Sam Graham-Felsen is currently serving as content director and director of outreach for Blue State Digital. Sam was the Director of blogging and blog outreach for Obama for America, where he also helped to produce online videos for the campaign. Prior to the Obama campaign, Sam covered youth politics for The Nation and was a video producer for Current TV. He graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2004.

Anna Curran: You worked as a blogger for the Obama campaign, and now you’re working as the content director at Blue State Digital. Can you tell us what it was like working on the campaign and can you tell us about your job now?

Sam Graham-Felsen: I was writing about student politics for The Nation magazine, and I had written a few pieces about Obama and how he was generating a lot of enthusiasm online. After the campaign launched, I wrote a piece about the new media operation and how they were using mybarackobama.com and Facebook to mobilize young people. In the process of writing it, I learned more about the innovative things that Joe Rospars and the Obama new media team were doing. So I decided to E-mail Joe and say that I was interested in joining the campaign. I asked if they wanted anyone who had experience writing and doing online video stuff (which I had as a video correspondent for Al Gore's Current TV).

Joe and I talked and he explained that Obama really was going to emphasize the internet. He said one of the key things that needed to happen in order for the web campaign to be successful was to have a very active in-depth “story telling” division. Joe wanted me to lead up the blogging aspect of that.

I joined the Obama campaign in March of 2007. I was probably one of the first 10 new media staffers, and I started out by telling stories of ordinary people, the impact that they were having on the campaign, and the impact the campaign was having on them. Almost everyone I had interviewed had never been involved in politics in their life. It was really profound to hear these stories -- from farmers in Nebraska to veterans in Florida- all walks of life. Many of them Republicans, many of them students, many who had never voted before who were talking about how this campaign felt different to them.

By the time the general election rolled around, I had hired some other bloggers who I oversaw and a lot of my time in the general election involved blog outreach and maintaining day to day contact with a lot of the top bloggers on a national and state level, feeding them what they needed to cover the election.

Now I am the director of content and research at Blue State Digital. I oversee a team that creates action-oriented web content and promotes content through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. It’s been interesting to apply the principals of the Obama campaign to a variety of really good causes. The fundamentals are the same. A lot of it is based on storytelling and really making sure that authentic content gets out there.

People are used to being marketed to, reading glib one liners, and hearing sound bites. What we tried to do on the Obama campaign was cut through the static by telling real stories and showing authentic voices. Even if the footage was a little shaky or the people weren’t 100% perfectly on message every second, we wanted to show them as they were. We felt like that was what made it stand out and that’s what made it human.

Placing a real emphasis on authenticity is the best way to build relationships with grassroots supporters. They don’t want to feel like they’re being told what to do, or they’re being manipulated, they want to feel like they’re having a conversation and being respected.

Anna Curran: You worked for the Nation Magazine both as fact checker and writer. Can you tell us about those experiences and what did you enjoy the most about your time at the nation?

Sam Graham-Felsen: After college, I wanted to find out more about magazine journalism, so I joined the Nation as an intern. My primary responsibility was fact checking. That really exposed me to the reporting process because a lot of what we had to do was retrace the footsteps of the reporters. We would talk to the people they talk to and made sure they had their figures right.

One of my favorite pieces I had to fact check was a piece by Micah Sifry ["The Rise of Open Source Politics"]. It was right after Bush was reelected in 2004. Micah wrote a piece about online politics and the wake of the Dean campaign, and it got me thinking about the role that the internet can play in grassroots organizing and the importance of the internet in terms of getting the progressive movement back on track. It occurred to me that following what was happening in the online space was critical.

After the internship, I stayed on to write for the Nation blog and the magazine about student politics. Of course a lot of coverage in student politics was about online activism and watching how students were organizing on platforms like Facebook. One of the cool things I did while at the Nation was help start VideoNation, which was the Nation’s first foray into online video. We created a YouTube channel back in 2006. It seems funny to think back to when YouTube was cutting edge.

