Up until now all the media attention has been on the Koz Kiddiez and their antics. Of course, the knives are out now and it's not quite as much fun for the Kidz at the moment. Still, the got a lot of media love for a while, then a bunch of Democratic party pandering before the (inevitable) backlash happened.
Now, Hugh Hewitt is set to roll out the conservative counterweight to the Koz Konvergance. It looks very, very promising, too.
….On July 4, Salem Communications, one of the country's largest radio-station owners, will relaunch an old Web war horse called Townhall.com as a hub for its stable of stars (including Bill Bennett, Michael Medved and Hewitt himself). The hope? That "Web 2.0" wherewithal can transform what was once an op-ed clearinghouse into a single nerve center serving the separate conservative communities of talk radio and the Internet. To Hewitt, a valuable White House ally, the math is simple: add 6 million Salem fans to Townhall's 1.4 million unique monthly visitors and you've got an audience six or seven times the size of liberal site Daily Kos, the Web's biggest political blog. "We will overwhelm them," he says.
Like Daily Kos, the revamped Townhall will focus on motivating and activating the grass roots. That's where Chuck DeFeo comes in. As manager of Bush's 2004 eCampaign, DeFeo was widely credited with winning that year's war of the Web by emphasizing word-of-mouth marketing over fund-raising appeals. Soon after, he signed with Salem and, spurred by Hewitt, spent months building a group blog called Beyond the News. But when the 11-year-old Townhall (a Heritage Foundation-National Review coproduction) went on the block, DeFeo had Salem snap it up. He would still use his 2004 tools to assemble a site where "you're no longer just listening and learning about politics, but can impact the debate and make your voice heard." Only now he would have an existing brand to expand on.
So Townhall gets its second act. Every day, Salem's nationally syndicated hosts will post show summaries, blog entries and podcasts. On the air, they'll encourage listeners to visit the amped-up "Action Center," where users can "push out" petition alerts on customized e-mail lists, set and track fund-raising goals, contact their elected officials and create personal blogs—a first, DeFeo claims, for a conservative Web site. As Kerry '04 blogmaster Dick Bell has said, "the hosts will act as recruiters for the millions of people listening every day—and that could really change the dynamic in terms of impact."
Full disclosure, Hugh Hewitt has been quite kind to Blue Crab Boulevard and has said some nice things about the Crabitat. I was not asked to write anything, or even contacted, about this rollout. I have been aware it was coming from Hewitt's blog, however. It will be fascinating to see where it goes. It really is a whole new convergence of a number of technologies.
