Missing good ole Kos? He and Jerome Armstrong have a
guest post today over at Kicking Ass, the great DNC blog. Check it out.
Guest post from Daily Kos: Three months later
We visited DNC HQ about three months ago. Contrary to popular conception, the DNC isn't a monolithic, faceless organization. There were real people behind it. Many who, to our pleasant surprise, were already bloggers.
Having confused us for VIPs or something, we got the royal treatment -- showing us the not-yet-launched Kicking Ass blog, meeting the DNC's tech team (who I am sure are much cooler than the rest of the DNC staff), and even a meeting with Terry McAuliffe. (The tech team is definitely cooler than him!)
But they were all great. The passion is palpable. And they were all serious about reaching out, using the Internet to build community. I'm not sure many of you realize this, but the institutional resistance to blogs in the DC community is massive. Organizations are afraid of "losing control of the message." They are afraid of hearing their constituencies criticize them. They are afraid of, well, the people.
The DNC was like any organization, and our role was to give the tech team moral support. A bastion of bloggers, they wanted Kicking Ass. They wanted to create a community of party supporters where they could discuss and debate the issues. For the rest of the organization, green-lighting the project was a huge risk. And resistance to change, while a cliche, is also a reality.
But they took that risk.
In retrospect, all the hand-wringing seems silly and unnecessary. Kicking Ass has become a great resource for the party and for the online community. It hasn't been stifled by the party elders, and that's a credit to them. Blogs are new. They force organizations to change the rules about how they communicate with their supporters.
Will the Republican National Committee follow suit? Nope. They don't care for feedback. But our party is different. And this blog is proof positive.
Markos Zuniga & Jerome Armstrong
DailyKos.com & MyDD.com
PS: Terry, when are you going to make a blog entry?