New-fangled internet dazzled 1996 DNC in Chicago. Today, experts debate the benefits — and dangers — of online influence.
During the summer of 1996, Scott Albert Johnson was covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in a highly unconventional manner for the era on his website, Publius ’96: A Virtual Walk Down the Campaign Trail.
The internet was just emerging as a political and media tool. The 26-year-old, who’d recently finished his journalism graduate degree at Columbia University, had no media credentials or steady funding. At night he often crashed on couches in the homes of friends.
Yet the site earned the acclaim of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets, mainly for its novel approach to political coverage, a phenomenon then dubbed “micro-journalism.” Most of Johnson’s interviews were with ordinary folks in bars, cafes and along the streets of Chicago outside the United Center, in stark contrast to the candidate-centered stories that filled traditional print newspapers and broadcast reports.
“You could argue it was one of the very first political blogs,” recalled Johnson, who now lives in Mississippi and works as a college admissions counselor and professional musician. “I was kind of a gadfly. I was kind of on the periphery of it all. It was a man-slash-woman on the street kind of thing.”