Greg Sargent has learned that President Obama has hired longtime online guru Jesse Lee to be his blog outreach coordinator.
The Obama team has hired the well-known blog online operative Jesse Lee as the new White House Online Programs Director, a White House source confirms.We love Jesse (which is probably the kiss of death). He was excellent as the blog outreach guy at the DCCC, and did a great job with the Obama campaign (via the DNC) when they let him.
Lee is well respected in the blogosphere, having run the house blog for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, more recently, done blog outreach for the DNC during last year’s presidential campaign. Lee’s gig will be to integrate the Online Programs department with other departments and agencies, as well as to handle most blog outreach.
Here's Markos' take:
I asked Markos Moulitsas what he thinks of the new hire. He said that the key questions are how closely linked the new department will be to the White House’s communications shop and whether the blog outreach director will have real access to key White House decision-makers.I don't totally agree with Markos. While we are media, we're more than media. We are activists and advocates too - akin to the ACLU, the unions, the gay lobby, and more. We're not even partisan media, such as the Nation, in my view. We're far more activist-oriented, and, I'd argue, many of us are long-time political operatives as well (though I've also worked as a professional journalist).
“We are media, and should be treated as communications outlets,” Moulitsas said.
All that is to say that bloggers are a bit of a mutt, and should be treated as such (after all, am I a blogger, a liberal activist, a 24-year-Washington-insider, a gay rights leader, a prominent Greek-American, or a journalist?) . If you corner us off with the mainstream media, you'll be missing out on harnessing our advocacy. But if you treat us simply as activists, you miss out on our media megaphone. In the end, the one thing that would hamper Jesse's job, in my view, is to treat him as a techie. Blog outreach long-since graduated from the days when it was the domain of the computer guy. The computer guy is a genius, but he's not a political genius. The blog outreach person in any organization has to have political and media savvy, and good 'ole activist/organizing sense. He has to be multi-disciplinary, and thus needs to straddle several departments, with a leg in media, political, and even tech (I know, 3 legs).
And most importantly, he has to be connected to what's going on in the White House. It's of no use, to us or the WH, having someone work with us who isn't really authorized to speak on behalf, negotiate on behalf, of the administration. We are here to help, when our interests coincide. But we need someone who's truly part of the WH team, and not simply passing us press releases. Jesse is that man. If they let him.