Anna Curran: I noticed on Twitter that you had commented on Obama’s Cairo speech. You posted that, “it was the kind of thing you had dreamed about someday happening.” When you were on the campaign, what was it that pushed you through those hard moments? What was the darkest hour? And was there a moment when you knew for sure that Obama was going to win?

Sam Graham-Felsen: I wouldn’t have joined the campaign if I thought there was no way Obama was going to win. I was definitely a true believer early on, and I felt convinced that once people began to know Obama, he was going to capture the imagination of the country. I believed in the strategy that David Plouffe laid out: that we were going to win Iowa, and once we won it, the country would learn about this extraordinary candidate. This momentum would take through Feburary 5th.

You have to believe that your candidate is going to win, but in the fall of 2007, we all knew things weren't looking great.

But it was during this time that the new media team spearheaded something that I believe helped turn the tide for our grassroots supporters and kept people feeling hopeful. At the end of August, we decided we were going to throw a rally in Washington Square Park right in the heart of New York City which, of course, was his main opponent (at the time) Hillary Clinton’s home turf. It was a brazen thing to do when we were really far down in the polls.

Even in the darkest hour, we were going to show the country that our grassroots supporters still had amazing energy -- and it turned out to be our biggest rally ever. We had to turn away thousands and thousands of people and about 25,000 people got into the park.

The general was in some ways less stressful than the primary. It was a scary moment being inside the Obama campaign to see Palin inject extraordinary energy into the McCain campaign during the Republican National Convention. Then Sarah Palin made those famous comments criticizing Obama for being a bottom-up community organizer, and doing that was an implicit insult to our entire movement. We sent out a response email that night with that message. Our supporters definitely felt that way and we ended up raising over 10 million dollars in one night which is probably the greatest fundraising night in political history.

But to just briefly get back to the first part of your question: I wrote that tweet because I really felt that one of the proudest moments on the campaign was seeing Obama give his race speech in Philadelphia. I felt like that speech embodied everything that was so important about this candidate and this campaign. Watching it I felt that if we won, we were going to significantly break down the old boundaries that had been holding people apart. I also felt like we finally had a politician that was going to speak to like adults, after eight years of being spoken to like we were children.

I just remember sitting in the office in front of all the TV monitors. We were all sitting there completely silent. Some people had tears in their eyes. It was the kind of thing you needed to keep you going and remind you why you’re putting so much into the campaign. I wrote that the Cairo speech was like the race speech except to the whole world. Again, he was trying to break down the barriers and walls that between the US and the rest of the world -- and he was speaking to us and the rest of the world as adults. It was really a proud moment to know that in some small way the internet team helped elect this guy who is already having an remarkable impact on our relationships with the rest of the world.

Anna Curran: That brings me to my last a question for you. What is something that our audience doesn’t know about you already but should?

Sam Graham-Felsen: My coolest job ever was being a peanut vendor for Fenway Park. I got to watch hundreds of Red Sox games. It was pretty much the best job a teenager and college kid could have. I got to walk around in the summer watching my favorite sports team beat up on the Yankees and make a pretty good profit at the same time.

Working at Fenway, we were in a union, and that really gave me an appreciation for being a union member. Whenever I go to a different ball park I will strike up a conversation with some of the vendors and I’ll ask what they’re hours are and what they compensation is. I am pretty sure Fenway vendors were treated better because we were in a good union with good union leadership from the vendors.

The coolest part of the job was that we got to show up very early, and occasionally I got to interact with players before the games. I remember one afternoon the stadium was empty except for me and a few of my friends who were sitting near the very top of the grandstand which is pretty far up from right field. Pedro Martienez, who is my total hero, was warming up, and I yelled, “Hey Pedro” at the top of my lungs. He rocketed the ball all the way from center field all the way to the top of the stands and somehow I caught it with my bare hands. I still have that ball even though he is with the Mets now.

I credit my decision to work for Obama to my Fenway days. Being a lifelong Red Sox fan gives you faith in underdogs.

Know someone who I should interview? Email your suggestion to me at anna@personaldemocracy.com.