Knight Ridder News Service: The Net President

San Jose Mercury News; Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Presidential Aspirant Howard Dean Seeks to be a Candidate of the Web and by the Web. Support for Dean’s Campaign has Spread Like Wildfire in Chat Rooms and Through Blogs, in Part Because Organizers Understand the Self-Governing Nature of the Internet.

By Dan Gillmor

On July 10, Zephyr Teachout posted a short note on the Weblog for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. She was looking for programmers to help on several projects, one of which would let volunteers around the country create a social network to share their best ideas more efficiently.

She quickly got scores of responses. Members of an unaffiliated group called Hack4Dean, since renamed DeanSpace, were among those who answered the call, and a site she’s calling “Visible Volunteers” is taking shape.

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August 18, 2003 | Filed Under Dean, News Mentions | Comment 

Boston Globe: Net Gains for Dean

Candidate Increasing Funds, Support Via the Web

By Joanna Weiss

Of all the technological tools they have used to draw people to Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, staffers never expected to get so much buzz from a baseball bat.

As cyber things go, it’s not especially high-tech: a picture of a bat, posted on Dean’s website, www.deanforamerica.com during the June fund-raising drive. Supporters who reloaded the campaign website every half-hour could watch the donations grow, like mercury rising in a thermometer. When it was first proposed, some staff members thought it was, frankly, a little cheesy.

But ever since the June drive ended, die-hard supporters have posted pleas on Dean’s campaign “weblog,” begging the staff to “bring back the bat.” Soon enough, it returned, as a cheerleading tool for one of the campaign’s more audacious ideas: last month’s “Cheney Challenge,” in which the campaign famously earned nearly $500,000, surpassing the $300,000 Vice President Dick Cheney took in at a South Carolina fund-raiser.

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August 11, 2003 | Filed Under Dean, News Mentions | Comment