Matthew Stoller is one of the 30+ webloggers who are blogging this week's Democratic National Convention. He is the producer and cocreator of the Blogging of the President web project, an interactive media series on the ongoing digital transformation of politics and media.
Matt has worked in software product management, holds a BA from Harvard University.
MP: You're a blogger, but are you also in part an organizer helping the DNC manage the bloggers? What is your exact role here? Are you working for the DNC yourself, etc?
STOLLER: Funny you should ask that question. The National Journal just did a story on the DNCC supposedly 'firing' me because my name was removed from the blog. Of course, the story isn't true, but it is a reflection of the ambiguous role that I played and the conflict between organizations and the media cycle that so distorts effective descriptions of democracy.
As unpaid advisor to the DNCC, I put a lot of work into the convention to make sure the bloggers had a good time. And they are being treated wonderfully. I used the Democratic National Convention Committee blog to help coordinate this group. But I am also blogging on my own blog, BOPnews.
MP: Does the fact you are working at the DNCC mean you have more responsibility than others?
STOLLER: Great question. When the Convention came around, we had to figure out what to do, which speaks to the essential question - when I blog on my own site, am I me Matt Stoller or a representative of the Convention? And what are the consequences of this being misrepresented one way or the other?
Well, I think that it is possible for media outlets to misconstrue what I say on my blog and confuse it with the DNCC blog, especially those with partisanized agendas. In an environment with such an immature media culture, this can become controversy very quickly. How could someone want to help the Democratic National Convention and not love every single thing that's going on?!?! Zut alors!
The determination was that if I was speaking for myself publicly in an online forum, I was speaking for me and not the Convention.
People have conversations all the time about what's going on. Once conversation moves online, however, it goes 'on the record'. I happen to have some of my conversations online, but the political media hasn't caught up with the fact that most normal people act like normal people and have normal conversations. They curse. They have opinions. These are normal things. But putting this normality online challenges the structures of our cultural institutions, which tend to rely on images of perfection rather than authenticity.
MP: What, generally, has the reaction been like by the press to the presence of the bloggers? Are any of them resentful?
STOLLER: Oh, I don't know. Most of the ones I talked to are like 'oh, neat'. Some say that they love blogs and read them all the time.
MP: Do they feel competitive at all to break news?
STOLLER: Perhaps. I think the bloggers here have different agendas. Some just want to watch the Convention.
MP: Are the bloggers getting special treatment? There was a blogger breakfast this week attended by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
STOLLER: Some are journalists looking to break news. Some are consultants looking to broaden their understanding of political issues and races. We are starting to see that 'bloggers' doesn't mean anything anymore. Because blogging is just a tool. The people that used it were initially in one community. But no longer.
MP: But are bloggers getting white-glove treatment the press does not get?
STOLLER: Yes. They don't have to pay for their space in the Fleet Center.
MP: Why should they if blogging is just a tool?
STOLLER: Because this is a special moment.
MP: Do they get greater/lesser access than journalists do?
STOLLER: I bet that bloggers could get better access if they wanted it.
MP: Some say the bloggers are the news at this convention. Are the bloggers stealing the spotlight? How does the DNC and the Kerry campaign feel about this?
STOLLER: You'd have to ask them. But my interactions with them have been quite positive. I think, and I think they think, that blogging and participation will be very good for the Democratic Party, and great for democracy. Anything that distributes power downward, as Joe Trippi or Seth Godin might say, is good for populism.
MP: Jay Rosen told the New York Times this week: "Whomever they decide to let through the gate is now the press. What the credential means to me is that someone just expanded the idea of the press a little bit." Is blogging journalism? Are these bloggers closer to journalists than folks like me? What’s the relationship between blogging and journalism?
STOLLER: Well the whole edifice of journalism is built on the idea that ethics in speech are important. But why must this be? Well, because if there are a limited number of printing presses, the people in charge of them have special responsibilities and special power.
Now, anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and some degree of literacy can have their own printing press. The challenge is to figure out a set of institutional arrangements that maximizes the credibility of the content that is displayed to the largest number of people. And I'm not convinced that our current system of commercially organized media does this. In fact, I think it doesn't. Individual blogs don't do this either, but the blogosphere as a whole presents good quality content very efficiently.
We are used to a system where if you work in commercial media, the content you create will be edited and honed, but it will be consumed The blogosphere doesn't work that way. Neither do people. We don't remember most of the conversations we have - we only remember a few key moments in them. 99% of the content is ignored, but the 1% that isn't becomes very meaningful. And the bad 99% is critical to the creation of the good 1%.
So even though the blogosphere creates a lot of innuendo - in fact most of it is terrible - the content that the blogosphere presents to most people who participate in it is great. Why? Because the blogosphere is one institutional arrangement that has figured out how to allow people to mostly ignore crap, and pay attention to stuff they are interested in.
MP: But does this mean that gatekeepers - by limiting access to a select few of these individuals - risk setting this system backward?
STOLLER: Gatekeeping, which is intrinsic to the system of media and PR that we have right now, creates corruption. And that's what our public discourse is right now - corrupt. And so the question of 'is blogging journalism' is really an attempt to redefine the notion of journalism when its institutional arrangements don't make sense any more.
How do you find a business model for Seymour Hersh, in other words? But this crisis is everywhere. A lot of corporations are trying to figure out how to sell what they want to sell, rather than restructuring their businesses to encourage risk-taking. The whole 99% of crap produces the 1% of greatness.
Anyway, no, I don't think that credentialing a few bloggers will set this back at all.
MP: What impact do you think this seminal event will have on politics, journalism and (most importantly) PR?
STOLLER: Well, it legitimizes blogging as a medium that the press is now allowed to pay attention to. So that's a shift in media culture. Over the long-term, this will alter the media ecosystem to allow for more boutique journalists - and 'beats' will become 'communities'.
Politically, we are in the midst of an enormously significant change, perhaps as large a political realignment as the American Revolution. The anger we see between the parties and within the parties, and within organizations generally, is over how much information to share and how much power to distribute downwards - classic populism rocket fuel.
In terms of PR, the industry will become a lot happier. Authenticity is a great thing, and authenticity sells. The need to portray perfection when all is not perfect is inherently anxiety producing. PR will become about managing conversations among stakeholders in a product or service line. It will grow to encompasses CRM and some elements of product design and marketing.
It's fairly obvious once you drink the kool aid. The thing is, people don't want to believe that cynicism doesn't work. They are used to assuming that manipulating fear and imagery can get you everything you want.
If I sell you a bad product, and I know you can't talk about it, I'm not going to care what you think. So my PR strategy will be about convincing other people that they need this product. Obviously, this is an oversimplification.
But without strong word of mouth, the tool set available shrinks to information delivery and emotional manipulation. It's hard to convince people that just by making a good product and being honest with your customers, you can do well. They just don't believe that 'word gets around'. And so they are skeptical about substance, because without word of mouth or community, style is all that matters.
