Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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A Tale of Two Pities

Wednesday, February 7, 2001

It WAS the best of times: Good salaries. Great benefits. Stock options. Publicity.

In the Washington Post there was a small item in the business section as follows:

"Ntercept of Washington, an online opinion research firm, raised $10 million in a second round of funding led by Communicade, a division of advertising holding company Omnicom Group. The company, which changed its name from SpeakOut.com, plans to use the money for expansion."

It was the worst of times:

About 12 hours later, the following hit the wire:

"Voter.com, the ambitious political news and information site that hired Watergate sleuth Carl Bernstein, announced Monday that it would close up shop.
"The site's troubles were apparent back in November, when a flood of visitors failed to bring in significant advertising revenues and the company laid off 20 percent of its employees.
"Over the past few months, Voter.com sought in vain to collect another round of venture capital funding or merge with a deeper-pocketed political consulting firm."

As one of the few people who wrote for both Voter and SpeakOut I can tell you that both had decent business models; both were stocked with terrific writers and managers; and, both were wrong.

It was the age of wisdom:

The Dot-com Master Model - drive enough viewers to your website and advertising dollars will follow - was wrong. It wasn't just wrong for SpeakOut and Voter. It was wrong for the entire dot-com market segment.

It was the age of foolishness:

It was even more wrong for the political sites because they were attempting to create newspapers-on-the-web in the face of REAL newspapers pouring millions of dollars into their own web sites.

It was the epoch of belief:

Every flavor political web-site knew that interest would drop off following the election last November. The extended Florida situation did nothing to change anyone's projections. The question was: What will these sites do following the end of the political season?

It was the age of foolishness:

Voter.com made the decision to be the last major political site standing so that, even in the face of diminished interest there would be enough viewers, hence advertisers, to survive, if not flourish.

It was the spring of hope:

As early as last August the leaders of SpeakOut - Ron Howard and Barbara Dryer - began taking steps to conserve cash and move away from the political web-site model. SpeakOut used the technology it developed to provide near real-time polling during the two national conventions and the major party debates to morph completely into an on-line polling company called Ntercept Communications.

It was the winter of despair:

The result is, yesterday morning 45 people - many of them friends - were out of a job at Voter. 45 people - many of them friends - still had jobs at Ntercept.

And speaking of "the epoch of incredulity," now it comes to pass that not only did the Rodham-Clintons walk out with the silverware and the glasses, but they carried out sofas and chairs which had been donated to the White House not to them personally.

In true form, they blamed their staff for misleading them and it seems like a throwback to the Lincoln-Bedroom-as-Motel-Six days: "They LIKE it when you take the towels and the ashtrays. It's free advertising." And the chairs, and the sofas, and the TV sets, and the coffee maker from the lobby.

NBC's Nora O'Donnell found that the price for the digs in New York City keeps going up and up and up all the way to the penthouse. The new price tag, according to her MSNBC.com piece is more than $800,000 per year. See Nora's article here.

The Associated Press is reporting that a group of news organizations has formed a consortium to review the over counts and the under counts in Florida. "News organizations overseeing the review include The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times, The Palm Beach Post, St. Petersburg Times, Tribune Publishing, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post," said the AP piece.

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