I am attending the National Taxpayers Union annual conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. this weekend with Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and have just sat-in on a session on media relations featuring speakers Deroy Murdock and John Fund. Readers may not know that both Murdock and Fund, both professional journalists with national reputations, also both hail from California and were active in conservative politics in the Golden State as young men.
In fact, Murdock not only was a southern California conservative activitist, he was also a YAF member, and attended the 1983 YAF National Convention in Los Angeles (my last as National Chairman). And Fund, from San Francisco, has a YAF and Movement pedigree as well.
Murdock moved-on to Georgetown University where he received his BA, and then attended New York University, where he earned an MBA. Today he is nationally syndicated through Scripps-Howard and is associated with the Hoover Institute and the Atlas Foundation, and lives in New York City.
Fund worked for a California Republican state legislator as a young man, and got his break about 25 years ago when he was hired to be Deputy Editorial writer at the Wall Street Journal, and now writes his own column for the Journal. Today he also frequently appears as a guest on television news programs and writes on the Internet.
Fund’s message today was about grass-roots groups accessing the "new media." He contrasted the situation of 27 years ago when Ronald Reagan first ran and won the Presidency, according to Fund "in spite of the media," at a time when there were just 3 national news magazines, 3 national networks, and 200 radio stations, with no internet, cable, extensive talk radio, and no real national newspaper. Fund said that Reagan won election at a time when there were few opportunities to get a real message out, and when the media could literally "black-out" messages it did not like.
But today, Fund said, there is no excuse for conservatives to not be able to get their message out. As an example, he cited a recent press release sent out by Michael Moore challenging Fred Thompson to debate health care (and to promote his new movie "Sicko" lauding the communist health care system in Cuba). Moore issued the press release at 7 am, but by noon the same day, Thompson and his team had produced a detailed video response that they put on the Internet unbriding Moore. The video received one million hits and effectively squashed Moore’s attempt to sully Thompson and promote his movie. Fund said the cost of production of the Thompson video was just $137.
Another interesting note was about changes in radio. 25 years ago AM radio was on a huge down-swing, as people were switching to FM. But talk radio, starting with Rush Limbaugh, revolutionized AM radio, and stations have grown to nearly 2,000 nationally. Fund said he just attended a convention of talk radio folks. He said by 2009, it is expected that every new car in America will have an iPod dock, and the "talk" is that now it is FM music stations are gravely threatened by personal programming of music on the iPod, and now the FM stations that feature music appear to be headed for big trouble. What is the expected response of FM station owners? To go to talk radio formats! More talk radio, more opportunities to get the message out. A media that is currently dominated by conservatives, I might add.
So the message was, there are so many opportunities to get the word out today, that no one can blame anyone but themselves for not adequately gaining media attention for their position.
Other Californians in attendance here include Lew Uhler of the National Tax Limitation Committee. Lunch today features former Congressman Pat Toomey. Jon Coupal will be speaking this afternoon, and the conference continues on through Saturday night.