We are wasting our power.
Last week I was briefly perusing the diaries when an entry by Darksyde's caught my attention. It was all about the power we as liberal activists and liberal bloggers have to effect what the media chooses to air or not to air. Tons of you posted on those diaries, but for those that didn't, they're here, and here, with a relevant diary here.
I've been meaning to comment on these diaries for some time, but I work at a major not-for-profit disaster-relief organization, so as you can guess I've been pretty busy.
This movement is, in my humble opinion, the best idea I've seen in a long time- but there's one thing missing. It lacks the scope and organization needed to have any real impact.
My credentials and education are in marketing (and linguistics), and the two main rules of any new campaign are always
1.)Unity of message- Any and all messages presented in reference to the selected topic or product must at all times say the same things with only syntactical variations (i.e. George Bush should be impeached and Impeach the president are okay, but George Bush should be impeached and Save the whales would not be okay.) You political types like to call that staying on message.
2.) Prevelance = Payoff- whoever gets to repeat their message the most wins.
This may all seem like pretty obvious stuff, but what's important here is how we implement these ideas with Darksyde's plan. For us to truly have any impact on media or their sponsors, I think we're going to have to take a step that we might be hesitant to take- we're going to have to ORGANIZE.
What is needed is a coordinated inter-blog effort to get users to sign up onto a central database with their emails. Afterwards, the director of this effort can send out an action letter whenever it's necessary, either a pre-formatted letter users can just change the signature on and send off, or simply a call to action with email addresses- sort of a moveon.org that doesn't suck. I understand that that makes people nervous. As a rule mass emails = bad. That is why we need a trusted leader in the liberal community to send these messages. I would urge anyone with that profile (cough)Kos(cough) to take the reins on this. The power we have as a community is being squandered due to lack of coordination.