Ten Thousand Letters Ain't What They Used To Be

11:00 AM Sep 20, 2005

Over on Personal Democracy Forum last week, Kate Kaye logged an interesting observation about media disdain for Internet letter-writing campaigns.

We've reported previously in this space on Congress' struggles with online communiques. The larger picture is one of old modes of formal communication between an individual and an institution -- the letter to the editor; the constituent appeal -- metamorphising in the chrysalis of technological change. One can already make out the contours of the new creature so uncouthly emerging: communications standards ordering and even mechanizing the medium; the letter to the editor slipping into a long dotage as blogs erode the value of papers' opinionmaking real estate.

If there's a tragedy of the commons underway with online advocacy -- and personally, I think that would be a considerable overstatement, the old standbys having hardly shown themselves to be so instrumental to the welfare of the Republic as to merit heroic exertions towards conservation -- then it's time to be realistic about what Internet campaigns are really good for. Answer: list-building. I don't say that cynically. It's such a tremendously important thing for an organization that mass-messaging campaigns are worthwhile for that purpose alone -- the question of who gets the messages and whether they read them is remotely secondary. MoveOn, from whom one could do worse than crib membership-building notes, routinely gooses its list with action opportunities, even when nothing's really cooking.

That having been said, assurances of media sages to the effect that message bombardments sway them not at all deserve as little credence as any other issuance from that source. Whinging at tremulous scribes from the top, the bottom, the side, wherever, has been page one of the GOP playbook for years. As former RNC chair Rich Bond put it, they like to "work the refs."

And even by the standards of the immediate goals of an advocacy project, Nina Totenberg denouncing your campaign on-air is a definite win.

(While it's possible to use DemocracyInAction's Letters to the Editor tool for indiscriminate blasting, its default structure encourages personalized composition at the expense of raw numbers of actions.  A legitimate letter from a local resident is still the thing a paper is most likely to print.   And blogosphere or no, a paper's opinion page is still a worthwhile place to be.</plug>)

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