Question 5: How might this campaign change the way future campaigns will be covered?

Ben Hoffman: Perhaps more hope than prediction, but I think the next presidential campaign will see the beginning of the end of false equivalence journalism. And while news organizations have rightly upped their focus on fact checking during this campaign, it seems clear that the idea of fact-checkers, as they’re currently constituted, are almost already outdated. Fact-checkers being ignored and explicitly derided by campaigns, fact-checkers checking things that are not facts. Fact-checking needs to exist not as a distinct concept practiced only by the fact-checkers, it needs to be integrated into every aspect of campaign coverage (traditional reporting, headline writing, maybe live fact-checking during debates a la Candy Crowley?) Two other predictions: Going back to question #3, how accurate Nate Silver and the polls and models and other such wizardry prove to be will play a huge role, of course, in how trusted they are in 2016. Second, you’ll see Twitter assuming an even greater role in the arguments, accusations, and spin wars waged among campaign surrogates and partisan media members.

Stephen Kurczy: The candidates and the media must pay more attention to Twitter. The social networking site helped define the narrative of each presidential debate as new records were set for tweets per minute and some stations (CNN, for one) actually flashed tweets live across the TV screen. The viral spread of comments (“Fire Big Bird!”) and conclusions (“Obama is losing this debate”) underscored that Americans won’t wait for post-debate punditry, much less the next day’s newspaper. Campaigns must find ways to either limit or control the social network, especially as the number of Twitterers (148 million) now outnumbers the number of voters (138 million in 2008).

Josh Lawson: Since the others focused on the journalism side of things, I’d like to throw a slightly different gloss on the question. For a long time, campaign management and traditional PR firms developed along distinct tracks. They are different things after all. Try managing Apple’s brand if Tim Cook decided to take a position on every controversial policy topic while still caring that people like his family and pre-order iPads. The differences between corporate branding and campaign development were just different for a long while, with top campaigners often rolling into substantial governance positions way above the pay-grade of PR buffs.

The two worlds collided in 2000, when both parties for the first time deployed voter profiling software using the same credit card, magazine subscription, and car purchase data relied upon by corporations targeting consumers (no, your neighbors don’t get the same voter mail...). Micro-targeting evolved further in ‘08, along with the “logo” presidency (replete with the trademarked “O“ and Shepard Fairey’s “Hope“ poster). It was worlds away from Al Gore personally sketching his logo in 2000. But this cycle took things to a whole new level of corporate/campaign imaging overlap.

Perhaps most notable was Obama campaign manager’s intensive training by chiefs from Apple, Facebook, Google, DreamWorks, and other corporate powerhouses hoping to ready their candidate for the new brand management landscape. This is new—very new. And I don’t honestly think it’s necessarily great or terrible. But it’s likely here to stay.

Anthony Resnick: I hope Ben is correct about the end of false equivalence journalism, but I think it depends largely on how the way this campaign (and other recent campaigns) was covered changes the way candidates campaign. If Romney’s “not dictated by fact checkers” campaign is seen as a model for future campaigns, then I think the media will have little choice but to adapt. I would also combine this in a way with the Nate Silver discussion. If fact checkers can be gamed and statistical models are superior to pundits in covering the horse race, perhaps the press will see that pundits are most useful at covering the substance of the campaign, what each candidate is truly proposing to do and what the consequences of victory for each candidate are. I would expect the media to be quite resistant to this kind of change, but there are some signs in this campaign that that may be where we’re headed.

Ian Cheney: Not at all. I get the sense that the ratings are great, the networks are flush, and everyone involved is having a good time covering it. More importantly, I expect many more websites to switch to a Construction -model for their political coverage. Five writers, five days; both perspectives; the numbers and a creative, Kurczyesque anchor to cap off the week on jovial Fridays. That’s political coverage done right!

Tagged in: barack obama, campaining, discussions, electoral college, false equivalence, mitt romney, nate silver, roundtables, super pacs, Twitter

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Ian Cheney, Connecticut resident, writes the Presidential Politics for America blog, which took a close, ongoing look at the historic primaries of 2008. He earned his M.A. in American Studies at Trinity College writing his Master’s Thesis on the Election of 1948. He teaches honors history in southeast Connecticut. Ben Hoffman was a Teach For America corps member in Washington, D.C., where he also worked for several think tanks. He now lives in North Carolina, where he teaches and writes. Stephen Kurczy is a New York-based journalist for the Financial Times Group. He is a former desk editor for The Christian Science Monitor, contributor to The Economist, and associate editor for The Cambodia Daily. He blogs and tweets. Anthony Resnick is a lawyer representing labor unions in Southern California. He previously worked as a community organizer for Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Josh Lawson is native of Raleigh-Durham (via D.C., via Los Angeles). He occupied positions in the public and private sectors, before transitioning to law. He holds a graduate degree in Political Management, a J.D., and is presently completing an advanced law degree at Duke. He is a former Coro fellow in public affairs and White House editor, and he has worked at the private practice of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

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