Modern Media Strategies: The Right Is Getting Online Organizing

Next Wednesday the founders of TechRepublican.com, led by David All (who also blogs at techPresident, advises Republicans about new media, produces the DomeNation video series with Jerome Armstrong, and is a former male fashion model for Baby Gap), will be leading the first-ever Modern Media Strategies workshop (pdf).
The event is designed to teach conservative activists and Hill staffers about new media (or, as All calls it, “modern media”) and how to use the web the way the liberals do.

All sees the workshop as the right's answer to the progressive New Organizing Institute, a "grassroots program that trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations." Lead by Judith Freeman, sometime techPresident blogger Zack Exley, and, until recently, Roz Lemieux (who just resigned as Executive Director), NOI organizes conferences and youth training camps for progressive activists and organizers, forming before the 2006 elections and then mobilizing with renewed energy after the Democrats took the House.

Owing to the well-documented (if not well-understood) liberal dominance of the web, a small group of conservatives are creating their own online organizing machine. In addition to All, Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation; techPresident blogger and former RNC eCampaign director Patrick Ruffini; eyeon08's Soren Dayton; and Towhall.com's Matt Lewis are helping organize this and future events. "If we're going to win this fight, we"re going to need a well-trained army," wrote All in his announcement of the workshop. “And it is our hope that this event helps serve as the beginning of an ongoing discussion to do just that.”

This is just the latest in a string of projects unleashed by the group. Last month, All, Bluey, Ruffini, and Dayton and others created SavetheDebate.com, which successfully lobbied to bring back the Republican CNN/YouTube, and received a ton of press along the way. Bluey has been running his Conservative Bloggers Briefings, weekly discussions in which guests like John Boehner and Robert Novak rub shoulders with conservative bloggers. And All is busy working on his answer to ActBlue, Slatecard.

These conservatives are fighting tooth and nail the notion that they're behind online because of some inherent, open structure of the web that lends itself to progressive organizing. To prove their point, they're aiming to convince mainstream conservatives that this Internet thing is real, and must be used if they're going to compete.

They appear to have struck a chord. All says 160 people are slated to attend the Modern Media Strategies workshop next week -- it heralds a big moment. This group of conservatives, most of whom are quoted daily in newspapers, on cable TV, and in the blogosphere, is developing results to rival online progressives.

For one thing, they've attracted Google. At the NOI-organized RootsCamp conference last December, co-sponsored by Google, Googlers led a session on how Google's toolbox (Gmail, Analytics, AdWords, etc.) could be used for organizing. It sponsored NOI's summer boot camp, now it's co-sponsoring the Modern Media Strategies workshop; indeed, Steve Grove, YouTube's News and Politics editor, will be among the presenters.

This doesn't mean the candidates will catch up just yet. First, Mitt needs to know his MySpace from his YouTube, the top-tiers need comprehensive tech policies, and there needs to be a serious online grassroots movement beyond a handful of enthusiasts. Only if the online conservative sphere becomes a Kos-like force will big-name candidates pay attention to it, like they did with Rush in the ‘90's.