A handful of individuals have taken it upon themselves to hijack new media from the Republican Party, allowing them to misrepresent the Virginia blogosphere, and now are positioning themselves as the heralds that will guide Virginia’s Republican activists through the wilds of the Internet and to the great beyond.
New Media is all the rage these days, especially in political circles. For years Democrats have had an advantage over Republicans in netroots activism, turning their efforts in blogging and fundraising into electoral victories. Yet the Republicans continue to lag, even after seeing where the Democrats have succeeded. This has not come from a lack of effort on the part of Republican activists online.
Here in Virginia we have two Republican blog circles: The Old Dominion Blog Alliance and The Jeffersoniad. Each of these groups are full of people of varying degrees of experience in politics and beyond. All of them care about the party and its direction, have fought for years online and off for its success and future. These bloggers represent the New Media contingent of the Republican Party in Virginia, yet efforts on the part of the Republican Party to reach out to these activists have been less than impressive.
At this December’s Advance the RPV will be holding a seminar entitled “New Media: Blogging, E Campaigns, Websites”. RPV is still organizing this panel as well as many other events for the Advance, pieces that will be falling into place as December 5th draws closer. But, as Brian Kirwin pointed out last week, there is a big question as to who will be leading this seminar. Lynn Mitchell had concerns as well.
These concerns are grounded in a lack of new media outreach coming out of the Republican Party of Virginia and leadership throughout the state. If the RPV and others are not interacting with the core Republican new media activists in Virginia how can they hope to hold a seminar that will teach party activists anything about what the new media is and what it can do?
In his post, Brian cited one example of Republican “huge new media successes” that is involved in the panel: HamptonRoadsGOP.com. While a critique can be made of the site’s structure and how it is lacking as a “blog” or any example of how to use “new media”, the biggest issue behind HRGOP is in its organizers and how it has gone about promoting itself online.
When people think of and look to new media, especially within the Republican Party, they are looking for new blood, new thoughts, new leaders.
HRGOP was organized by Bruce Meyer, former 2nd District Chairman.
HRGOP premiered on October 20th, starting right off the bat with a swipe against the already established Republican blogosphere:
HamptonRoadsGOP.com is a project of the Republican Professionals Network. HamptonRoadsGOP.com will contain a calendar of all political events going on in Hampton Roads as well as the ONLY major Republican blog in all of Virginia. Stay tuned!
Since then, another member of HRGOP had used multiple names under the same IP address to not only harass multiple blogs within the blogosphere but demand links to posts that contain an email sent to many people at once, something that is hardly exclusive and a move that does little to endear the blogger or the site to the blogosphere at large.
HRGOP has abused its position in the process of helping organize the Advance to provide “exclusive” details about its organization, becoming a de facto site for information on the Advance. This despite the RPV denying that the HRGOP represents the RPV.
A handful of individuals have taken it upon themselves to hijack new media from the Republican Party, allowing them to misrepresent the Virginia blogosphere, and now are positioning themselves as the heralds that will guide Virginia’s Republican activists through the wilds of the Internet and to the great beyond.
By organizing around the old guard, by being openly hostile to Republican bloggers, by failing to understand that you are not truly anonymous on the internet, by failing to grasp a basic understanding of new media, by having access to RPV dealings, these individuals are representing themselves as mouth pieces of the Republican Party Of Virginia and threatening the message and direction that the party so desperately needs if it is going to organize and pull itself out of the downward trend of the last few elections.
All of this shows a lack of understanding of the New Media on the part of the current Republican Party of Virginia leadership. Efforts by bloggers to reach out to the RPV and help were met with invitations to blog for the RPV but no real avenue for input in how the RPV conducts its online outreach. Serious questions are raised about the organization of the current leadership and the state of the future of this party, whether it belongs to new voices and new ideas or the same, old, bitter trends that have gotten the party to where it is today.
Republicans don’t retreat, we advance. In two weeks Republicans will gather at the Homestead Advance to try and find the best way forward. But will that advance be led by the old guard trying to show off how to mis-use new toys or will new voices and new ideas be given the floor?
