First, read this Time magazine essay about how the news cycle has changed for the White House with the web and it’s ability to get info out as it happens. Contributing to this is cable news channels with their wide-variety of choices.
This means that politicians need to be constantly monitoring what’s said about them in all these different places all the time and they need to be able to respond.
But read down a few paragraphs in the essay and you will see that Obama has created his “own media empire” with the 13 million he has on his e-mail list and who subscribe to his periodic e-newsletters.
The lesson: Politicians and political candidates need to be collecting e-mail addresses from people. They can be gold if they’re used properly.
How many of you already do this? Do you ask people for theirs?