Media
Literature review
Hill, Yes! O., No! The Battle Isn't Over for Many Women Who Fought for Clinton
- On June 8, the evening after Clinton conceded the Democratic presidential contest to Barack Obama, Mantouvalos organized a conference call with some 40 bloggers, political activists and other hardened loyalists of the New York senator's, in what became "a jam session of very intense opinion" -- about the party, its leadership, its presumptive nominee, the media. Five hours later, Mantouvalos, age "north of 35," had built a new Web site, JustSayNoDeal.com, which has become a clearinghouse for the renegade forces that are now confounding Democratic Party officials and Obama campaign operatives.
McCain's Web Team (National Journal)
Obama's Wide Web WaPost, August 20, 2008
Portrait of the candidate as a pile of words Whatâs the most frequent word on McCainâs blog? âObamaâ, The Boston Globe, August 3, 2008
- Both of this yearâs major party presidential candidates have made official campaign blogs a central part of their virtual headquarters. John McCainâs campaign hired former Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb as its deputy communications director and made the "McCain Report" into his one-man show. The Obama team has taken a more collaborative approach, allowing supporters to create their own blogs and then moving some of that content, together with snippets of news coverage and messages from campaign officials, to the official "ObamaBlog" front page.
YouTube video of Diane Mantouvalos on Cavuto re: Just say no deal
- "Republicans are definitely courting us." - Diane Mantouvalos
Just Say No Deal Answers Questions on Sirius Radio
âI ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign.â
- After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. "Your letters," says Phil Tuchman, "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."
Political bloggers fear publicists will infiltrate sites, Boston Globe, February 23, 2007
- Erick Erickson has been running the popular blog Redstate.com long enough to know what his readers' postings sound like: red-meat conservative rhetoric served up with a little dash of populist anger.
So when postings from an unknown writer on the site showed up praising Senator John McCain -- one of the site's least-popular Republicans for his deviations from hard-core conservative orthodoxy -- Erickson thought he smelled a rat.
Or maybe a sock puppet, shill, or a troll -- Web slang for bloggers who pretend to be grass-roots political commentators but instead are paid public relations agents.
The author of the pro-McCain articles on Redstate.com, Erickson determined after a Google search, was a Michigan political operative whose firm worked for McCain's political action committee.
- "You need to engage them as if they are any other powerful constituency," said Peter Greenberger of New Media Strategies, an Arlington, Va.-based consulting firm that works with candidates and corporations to improve their image on the Internet.
Greenberger said his firm was not working for any 2008 candidates, but had turned away requests by some candidates to woo activists through online "astroturf" campaigns. Astroturf, in political parlance, refers to campaigns organized by public relations firms to create a false image of grass-roots support.
BAM TRIPS ON NET. BARACK INTERNET STAFFER REVEALED AS BRAIN BEHIND HILLARY ATTACK AD, Daily News, March 22, 2007
- The mystery man behind the scathing "1984" Internet video slamming Hillary Clinton as "Big Sister" was unmasked yesterday as a staffer in the consulting firm that runs Barack Obama's Web site. In a revelation that stunned the Obama campaign and could damage his presidential prospects, Philip de Vellis, a worker at the company Blue State Digital, admitted creating the video that has riveted the political and Internet worlds.
Win Points for McCain!; Rewards Program for Online Commenters, WaPost, August 7, 2008
- On McCain's Web site, visitors are invited to "Spread the Word" about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor's screen name. The site offers sample comments ("John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .") and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into "conservative," "liberal," "moderate" and "other" categories. Just cut and paste.
Activists and political operatives have used volunteers or paid staff to seed radio call-in shows or letters-to-the-editor pages for years, typically without disclosing the caller or letter writer's connection to a candidate or cause. Like the fake grass for which the practice is named, such AstroTurf messages look as though they come from the grass roots but are ersatz.
Press coverage of formation of No Deal...
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/13/1138240.aspx#comments
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/13/a-clinton-backer-turns-to-mccain/
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/256106
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/McCain_mingles_with_Clinton_sup
PUMA=Republicans?
More PUMA Proof: registered in Red States