Presidential politics in the BlackBerry era

We've long been in the information age.  Speed and accessibility of information are of vital importance, especially for those of us who work in the communications industry.

So, to me, it seems strange that President-elect Barack Obama will have to put aside his BlackBerry.  I was simply puzzled when I read that President Bush does not use e-mail and Obama will have to give up the correspondence as well.  Isn't rapidity of information important to the most important political figure in the world?

Of course, Jeff Zeleny goes on to mention in his article that hacking is one of the main reasons behind this, but matters of national security be damned!

Although this is one aspect of new media that Obama will not be able to utilize, I think that it will be interesting to see what kinds of media he does use when he takes over the White House.  After all, this is a campaign which has broken barriers in terms of how media is used in presidential campaigns.  Surely his administration has some tricks up their sleeves for when takes over the hot seat.  

On a related note, I think I'm going to be getting a BlackBerry Storm for Christmas!!  The Storm, which is scheduled to be released Friday, is the newest touch screen competitor for the iPhone.  I aspire to be as cool as Dr. Shamp, but I know I can never achieve that level of sophistication with a mere BlackBerry.  But you know what?  I happen to like Verizon...a lot.  

Campaigns 2.0

Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks. Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.

The use of new media in this presidential election is something that I've talked about in previous blog posts.  There are many forms of media that have taken an increased role in 2008, and this article from The New York Times talks about that as well. 

The author talks about three forms of media that are having a big role now that weren't big media in 2004.  Facebook, YouTube, and Huffington Post have all been great disseminators of political news and discourse in 2008.  

I find this interesting too:

“We’re constantly experimenting with videos,” said Joe Rospars, Mr. Obama’s new-media director. In fact, the most popular videos on BarackObama.com weren’t TV ads; they were biographical and Web-only spots.

I wish I was Barack Obama's new-media director.  Oh well, there's always 2012.