Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

With the launch today of BloggerStorm
 http://blogforamerica.com/bloggerstorm.h… to cover the Iowa
presidential selection process and caucuses,  Dean for America is
the first campaign to embrace blogs as a way for
citizens to report “on-the-ground” frontline reality to the campaign’s
vast audience. 

BloggerStorm’s network of contributors consists
of individual citizens, not professional reporters. 
The feeds that the contributors make go directly to the website, without editing. 
This network of real people with real eyes and ears on the
ground, linked to the website of a major candidate with very high
traffic levels on the web, plus instantaneous feeds from the field, is
a new development in citizen journalism and open democratic
campaigning.  Thanks go to Matt Gross, Joe Rospars, Rick Klau and Alden Hines.

The BloggerStorm
site is just starting up.  BloggerStorm is an experiment.  There will
be scoops and really great reporting.  There will also chaff among
the wheat.  You know what is great? You truly get to decide. 
This is reality campaign coverage.  We provide, you decide.
Overall, there will be a
raw, immediate feel that you will not get from “the letters” (ABC, NBC,
CBS, CNN, FOX). 

Part of the story will be the effect of participation and
excitement on the bloggers themselves.  They willl form a national
news team.  I expect that the effect of being watched will itself
motivate the participating bloggers to rise to great heights of
dedication and insight.  So watch the BloggerStorm community develop over the
next hours. 

The Iowa Caucuses start on Monday evening after dinner–72 hours from
your evening meal tonight.  The caucus race is very tight–a four
person race.  Many are calling it a horserace.  Think
Kentucky Derby.  Four great horses, four approaches to how to win
the hearts and minds of voters.  Four campaigns to interest people
in politics and help them come together to take their country
back.  Not yet the triple crown–but important on the
way to winning the triple crown.

In Boston political events–and  four years ago at Gore campaign
supporter events and phone calls–Michael Whouly was often introduced
as “that great American patriot Michael Whouly” followed by
cheers.  He organized field and get-out-the-vote operations for
the campaign–and was the shining success story in an otherwise poor
campaign.  Now he may be doing this in Iowa for Kerry, according
to this story in TNR, courtesy of the DailyKos, picked up on
BloggerStorm. 

Ahh, the importance of campaign field organizations.  Television
is not the only element of winning an election.  TV pundits and
“Hardball” don’t determine who an individual voter comes to know and
trust.  Some other things matter, like well-led field operations,
grassroots organizations and ecosystems, plus tight working alliances
with local leaders.  Within it all, each day I’m understanding to
new depth the extent that campaigns require a relentless focus on time
and discipline.  In business, we talk about it as “time-based
competition.”  Not sure of the equivalent term in political
organizations–but it is soo key.

To win against Bush in the fall, the combined Democratic family will need this organizational capability.

BloggerStorm  (Dean for America)    Iowa Caucus News on the Ground (Berkman)      Perfect Storm” volunteer campaign in
Iowa.  Matt was inspired by the Feedster site that ran during
BloggerCon.  We jumped around the corner to the webteam area, and
recruited Joe Rospars into the conversation.  We soon had specd
out a sort of instant Feedster site,   Joe got ahold of two
volunteers in the DeanSpace community, Rick Klau and Alden Hines, and later in the day we had BloggerStorm up and running.

I drove back to my home near Boston, and arrived around midnight. 
I decided it would be fun to add a non-partisan site covering the last
weekend of the Iowa caucus process.  My blog, like BloggerStorm, would draw on sources from bloggers on the
ground.

Just after midnight I started messing around in Manila (thanks Dave).  By 12:41 (see the time stamp on the first post) I had the “Iowa Caucus News on the Ground“
blog up and running.  By about 1:00 AM the first few RSS feeds
were in, the site looked pretty good, and I phoned Joe Rospars in
Burlington to take a look.

Now I am merrily surfing Iowa blogs, and adding those with RSS feeds.
Unfortunately some of the fun ones don’t seem to have feeds. For
example, An Iowa Libertarian writing about topics ranging from Des Moines Register editorials to Sabine Herald, the French political activist.  And from Cedar Pundit comes this irreverent review of the Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen endorsement of Dean in Cedar Rapids.

If you are going to be participating in the Iowa caucuses, or if you
are blogging them, let me know so I can consider your blog for Iowa
Caucus News.  jmoore at cyber.law.harvard.edu
Please mark the subject: Iowa blog. I’m going to
try to work for balance, though I’m sure I won’t be able to satisfy all
readers.  And I can’t guarantee I will have time to look at all
the submissions–because it’s going to be a big exhausting marathon
weekend at DFA.  But please send anyway, because if and when I do
have time, I’d love to hear from you.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is this weekend is to have some fun,
and get a sense of the action by way of a few writers we will get to know…

From an Iowa
blogger                              
comes
 
Deadmoines.com>                       this:

Hand writing vs. apathy

Nobody except my mother’s mother writes handwritten letters to me.

So, when a Dean supporter sent a *long* handwritten description of her passion for the good doctor to me yesterday I was stunned.

I mean, I knew the campaign was doing this, but I hadn’t yet received one of these letters. And didn’t really expect to, given my Independent registration. Still, a day later I continue to think about it…

Not that the letter, or the accompanying position papers, persuaded me strongly.

Instead, I think the letter — on top of the myriad phone calls
(not the automated survey crap, but the live people who fly in to Des
Moines to dial us all day) — has me pondering the energy within our
democracy.

From Iowa blogger Dedmoines.com, January 15, 2004:

I can’t reconcile the amount of activity surrounding the Iowa caucuses with the disintegration of our government and so many other aspects of American life that seem so damaged.

Why can’t campaign volunteers redirect their civic pride, their
sense of duty — whatever drives them to participate as they do — to
other causes throughout the year?

Maybe they do; maybe we just don’t see it on TV, in the newspaper or in our mailboxes.

You would think that I would have at least made a decision to
support a candidate today — only about three days to go before Iowa
provides some indication of the direction of the Democratic race based on the issues that are important to this state.

But I haven’t.

And I probably won’t until I walk in and see the faces of my
fellow suburbanites who have hope that we all still make a difference
in the policies and practices of our federal government.