And The GOP New Media King Is…

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


After much anticipation, the GOP House Conference has finally released the names of the winners of its six-week “new media” challenge, in which members competed to see who could sign up the most new Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers. In a hotly contested championship final, Louisiana Rep. John Fleming emerged Wednesday as the winner (1st prize: an iPhone), followed by Georgia’s Phil Gingrey (flip phone) and Lamar Smith from Texas, who seems to have gotten a bit of a booby prize for coming in third (a set of steak knives as a symbol of the need for the GOP to be on the “cutting edge” of new media).

The challenge netted the House Republicans a pretty nice foothold in the social media sphere, with 11,000 new Twitter followers, 30,000 new Facebook fans, and 1100 new YouTube subscribers. The contest was apparently so successful that it prompted the Democrats to launch their own competition to try to close the fan gap, which is significant. When the GOP started its new media challenge, 79 percent of House GOP members were already on Facebook but only 39 percent of Dems were, and only 20 percent of Democratic House members were tweeting, compared with 64 percent of Republicans. The disparity apparently shamed House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi into getting on the Twitter. She still has a ways to go to catch up with her Republican counterpart, Minority Leader John Boehner, who has nearly 44,000 Twitter followers. Perhaps the possibility of winning some steak knives might spur some ferocious tweeting.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate