The Boys On the 'Net   

The campaign beat now includes hoome pages on the World Wide Web.

Mark 1996 as the year politics discovered the computer as a communications tool. The Internet, the World Wide Web and e-mail have all become resources of choice for politicians and journalists who cover them.

"A political reporter who's not online is behind the curve a little bit," says Jeffrey Weiss, a Dallas Morning News reporter. And by all accounts, journalists can only look forward to seeing more and more campaign-related activities move to the Internet and other online sites. David L. Haase, Washington correspondent for the Indianapolis Star & News, says he checks political sites on the 'Net much like "doing office rounds if you're covering a [congressional] delegation."

Much of this move to get online has come about because politicians have recognized that the Internet and other electronic communications media give them powerful new ways to get their messages out, to citizens as well as journalists.

To see what might be a prototype for how political issues are framed and communicated in the electronic world, drop in on the World Wide Web's Flat Tax Home Page (http://www.house.gov/

armey.flattax/), courtesy of House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, cosponsors of one of many flat tax proposals. You can get "flat-tax-related press releases." You can connect to the Internal Revenue Service's home page. (Don't, however, expect a discussion of the flat tax on the IRS site.)

One document on Armey's page invites you to "click here for excerpts from a representative sample of thousands of letters Mr. Armey has received." Typical: "Hurray for a flat tax!" – Kathleen, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. But viewers looking for a quote like "This flat tax is awful" will search in vain.

The page also has the obligatory summaries of the Armey-Shelby proposal and, for the truly wonked-out, the full text of their bill, which as of yet has gone nowhere in Congress. Seven months after it was introduced, the bill had a single cosponsor in the House and two in the Senate.

The Armey-Shelby page is one of many sites where you can get flat tax information. There are flat tax discussions on the "Forbes for President" page and other Web pages related to taxes. And there are numerous chat groups, mailing lists, newsgroups and bulletin boards where "ordinary people" log on to express their flat tax views.

The flat tax is just one example of how issues are being voiced on the Internet. Every serious presidential candidate has a home page on the World Wide Web (and some who aren't so serious, like Pat Paulsen). These sites offer press releases, biographies, reports of favorable polls, rosters of campaign staff, addresses of campaign offices, position papers, schedules and other information about the campaign. Sen. Bob Dole's home page solicits campaign contributions; donors sending more than $25 will be given an official "Bob Dole for President" mousepad.

Many major publications have also developed Web sites that primarily provide access to political and government information. And many reporters are finding that it's getting so they can't cover aspects of politics and government without first hooking up to the online world. They are also discovering that cyberspace needs to be covered as an increasingly important part of the campaigns themselves.

Recognizing this trend, several newspapers have assigned journalists to write about the electronic campaigns.

Brock Meeks is covering the 1996 campaigns in his new capacity as chief Washington correspondent for Wired magazine and Hotwired, its electronic counterpart, and is up against a 6 p.m. daily deadline. He uses the home pages of the presidential candidates frequently. "I can often find their press releases faster in the home page than on PR Newswire or the fax machine," he says. When Meeks was searching for information on the flat tax, he used the PoliticsUSA site, offered by a partnership between National Journal and the American Political Network, to find references to past stories, which he passed along to a researcher. "This all happens within 15 minutes," Meeks says. "It would take hours to track down and at much greater expense" using conventional means.

PoliticsUSA is one of the most popular Internet sites among political journalists. Doug Bailey, a former Republican political consultant and cofounder of the American Political Network, says the aim is to make the Internet site "a first-stop shopping" location for journalists and others interested in politics. The site offers extensive coverage of the 1996 presidential candidates, but its most useful features for journalists are the archives of The Hotline, a daily roundup of political news from sources around the nation published by Bailey's company, and a fully searchable edition of the Almanac of American Politics, considered by many to be the political bible.

Several other major organizations have also entered the market: Congressional Quarterly offers American Voter '96; the Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC News are collaborating on a venture called Electionline; Time and CNN have joined forces to operate a site called AllPolitics; and C-SPAN is operating a site called "Campaign '96." Dozens of local and regional newspapers also are devoting extensive coverage of the campaign through their electronic editions. Most of these sites are not aimed directly at journalists, but many have proved useful to reporters.

It's not surprising that Meeks uses the Internet to supplement his reporting. He is a pioneer in the use of electronic communications systems by journalists, and his publication is devoted to coverage of the online world. But scores of other reporters and publications are also discovering the value of having an Internet connection when it comes to covering politics.

"I'm just starting to explore, but I anticipate it's going to be an increasingly useful tool," says Kathy Kiely, Washington bureau chief of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Kiely says she expects Internet connections to be "really helpful on the road. That's where you need it." For example, she envisions being able to connect to the Little Rock paper's home library while she's traveling with President Bill Clinton during the 1996 campaign.

Kiely, who took a computer-assisted journalism seminar in 1993, might have moved to using electronic tools sooner, but until recently her bureau, like many others around the country, didn't have the computer horsepower it takes for a full-scale Internet hookup. Editors and managers are discovering the need to upgrade their equipment now that the use of the computer has become more integral to journalism. Many journalists, like Indianapolis' Haase, find their office computers are less suited to Internet-based reporting than their home machines. "I do a lot of trolling the 'Net there," says Haase, who writes a weekly column about the Internet and politics. It appears in the newspaper's electronic version, StarNews Online, but not in the printed editions.

