Web, White, and Blue

It's Thursday in the City of Brotherly Love, and if Doug Bailey is figuratively standing at the intersection of democracy and the Internet, he's literally standing there as well. Bailey's operation, FreedomChannel.com, is in Media Tent Four, one of four mammoth big tops outside the Republican National Convention. Philadelphia, the location of the first televised political convention, in 1948, is now hosting the first substantial Internet-media contingent to cover a national election.

Media Tent Four is experiencing dotcom fever in a serious way. Around the corner from "radio row," where Ollie North chats on the air with Ted Nugent, and Matt Drudge opines into a microphone, 35 different news outlets have appropriated 10,000 square feet of floor space, their folding tables loaded with equipment. Here, in Internet Alley, Tom Brokaw offers daily observations from the set of MSNBC.com. Nearby, in the warm glow of ABCNews.com's klieg lights, Sam Donaldson reports on the convention.

Bailey, 68, a tall, soft-spoken man with fine features, is in the business of asking what the avalanche of new media means for the political process. A former Republican political consultant and cocreator of the Hotline, the first inside-the-beltway online political-news briefing, Bailey recently cofounded three political-information Web sites -- FreedomChannel.com, Web White & Blue 2000, and Youth-e-Vote 2000 -- that bring the capabilities of technology and media convergence to bear on civic dialogue. His favorite of the three, Youth-e-Vote 2000, will host the first-ever national online student vote, and, by extension, America's first online election. Bailey expects the project to draw up to 10 million participants from grammar schools and secondary schools across the country. The results will be announced five days before Election Day.

During the Republican National Convention, Bailey makes his home at FreedomChannel.com, in Media Tent Four's Internet Alley. FreedomChannel.com's operation consists of a large banner, several whiteboards, four folding tables, piles of computer gear, and a digital video camera pointed at a chair in front of a gray backdrop. Every half hour or so, someone like Newt Gingrich comes along, plants himself in the folding chair, and speaks into the digital camera.

FreedomChannel.com is a nonpartisan, nonprofit Web site that uses streaming video to give voters direct access to candidates' statements. The site provides every presidential, senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial candidate with "Net time" of up to 90 seconds per topic on a drop-down menu of issues ranging from world-trade policy, to race relations, to education, to Medicare. At press time, there were roughly 1,500 such video clips available to voters, and the site expects to have more than 2,500 come Election Day.

"When television was invented," says Bailey, "nobody thought much about how it was going to change politics, or if we could use it to improve the process. So we're asking ourselves those questions, trying to figure out how to use the new technology to reach people, because the medium has the power to change politics."

Truth be known, Bailey is not so much standing at the intersection of old and new media as he is sitting there -- among several tables belonging to CNN, just a few feet away from FreedomChannel.com. And he can't sit there long without being greeted by one roving honcho or another.

"Hi Doug," says Brian Hartman, politics editor at ABCNews.com, happening by. "You being interviewed?"

"I am," says Bailey. "How do you like our new digs? We've taken over CNN." "A FreedomChannel-CNN merger?"

"Yeah. Pretty good, huh? And we're coming after you next."

Hartman laughs. Actually, what Bailey has in mind isn't so much a takeover of the major-media world as a coalition with it. Last spring, Bailey, together with former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry, helped bring together various Internet outlets for Web White & Blue 2000, a nonpartisan project initiated by the Markle Foundation.

Continuing through Election Day, Web White & Blue 2000 is hosting a daily online issues-oriented exchange among the presidential campaigns. The unedited Rolling Cyber Debate is carried simultaneously on the 17 Web White & Blue charter sites -- high-traffic sites that together reach 85% of America's Internet audience. ABCNews. com is one of those sites, as are America Online, CNN.com's allpolitics.com, Excite, MSNBC.com, MTV.com's ChooseorLose.com, and so on. Web White & Blue 2000's front page provides links to political-news stories at these top outlets.

"Web White & Blue gives campaigns the ability to present the same material, the same way, and reach 85% of the online audience," says Bailey. "And just think of what it means for you, as a voter, to be able to push a button and watch the candidates talk about issues that you're interested in. You'll be able to make informed judgments. And we both -- hey, Ann?" Bailey interrupts himself. "Who are you looking for?"