There's an interesting story in today's Washington Post (submitted to Netscape by TechnologyExpert), in which various pundits and GOP operatives wring their hands over the Republican Party's alleged inability to compete with Democratic candidates on the internet. An excerpt:



As that excerpt makes clear, the Post's Jose Antonio Vargas chose to focus on the early front runners in both parties, and in doing so, he makes a fatal error by exclusion. The story fails to mention Ron Paul, whose official YouTube channel has a good 2,000 more subscribers than Barack Obama's channel and almost three times as many subscribers as John Edwards'. The Republican underdog is also clearly on the mind of bloggers; his name has been the number one search term on Technorati for several weeks.

I called Ron Paul's Austin-based campaign headquarters to get their take on the Washington Post story. Jesse Benton, Paul's communications director, told me that the Paul campaign was not contacted by the Post in connection with the story. "It is a little ironic that the strongest Republican candidate on the Internet was excluded from a story about Republicans on the Internet. I think that has been a little typical of our treatment in the mainstream media. I also think that is changing--the mainstream media is paying a little more attention to us every day."

All the more ironic is the fact that the Paul campaign has specifically sought to use the Web as a tool to reach voters in absence of that coveted MSM attention. "The internet is a major part of our strategy," Benton says. "We think it's a powerful force in leveling the playing field and allowing non-Establishment candidates, without nationwide name-recognition at this early point in the campaign, to be able to stand up on the same platform with self-anointed--or mainstream media-anointed--front runners." Benton attributes Paul's online success in no small part to his message. "He is the leading advocate for Internet freedom in Congress: he has never voted to tax the Internet or regulate it in any way. People who have a presence on the Internet realize that he is their strongest champion."

So why exclude the Paul camp from the story? I've contacted Vargas and will update this blog post when I get a response.

One of our top stories on Netscape today is a Newshound takedown of Fox News stalwart Bill O'Reilly, who has blamed MSNBC's "far left" slant for the poor ratings of last week's Republican debate. Since the Newshound site exists for the sole purpose of slamming Fox News, its take on the story doesn't exactly come as a shock. "You need to face some facts," Newshound tells O'Reilly. "You've peaked and Keith Olbermann is coming up behind you and MSNBC considers him a great asset."

But do they? According to an AP story circulated by Jossip and The Huffington Post, MSNBC did have to contend with flack from conservatives regarding Olbermann's debate night commentary, particularly concerning Rudy Giuliani, whose team actually called MSNBC to complain. AP's David Bauder suggested that "having Olbermann anchor [a political news event] is the MSNBC equivalent of Fox News Channel assigning the same duties to O'Reilly." In other words, news guys should take care of reporting news, and commentary guys who get paid to ruffle feathers should only be brought in after the fact.