Playbook 2012_ The Right Fights Back (Politico Inside Election 2012) - Mike Allen [1]
Jon Meacham’s work at Random House is likewise a manifestation of someone obsessing over the question “What’s next?” Like people at POLITICO, he and his Random House colleagues are not content to live their lives in a defensive crouch, squinting longingly through the mist at a fast receding golden era. Far better to aim to create a new golden era based on the abundant publishing opportunities that exist in the here and now.
Optimism in the media business is partly a choice—a matter of willpower. But it is more than that. It is true, undeniably, that the digital age has not on balance been friendly to long-form narrative and argument. The Web has instead put a premium on speed, brevity, and monomania for the story of the moment. No problem with that, I must hasten to add, as editor of a publication that has prospered through speed, brevity, and monomania. But I agree strongly with a view advanced by my colleague Jim VandeHei: these traits, while absolutely necessary on certain types of stories, no longer constitute a distinctive comparative advantage. In the age of Twitter, there are virtually infinite competitors on these fronts. A publication like POLITICO must harness its future to original content that cannot easily be replicated by competitors. We have seen many times of late—most recently during POLITICO’s reporting on Herman Cain’s travails with accusations of sexual harassment—the ability of enterprise reporting to “drive the conversation,” in the parlance of our newsroom, in national politics.
People in the new era, like those in the old era or in any era, like good stories. It is how we understand human experience and human character. This timeless truth is combining with technological advances—iPads and Kindles and their competitors—to make reading in-depth stories in electronic form a far more congenial experience. In sum: long-form narrative may be making a revival in the digital age. At least we are prepared to put some chips on that square.
If this volume works, it is in large measure due to the special chemistry between Evan and Mike. At first, their differences seem most striking. From the magazine world, Evan has been writing stories like this one his entire career. From a newspaper background, Mike grew up telling stories in staccato bursts. But these first-blush appearances can be misleading. Evan has an intensely topical and news-driven sensibility. We need car chases, he would sometimes say when describing what he wanted in the narrative. Mike, meanwhile, beneath his hard-news facade is not simply an in-the-moment reporter but one keenly perceptive of character and the long-term forces that shape any given day’s news.
We see the results of their journalistic rapport on every page of this chronicle of the opening phase of the 2012 contest, with its special emphasis on the Republican side: in the stories of Mitt Romney’s efforts to turn weakness into strength and claim the mantle of inevitability, to Rick Perry’s blastoff and (partial) return to earth as voters and donors alike came to inspect the goods, the Cain imbroglio, and even the fateful decisions of people like Sarah Palin and Haley Barbour not to run for president. As Barbour discovered, there’s nothing quite like reading a campaign “oppo report” on yourself.
What Mike and Evan do in this first volume is what we try to do every day at POLITICO: defend and vindicate traditional journalism and its cardinal values, even while updating the craft for the new age we live in.
That they do it so well is one more reason for optimism—and for more experimentation—about the future of things we care about.
—John F. Harris, Editor-in-Chief
When Mitt Romney ran for president the first time around, in 2008, he started out too cocky and wound up gun-shy. One