LOS ANGELES – This was supposed to be the year of the Internet convention, a brave experiment in online democracy, right?
Well, gird yourself for gritty reality: It didn't happen.
Uninterested viewers simply ignored political websites during the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, and the smart money says that the same thing happened during the Democratic shindig this week.
PC Data Online, which monitors the Web-browsing habits of 120,000 Internet users, reported a 14-percent average drop in traffic to four top news sites – including msnbc.com and cnn.com – during the GOP convention compared with the previous week. Media Metrix reported similar dips. Msnbc.com was down 27 percent and cnn.com fell by 18 percent.
Some disappointed dot-com firms have scaled back political coverage.
Pseudo.com, after publicizing its 360-degree webcams at the Republican convention, decided not to install them in Los Angeles.
The conventions themselves also seemed to be anything but connected.
Sure, there were some iMacs on the Staples Center floor – one per delegation – but there was no wireless Ethernet connectivity, nor were there ports to plug in laptops. Nobody seemed to know the locations for the promised places where you could plug in your Palm Pilot to get the latest schedule.
"Coming from IETF in Pittsburgh just two weeks ago, where we had hundreds of connections and 155 Mbps bandwidth, I was rather surprised that the bandwidth here is only DSL," said one Democratic VIP who also attended the Internet Engineering Task Force's meeting. "I was less surprised that Pac Bell didn't get some of the DSL lines installed in time. The Congressional cloakroom, sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America, had to tap into the Ethernet next door."
The folks at netelection.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, say the convention websites stressed glamour over content.
"They're pretending to be interactive," says Chris Hunter, a netelection.org analyst. "They're pretending to have live chats. They're pretending to let people interact with candidates."
Hunter points out that a so-called Democratic Party chat on August 14 wasn't live, wasn't a chat, and didn't allow users to ask questions of guests like Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton.
The Republicans have had their own problems, like a convention website that went offline after the event was over. Users have been redirected to the Republican Party website instead.
Most memorable personality: One of the most memorable personalities at the convention wasn't a delegate or political type, but an alleged alien abductee named Frank. He served, along with drinks in the media lounge, fabulous tales of how he disappeared in a wormhole for 16 centuries while aliens took him on a tour of the galaxy.
"Frank is a great guy," said one lounge staffer. "People come back to see him. He's a big draw."
Weirdest conspiracy: A conspiracy theorist waylaid delegates and press outside one of the heavily-guarded entrances to the Staples Center to convince them that George W. Bush killed JFK Jr.
"He was the only Kennedy to ever acknowledge a conspiracy in his father's death.... The people who killed his father had to kill him," a handout from JFKII.com said.
Most improved food: By nature, reporters are a catty lot, and the clammy chicken thighs served at the media lounge in Philadelphia quickly became notorious. "The center of the chicken kind of crystallized," admitted a spokesman for BellSouth, which paid for the eats at both conventions. The hamburgers and hot dogs in Los Angeles, a quick poll of diners suggested, were much more edible.
Most precise counting: In a column this week, political pundit Charlie Cook included his calculations of the Electoral College math. By his count, if you include states that are leaning toward Bush, the Texas governor has assembled "250 electoral votes, 20 short of what he needs." It just so happens that Pennsylvania would give Bush 23 votes, enough to hand him the presidency. And you wondered why the GOP held its convention in Philadelphia.
Best coverage: Some of the best political coverage at the conventions has not come from Peter Jennings or Larry King – but from columnist Dave Barry. The humorist-turned-columnist penned a must-read daily write-up for National Journal's Convention Daily newspaper.
"The real highlight of the convention is expected to come at the grand finale tonight, which promises to deliver all of the drama, passion, and high-voltage excitement conjured up by the words 'Al Gore,'" Barry wrote in one piece.
