Warping the Media

Obama's campaign also had a superior grasop of the new media. By october of 2008, its internet arm had compiled an e-mail list of thirteen million supporters- "about twenty percent of the total number of votes we would need to win," Plouffe said. Dan Pfeiffler, the White House communications director, says that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allowed the campaign to "go around the filter" of the press- an obsession of the campaign that continues in the Obama White House. In the Clintion era, aides also talked about "going around" the White House press ; what they meant was getting an easy hour on "Larry King" or a soft interview with the local newspapers rather than submitting to a session with "60 Minutes" or the New York Times. The Obama campaign, with it's success online and with its mastery of a history-making narrative, was impatient with old media. One campaign reporter recalls a 2008 exchange in which Pfeiffler mockingly speculated that the Washington press corps might be rendered obsolete through the use of Presidential messages posted directly on Internet sites like YouTube. "It was basically taunting" the reporter says.

This passage comes from the second page of the article as the second paragraph. The quotes com from David Plouffe, Dan Pfleiffer and an undisclosed reporter.

The main thing that I take away from this section is that the Obama administration knew what it was doing and that they used that to its advantage. They knew that Social Networking was becoming popular and used that to its advantage. They knew what the media would possibly do and sought to side -step that.

The passage means that people who are most up to date are the ones that are going to be more in control what they want out and what they want secret. This could have implications and a hand in a new media revolution.