Keegan Kyle is a senior studying journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

EIGHT DAYS AFTER STARTING his first term in office, March 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat down at his desk and let political reporters know there was a new sheriff in town. The Sunday evening broadcast marked FDR's first Fireside Chat. He wasn't speaking to journalists. Rather, he was speaking around them.

Suspicious that newspapers were biased against his New Deal proposals, FDR used the emerging technology of radio to reach constituents directly. He explained complex initiatives in simple terms and a conversational tone. Gaining wide support from listeners, FDR, unlike any before him, used the broadcasts to add character to his presidency.

Were he a candidate for the presidency today, FDR would probably be exploring another growing medium: the Internet. Seventy-four years have passed since the first Fireside Chat, but the successors to FDR are facing a similar question: In the corral of political information, how do I use the Web to outshoot the gunslingers?

Online communication, especially blogs and video, will make the 2008 presidential election unlike any previous information shootout. Candidates have a fresh array of tactics to speak around political reporters while voters are experimenting with new avenues of free speech. News organizations that embrace this technology shift, rather than viewing it as a threat, will learn the deep lesson of the Fireside Chats: Despite a managed message and personal connection, newspapers remained America’s primary source of political information.

With a clear audience demand for frequently updated content, newspapers now compete in this brass-knuckles arena with other media, independent outlets such as bloggers and now presidential campaigns.

The never-ending need for online content has actually increased the importance of newspapers, said Dhavan Shah, journalism and political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although some online communities do independent reporting, blogs in particular rely heavily on newspapers for topics of discussion. The situation “suddenly makes newspapers again the center of political discourse,” Shah said.

Together, the newspaper and the independent blog could make a powerful combination for political coverage during the 2008 election, Shah added. While many newspapers offer their own blog complement, independent blogs offer a large base of people for focused commentary on ideological issues while newspapers’ print products generate objective news to spur discussion. “It’s a good thing in the sense [blogs] provide the public with more perspectives," Shah said. "My concern would be if people only get their news through blogs.”

While professional reporters have filled the objective role in news, blogs are often opinionated and targeted toward specialized interests. The popular blog Daily Kos, for example, is monitored closely by the progressive-minded, and the blog Little Green Footballs is followed by conservatives. “Blog readers are probably already the heaviest newspaper readers,” Shah said, even though they may not pay to subscribe. “Without newspapers, bloggers wouldn't have a lot to comment on.”

Susan Gardner, a contributing editor to Daily Kos, said there is more media coverage today of blogs and blogging activity. In part, she said, newspapers have skewered blogs for making claims about breaking news when the mainstream media claim to be the only franchise of verified reporting. “What I hope comes out of it is actually counter to this - that a lot of traditional media focus less on the ‘breaking’ aspect of campaign coverage and turn their experience to fact-checking, analysis and research - looking at the bigger picture,” Gardner said. “Smart media outlets will stop feeling a rivalry with blogs and view them as amplifiers to get a more time-intensive campaign story out.”

Shah agrees that media need to be more accepting of blogs as a supplement to the news cycle. He said newspapers need to “embrace the idea that journalists have inherently lost some of their authority” and “user-created content is now part of the process.”

The political weight of the blogging community has gradually increased into a powerhouse that no lawmaker or member of the media would dare shun completely. Scott Anderson, senior political producer for CNN.com, said blog coverage of campaign efforts this election has pushed journalists to look beyond campaigns for interesting stories. “Rather than following the script that campaigns have laid out for the day, they might read blogs and see that a topic is really catching, then write about it,” he said in an e-mail. “Or, they might see a particular video clip is getting heavy play on YouTube and ask a candidate to respond or explain it.”

Newspapers have reported on a wide variety of topics produced by online communities, including everything from YouTube’s goofy fascination with John Edward’s hair to the candidates’ stances on divisive issues. Much of the political banter today happens in powerful online communities where targeted readership provides a grass-roots base for candidates.

When campaigns first began posting at Daily Kos, Gardner said, they would put up press releases and expect that to satisfy readers. “Not by a long shot. We’re a community that demands engagement and answers,” said Gardner, adding that most campaigns got the idea and now post unique commentary about policy, legislation, votes and issues from the everyday user. Some questions are answered by campaign staff while other issues go directly to the candidate.

The first YouTube debate in July on CNN demonstrated the rising voice of online communities. It was one of the most publicized events using online video, even though the technology has been popular for several years. It marked a turning point for journalists who have simply used independent blogs to generate story ideas and questions.

Stephen Smith, online director of communications for Republican candidate Mitt Romney, said the challenge for media and campaigns in the upcoming election will be managing the Internet’s vast output of information and dialogue. “We do our best to monitor and respond to the full range of information out there,” he said. “We do take Web video seriously because an increasingly large number of people are getting their news and information through that medium.”

For political reporters, the popularity of frequently updated content produced by campaigns, bloggers and competition will pressure the news cycle like never before. “If you like unpredictability, this is your time. If you like stability, you’re not going to find it. There is no way to know what the defining moment will be in the election because it could come from anywhere,” Anderson said.

