Earlier this week, President Barack Obama showed how to get off the mark fast in the introduction of his first major announcements.When it was discovered that former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle had "forgotten" to pay his taxes for three years. Daschle resigned but President Obama took responsibility.
He said, time and time again in his February media blitz that "I screwed up, I should have been more diligent."
This shows how well President Obama understands one of the fundamentals of communications.
When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, take responsibility, tell people what you are doing to "fix' it up ... and it goes away. I call it: "Mess Up, 'Fess Up, Dress Up."
While the Presidential team continues to use You Tube and the other New Media to communicate with Americans, they made sure every major US media outlet interviewed the President. It has been estimated that 25 -30 million Americans saw his television broadcasts (Bloomberg.com).
This is further evidence that the rules of the game have changed forever by technology. This is a good example of the melding of the roles of traditional and new media. The Obama team recognizes that you cannot focus on just traditional or new media but need to make creative use of the two.
Remember during the run up to the election sites with names like Politico and FiveThirtyEight and Eschaton and Crooks and Liars and AlterNet collectively come to rival the three television networks in influence with younger audiences.
Huffington Post's "Off the Bus" site often made headlines with on-the-scene bulletins and audio/video snippets from some 3000 contributors.
What's happening today?
The Democrats used www.change.gov as the "go-to" place to find out what was happening in the election.
As soon as President Obama was confirmed in office, the site closed, a message said: "The transition has ended and the new administration has begun. Please join President Obama at whitehouse.gov."
Now, that is effective use of the new media. By the way, President Obama got to keep his Blackberry, making him the first media-savvy President. Stay tuned!
Photo: Barack Obama. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
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If a person is all that savvy I would have suspected they would be smart enough to know if a potential appointee paid his taxes or not. These are people in government service after all; serving the public by paying taxes is important to constituents. Or, he knew about the non-payment already and he simply got caught. Neither case demonstrates savvy in knowing people or what is important to constituents.
Hitler was the first radio-savvy politician but that situation did not turn out too well I understand.
Obama's campaign site was hacked, as was McCain's, the Blackberry is notoriously insecure and no one is stepping in to prevent its use, Carol M. Browner refuses to use email, WhiteHouse.gov uses permanent cookies . . .
The tech list is endless but the ordinary and insecure is persistent. Business as usual in Washington.
Thanks, good points, all well taken.
It is refreshing though to see a political leader prepared to look at the possibilities of using the New Media to reach out to the under 25 audience.
Jim