Did you watch President Barak Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Did you watch it on television, or on You Tube, or on Yahoo, or on…?
You had so many choices because last night’s State of the Union went social. Social media outlets from Facebook to Twitter has been used to promote and/or report on the annual speech to target teens, Millennials, and anyone else who consider themselves Internet savvy. And that’s not all. Traditionally, a news embargo (a gentlemen’s agreement between media and sources) was enforced to not reveal the State of the Union until after the address had been delivered. And yes, they do send the press a copy of the President’s speech trusting it won’t leak to the public. This year was different. A copy of the speech was sent to blog platform and alternative journalism website Medium.com?to make the speech public even before delivery. White House Adviser Dan Pheiffer called this preview ‘SOTU spoilers’. The Obama administration has used Twitter to preview technological issues such as cyber security and the broadband Internet debate.
President Obama knows support among 18-35 year olds is slipping. This is a great way to win them back.??And like President Obama himself said, “I’m done campaigning…I won both mine.” So now it’s less about winning elections, or helping win people elections. It’s about leaving a lasting legacy for future generations. And using tools and strategies like this could set the stage for the next president and the one after that to keep the younger generation involved. But my question is why did the administration use Medium to break the age old news embargo? Why not CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN? I think it’s because more people are blogging and reading turning to alternative media than ever before, and they know it. So this is the kind of media they’re reaching out to. So what does this say about the state of mainstream media today?