Comfort with unpredictability comes more easily to cable news channels such as CNN that are used to a 24-hour news cycle. Newspapers have traditionally worked at a slower-paced print cycle that may be more stressed by the changing landscape. Ben Smith, a blogger for politico.com, said media can adapt to the Internet by reshaping the news cycle to better accommodate ongoing developments. “The Web in general has transformed the news cycle into a constant thing, with a story undergoing several twists a day and with the press able to report things in little bites as well as big opuses,” he said.

This system will put more pressure on journalists to produce content, but Gardner said bloggers may be able to provide some relief. Access to the Internet has produced more watchful eyes on government, even though those eyes may not be formally trained in journalism. Journalists today are no longer alone in the duty “to ferret out every fact,” Gardner added.

For bloggers, the emergence of online video has helped explain and cite specific examples during a posted argument. “Standing alone, video has a kind of surreal feel, a kind of context-free environment,” Gardner said. “Blogs are using video links more and more to underscore a point made visually or to actually comment on the points being made in the videos.”

Some newspapers have picked up on the trend. The Washington Post, for example, produces and posts video while others link Associated Press video to related stories on their Web sites. Campaigns and large news organizations say online video in the political arena has the potential to grow more than any other medium before the 2008 election with increased use by news organizations, independent bloggers and campaigns.

The increased use of high-speed Internet across the country opens new markets of readers to newspapers and blogs and new markets of voters to campaigns. This expansion of the online community is a significant shift from the small group of journalists who have traditionally moderated and reported presidential campaigns. Candidates are now being forced to address a larger number of questions raised by the unique perspectives of bloggers and other Internet users.

This increased discourse is one good effect of multimedia on the election, according to Anderson. “The number of topics discussed during the campaign will be broadened, and candidates will be forced to address issues that the mainstream media would never have raised,” he said.

One question during the first Democratic YouTube debate demonstrated this addition to political reporting: Should African-Americans be given reparations for slavery? “There were questions asked by users that no journalist would have asked during a normal presidential debate,” Anderson said.

Other questions and topics have been raised by campaigns themselves, with blogs and video becoming more popular routes to voters. Smith of the Romney campaign said the Internet has become a valuable medium for candidates to demonstrate innovation and personality. “We’re trying to break ground and do new things to reach different voters,” he said.

Interactive content produced by campaigns is occasionally genuine, such as Elizabeth Edwards’ blog. But there is a danger the Internet could “lead to even more carefully rehearsed and stultifying public appearances,” Gardner said. Rather than trying to control the online community, Gardner hopes campaigns realize honesty is the best policy in a digital election. Feeding voters critical opinions is risky compared to prefabricated statements, she added, but it could prove worthwhile since personality is a key factor for many voters. “The first people who do this may face the fiercest fire, but they may also in the long run get the biggest gain out of being ‘real’ first,” Gardner added.

With so many candidates in an open race, Gardner said the multimedia shootout will likely be an interesting one for news organizations to report and bloggers to comment on. Democratic campaigns have received more publicity for their online efforts - Hillary Clinton on response time to random blog items and Barack Obama on social networking - but both parties are experimenting in new territory.

Katie Harbath, of the Rudy Giuliani campaign, said the amount of online multimedia has allowed campaigns to “spread their message and interact with voters” on an unprecedented level. “There are innovations that will happen over the next one and a half years we haven’t even thought of yet, and it’s exciting to find a way to integrate these new tools with your traditional methods of campaigning,” she said.

Although campaigns are interacting with blog followers online more frequently, Gardner said there's still area for improvement. “I always find myself inwardly asking campaigns: If you were addressing a stadium-sized crowd of pretty well-funded, high knowledge activists, would you really just send a staffer out on the stage, read a press release and depart? Or would you think it worth an hour or two of your time to try and engage them, energize them and inform them?”

While this level of interactivity would have played to FDR’s strengths, some are concerned the Internet may encourage campaigns to restrict public access. “The bad effect [of the Internet] will be that candidates will be less spontaneous in public and much more careful with what they say in public because each word or phrase will be dissected on a thousand blogs and posted on YouTube,” Anderson said. “One misstep could end up being played on YouTube a million times and totally destroy a candidate over the course of a few days.”

Stances, previous votes and almost all comments made by candidates (public or not) are more closely monitored than in any previous presidential election. Romney was unknowingly videotaped during a radio interview questioning his Mormon beliefs, a subject he has frequently declined to address. The video jumped to YouTube and quickly became a popular watch, taking the management of the issue out of the candidate’s hands in new ways.

With a year to go, it’s clear the Internet has potential to be more firestorm than fireside for candidates. For news media that embrace the Web, it may well dramatically expand their depth and reach. And for voters, the medium — newspapers, radio, online — may well be irrelevant. The only question is what information can be trusted when choosing who governs. *