Message Machinery

Matt Stoller has an excellent post up on The Blogging of the President about the media role at the convention. This is the kind of inside look at “how thing work” that I’ve been waiting to read. He talks to Sean Hannity:

“Why are you here, Sean Hannity?”

“To annoy you.”

“Seriously, why are you here?”

“Because this is newsworthy…. It’s what we do, cover stuff like this.”

Later in the conversation, I asked him if any news will be made at the Convention. He gestured to himself and said, “The best part of the Convention is right here. This is uncontrolled and spontaneous.” And that’s the thing. These guys see themselves as newsmakers.

Well, they are bigger celebrities than pretty much anybody there, aren’t they? (And, please nobody tell me that is meaningless because it just isn’t.)

Matt goes on to describe how Ed Gillespie managed to use the Democratic media infrastructure today to efficiently get their message out. It’s almost funny. But, in the end, he has an insight that I think is very, very astute:

…these guys know why they are here, and no one else except the Kerry campaign does. This is about message for them. They aren’t part of the media, they are part of the Bush reelection campaign. And as a result, they are looking at this Convention just like the Kerry campaign is – as an opportunity to generate and propagate prepackaged message.

I’m becoming much less interested in the question about journalists versus bloggers for precisely this reason. I’m not convinced there’s any journalism going on here. This is about fighting over message – meanwhile there’s a conversation out there, somewhere.

There is absolutely no journalism going on there. (And, frankly, there’s not much blogging going on either. Wherever the conversation is it isn’t taking place in the blogosphere.) What we are watching from out here is a fight to get competing messages out to the American people by hook or by crook.

It’s about media manipulation and marketing and the Republicans are very, very good at it. Their biggest problem is that they are selling an extremely defective product. If they win it will be a true testament to their message machine.