Can Dotcoms Really Make Politics Pay?

摘要

With dotcoms imploding and voter apathy growing, this may seem an ill-omened time to launch a for-profit political website. Yet the Republican Convention swarmed last week with a new breed of dotcoms that offered everything from predictable pundit-ry to floor-panning, 360° webcams that online viewers could swivel with the click of a mouse. The convention was both a litmus test and a coming-out party for the new for-profit political digerati, who occupied sky-boxes and overflowed a media center that instantly became known as Internet Alley. At Voter.com, a site reportedly backed by $50 million in venture capital, 35 computers in a Cyber Cafe spewed briefings, commentary and gavel-to-gavel coverage. "We want to combine really good traditional journalism with edgy contributions from the best guys," says Carl Bernstein, who as executive editor of Voter.com is among a bevy of Old Guard notables to be drawn to the brash new sites.