WASHINGTON -- Here's an inviting and cautionary note from an Old Media geezer to the new-school bloggers, Webheads and YouTubers: Welcome. You're a valuable addition to the presidential landscape. Just don't get too full of yourselves.
I am moved to inject this little dose of realism into all of the hoopla that has followed the unmasking of the man who created and placed the hilarious "Big Sister" ad that lampoons Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on YouTube.
Drawing more than 2 million hits in its first days, the spoof re-edits Apple's classic "Big Brother" Super Bowl TV ad to portray Clinton as an Orwellian talking-head image on a huge screen that is shattered by a feisty young woman with an iPod in her ears. The ad closes with the Web address of Clinton's rival presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama.
The Illinois senator denied any association with the ad, noting with a wry chuckle that his campaign didn't even have the technical capabilities for such a slick job. Actually, it indirectly did. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post political blog, put what she described as a team of 30 Web staffers to work. They found the ad's creator was Philip de Vellis, 33, a Democratic Web tech wizard who worked at Blue State Digital, the Washington-based Internet firm whose founders include Joe Rospars, who oversees the Obama Web site.
That's embarrassing for Obama, who has presented himself as above that old mudslinging low-blow politics as usual. But, in fairness to him and to Clinton, whose fans already have posted anti-Obama clips on YouTube and elsewhere, a candidate can't be held responsible for actions by all of his supporters.
And, in the Internet age, the actions of supporters and detractors are greatly magnified, as De Vellis knows. He was quickly fired from Blue State Digital, according to his boss, although he says that he quit, in an online essay that Huffington invited him to write. But the rising Web-based movement that he represents goes on, he writes.
"This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last," he writes. "The game has changed." Well, yes, but not by all that much.
The promise of YouTube, the most popular of the sites that enable users to post their own videos, is in its slogan "Broadcast Yourself."
But what do you really get, YouTubers? Merely access to compete as just one more voice among the multitudes trying to grab a piece of viewers' time.
Go to YouTube and you'll join millions of users, but you'll also find a ka-zillion choices, most of which seem to be teenagers pantomiming tunes in front of their bedroom computers.
The "Hillary 1984" clip had unusual impact for one simple reason: It accomplished what it set out to do. It was clever, well-crafted and it delivered its message with a "Pow!" High impact.
But, was anyone's mind changed by it? Did anyone who was prepared to vote for Clinton decide, after watching this ad, to switch his vote? That's hard to say because no one knows. At best, the ad was an electronic version of an editorial cartoon. It was clever, amusing, provocative and even polarizing. But that's about the limits of the power any of us opinion-mongers have.
That's not to say that YouTube or blogs sometimes don't make a difference. The video clip of former Sen. George Allen, for example, flinging his weird "macaca" slur at a researcher for his opposition undoubtedly greased the slide that cost the Virginia Republican his Senate seat last year. But that clip wasn't opinion. It was factual reporting. That's another inescapable truth of the new media: Facts still matter.
The new media, like the old, bear the burden of competition, keeping facts straight, and, inevitably, feeding the beast of audience hunger`. That's what the framers of the 1st Amendment had in mind--and all they had were quill pens and movable type.
As Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Journalism School, reported in The New Yorker last August, bloggers have empowered a countless number of people to be journalists, but most of what they report is rehashed from traditional media. The proper comparison for most blogs, he said, is more often to a church newsletter than it is to The New York Times. In that spirit, most YouTube submissions are closer to home movies than to, say, CBS' "60 Minutes."
So, welcome to the game, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters and the rest. Your voices are welcome. But don't expect to rewrite the rules overnight. Whether old or new media, we all serve our audiences. The gadgets may change, but "the game" remains the same.
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board. E-mail: cptime@aol.com
