Today, it was announced that Barack Obama's main blog outreach guy, Josh Orton, was departing the campaign. Orton had previously worked for Air America and did online outreach for Senator Harry Reid.
Here's how The Atlantic described the departure.
Orton's immediate superior, new media director Joe Rospars, prioritized online organizing over surgical interventions in the blogosphere and the two staffers personalities did not mesh.
What are the surgical interventions Orton supposedly favored and Rospars supposedly opposed?
It could mean a number of things: Personal blog postings on important issues like Sen. Russ Feingold does. Pumping bold statements of principle onto the blogs like Chris Dodd's videos on Iraq and habeas corpus.
Featuring bloggers in issue videos like Bill Richardson is doing with Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, and Christina Siun O'Connell right now. Or maybe intervening to help the netroots during important battles, like when Sen. John Edwards announced he wouldn't participate in the Nevada Fox debate (now deceased).
What is the online organizing Rospars supposedly supported? Likely the MyBarackObama feature on Obama's website - which allows people to set up their own Obama fundraising events, social groups, blogs, etc. (Rospar's quick history -- he is on loan to the Obama campaign from Blue State Digital, a consulting firm that charges key party committees like the DNC hundreds of thousands of dollars for similar online tools.)
What do you think of Obama's online organizing? Is the balance of external blog outreach (the Orton model) and internal online organizing tools (the Rospars model) correct?
Share your thoughts. Take the poll. Feel free to send your thoughts directly to Joe Rospars at jrospars@barackobama.com and share your email to him below.
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