April 4, 2013

Republicans Embrace Listicles as Key to 21st Century Success

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Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus released an “autopsy” a couple of weeks ago that suggested the party’s woes were mostly due to poor optics and weak use of technology. Apparently the NRCC, the committee that funds Republican House races, agrees.

Yep: they’re doing the thing that every flailing organization does when they can’t think of anything actually constructive to do: redesigning their website. In this case, they’ve decided that cat videos and mindless listicles are the key to political success:

“BuzzFeed’s eating everyone’s lunch,” said NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing. “They’re making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way.”….The NRCC’s redesign includes a list of recent and popular posts. Other changes include shorter posts, fewer menu items and a heavy helping of what now passes for social currency on the Web: snark.

The new site comes a few months into the beginning of a broader strategy to capture more of the social Web’s attention. To that end, the NRCC has begun dropping blog posts with headlines like “13 Animals That Are Really Bummed on Obamacare’s Third Birthday.” A recent image macro the NRCC posted on Facebook featured a photo of President Obama laughing below a caption mocking voters for believing his claims about health insurance premiums.

Well, who knows? It might work. They suckered me into writing about it, after all. Still, I have to say that the screenshots of the new site don’t really look all that BuzzFeedy to my professionally trained eye. In honor of the new site, then, I think we should come up with a list of listicles for the NRCC to try out. I’ll get us started:

  • 12 Ways That A Capital Gains Cut Will Benefit You
  • 10 Best Tea Party Costumes From CPAC
  • VIDEO: Republicans Promote Cat, Dog Adoption as “Antidote to Partisan Bickering”
  • 7 Heartbreaking Letters To Obama From Schoolchildren Asking Him Not To Destroy Their Future
  • GALLERY: Five Gruesome Abortion Photos
  • 17 Ways That Obama Has Made America Less Safe

Your turn. Give the NRCC your best ideas.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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