About
The people behind Campaign 08 Blog, how each article about social media and political campaigns is put together, and what we will not publish.
Campaign 08 Blog publishes when there is something to publish. There is no schedule and no filler, and every piece stays in the archive even after we have changed our minds about it.
This site grew out of a spreadsheet. Lena Okafor had been tracking social media and political campaigns for years, mostly to stop repeating the same mistakes, and it turned out other people wanted the same answers.
The method is dull and it works. Explain what happens, explain what it costs, explain what can go wrong, then stop writing.
We buy what we write about. It is slower, it is more expensive, and it is the only arrangement that lets us say a thing was not worth it.
The full process, including corrections and commercial links, is set out on the editorial policy page.
People ask about the name. There is rarely a good story behind a domain, and there is not one here either. Campaign 08 Blog was available, it was short enough to say out loud, and it has been the name long enough now that changing it would be more confusing than keeping it.
What we do not do is predict outcomes. Nothing about social media and political campaigns works that way, and pages that pretend otherwise are selling something.
There is no house byline here. Each piece is signed, and each signature leads to everything else that person has put their name to.
Lena Okafor, Editor. Lena ran the website of a regional newspaper during the 2008 primaries and has followed online campaigning ever since. She edits the blog and writes about social platforms and civic tech.
Martin Ashby, Games writer. Martin has played political strategy and simulation games for twenty years, from Diplomacy by mail to modern election simulators. He writes about what those games get right about campaigns and what they flatten.
Rosalind Chu, Political media writer. Rosalind studies political advertising and online video and keeps an archive of campaign clips going back to 2007. She writes about ads, video and how attention gets bought.
Nothing gets filed under three headings at once. If a piece does not have an obvious home, that usually means it has not been thought through yet. The busiest sections are games, social media and politics and online video.
Tell us which line is wrong and why, at [email protected] or through the contact page. Small errors are corrected the same week. Anything that changes the advice gets a dated note at the bottom of the article.
