On the Electronic Campaign Trail
Politicians Realize the Potential of Web Video
By Chris Cillizza and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 22, 2007
"Playing defense is only one use of Web video. Equally important, the candidates and their staffs see Web-based video as an inexpensive and potentially significant tool for telling their campaign story without the filters of the traditional media.
Call it the YouTube effect, and it is only growing. The video-sharing site, which less than a year after its founding was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, has revolutionized the transfer of information via video, spawned a number of imitators and forced candidates to recalibrate choices, from their announcement strategies to their staffing decisions.
The accelerated use of campaign video is likely to continue throughout the 2008 campaign as technology opens new opportunities and challenges, with even more significant changes likely by 2012, when Internet Protocol television -- the equivalent of television channels based on the Web -- becomes more technically and financially feasible."