Haase isn't covering the presidential campaign daily, though he used the 'Net to keep track of the ill-fated presidential campaign of Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar day to day. Among other things, he subscribed to a University of New Hampshire-based electronic mail service that tracks the candidates for the Republican nomination. Haase thinks he could get a story off the Internet every other day.

Electronic reporting doesn't often produce information that reporters couldn't find through some other means. But it makes it possible to access large amounts of data more quickly and more easily.

"It's a matter of rearranging my time," says Rick Dunham, national political correspondent for Business Week. He checks America Online and other sources to keep up with breaking stories. And he drops in on presidential candidate Internet sites and other locations daily. For example, he says, it's been possible this year to track schedules "without having to call nine different people."

Haase finds easy access one of the Internet's most important advantages. "If I need to compare positions I can call three campaigns, play a little phone tag with press secretaries and then get a canned statement. Or I can go to Project Vote Smart," an independent political organization based in Oregon that encourages participation in the political process by collecting and disseminating candidate information online. That kind of access is really important to many regional reporters in Washington, as well as to those who aren't based there. "If you're not the Washington Post or the New York Times or one of the networks, it's hard to get one of these campaigns to respond to you in a timely manner," Haase says.

Journalists also are finding that electronic mail can give them quick and direct access to sources, and can also serve as a fast way to receive press releases and other material. Dunham has begun to make extensive use of electronic mail. When the Democraýic Senatorial Campaign Committee began to issue a weekly update, Dunham asked for it electronically and the committee obliged. "I look at a press release that comes electronically," he says. And a message in his e-mail account "catches my attention more than some of the fax stuff."

Eventually, many observers expect electronic mail to become a primary means of political communication. Mail lists let candidates communicate directly with a targeted audience of committed supporters. For now it appears that many politicians, especially members of Congress, are wary of e-mail, which could, in time, overwhelm their ability to answer constituent correspondence.

But Doug Bailey predicts e-mail will become the most common method of political fundraising. Pat Buchanan's campaign, which many journalists think runs one of the best candidate home pages, also has one of the most active mail lists.

Some campaigns and political organizations are starting to use e-mail for direct mail. Ross Perot's United We Stand America Party relies on e-mail to keep the movement's adherents in touch with one another. Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News recently began using e-mail to help his newspaper keep track of the often fractious disputes that have characterized the Perot camp since the 1992 campaign. Getting access to some of this e-mail might become a problem, especially when the campaigns become more sophisticated about its use and learn ways to shut out those they don't want eavesdropping.

Weiss and other journalists find the online world to be a good way of keeping track of what ordinary citizens are saying about the candidates and political issues. Every online service has areas devoted to political discussions. The Internet newsgroups, known collectively as Usenet, also can be busy sites for lively talk.

The chat groups are "the cyberspace equivalent to hanging out in New Hampshire in a coffee house," Meeks says. Haase says he checks in with the newsgroups to "see what the crazies are talking about. It hasn't produced a lot of copy, but it has kept me informed."

But the journalists who use these groups to keep in touch with political feelings are wary of them as sources. Few reporters would feel safe quoting from an electronic poster who had not been contacted directly to confirm the information and the identity of the writer.

Chuck Raasch, who's covering the campaign for Gannett News Service, says it's possible "this is going to be the new avenue of underground attack stuff." Raasch says that already a school board race in Great Falls, Montana, was affected by negative material that was spread by way of bulletin boards and other electronic means. Tracking such attacks could be made more difficult in the electronic realm, given that users who know what they are doing can post material anonymously. Michael Tackett, national political writer at the Chicago Tribune, agrees. He says the electronic communications systems offer ways to "attack someone in a spurious, sinister way." He wouldn't be surprised to see ads similar to the infamous Willie Horton spot from the 1988 campaignappear on the Internet.

ýeiss says the most important reason to monitor the electronic aspects of modern campaigns is to determine whether "online actually is affecting the non-online universe." He says that for electronic campaigning to "have any real meaning it has to affect the outside world."

Most observers don't think that the Internet and other online politicking have made that leap yet. Says David Fink, politics and government editor at the Hartford Courant, "I have no illusions. I don't believe a huge number of people are going to get their news from the Internet this year." The numbers of hits on the presidential candidate home pages remains relatively small. Still, Fink has decided to devote about half of one reporter's time to tracking computerized campaigning.

There's also one other sign of the importance of this new medium to politics: Political humor has moved to the Internet. Several satirical political sites have popped up to make fun at the expense of presidential candidates. On one you can watch Bob Dole's head explode. The Forbes campaign is lampooned on another. Unwary visitors have to be careful: The addresses for these pages are very similar to the addresses for the real deal. And the official Buchanan pages contain what appears to be a poke at the press: In some Web browsers, the background graphic for the Buchanan press page is a stone wall.

With campaigns getting more computer-savvy by the day, the way of the future for political journalists is clear: Get connected and stay connected. "The people who are using it now are pioneers," says Haase. "In another four years it will be standard. By 2004, it will be assumed that reporters will get most of their information off the Internet." l