaining enough to get people to watch but also a risk-free platform for him to give a presentation of his policies.

Presidents are always trying to get around the traditional news filter. But it's not easy. Part of the difficulty is built-in: One of the goals of going around the media is to get coverage in the media. Holding town hall meetings is a popular trick, but if they're full of softball questions, they aren't newsworthy. Local news stations may cover them, which can be important during a campaign, but national attention is preferred when you're trying to sell the nation on your programs. George Bush held a flood of these anodyne serendipity-free town halls when selling his plan for Social Security, and they failed to galvanize public opinion.

Another way for a president to go around the traditional news filter is by putting his weekly address on YouTube. But the White House knows that after the second week, when the gimmick wears off, people tune out. It's not special enough.

So Obama's "online town hall" was a combination of these two strategies—and it actually works. It's just gimmicky enough for people to watch it online, if for no other reason than the quasi-populism of the question-and-answer session allows people to join in the fun of going around the news filter that many of them think is obsessed with trivialities. And yet the news filter can't let go: The cable channels carried the town hall live and reported on it extensively (expanding the audience). It was also very safe—the questions were picked by community vote, but anything out of the mainstream can be finessed out of the conversation. A lot of people asked about legalizing marijuana, for example, and Obama brushed the issue off with a joke. The online town hall also now sits on the White House Web site, where people can access it at any time.

<SNIP>

http://www.slate.com/id/2214236/?from=rss

[BlooInBloo]

1. "But it's not easy." - Funny, Obama hasn't had ONE LICK of difficulty with that.

[Cha]

2. I call it

State of the Art.