MoveOn.org's Newspaper Ads Target 'Elite' Audience

By: Barbara Bedway MoveOn.org, the Web-based liberal advocacy group, draws admiration from Democrats and provokes grudging respect from Republicans for its canny use of the Internet to recruit membership and deliver its anti-Bush message. The organization, which claims more than 2 million members in the United States, made headlines last month with its contest to select 30-second anti-Bush television spots.

But the organization is also strategically allocating part of its $10 million advertising budget to the only venue that still delivers both an influential readership and offers the space to convince them: newspapers.

"A 30-second TV spot doesn't allow for you to fully make the case you need to make," says Eli Pariser, campaign director of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund (an adjunct organization created to highlight issues, but not support candidates, in the 2004 election). "Yes, most of the money will be spent on TV ads, but print ads give you the opportunity to go into facts and figures and give more context.

"Our print ads tend to reach an elite audience ? if you want to try to change opinion among the 'chattering classes' on issues of policy, a print ad is an effective way to go about doing that."

The ads' content is for now a work in progress. "Our approach is to work on issues our members find most compelling," Pariser says, citing last year's print ads that ran in The Washington Post (Click for QuikCap), USA Today, and The New York Times, as well as smaller papers. Those focused on issues such as the FCC's planned boost to media consolidation and the Republican Party's efforts to redraw the Texas electoral districts to their benefit.

One full-page, Iraq-related ad ran in 111 local papers. "I can't say now what the print ads will look like," Pariser says. "Our success stems from being flexible, as we were able to be then." Expect to see these new newspaper ads in the next two to three months ? very early for affecting the vote in November, Pariser acknowledges, but urgently timed to educate voters.

"Part of our campaign is about reaching voters before they get deluged by a high number of ads in the fall," he points out. Not incidentally, the ads keep the public's attention on MoveOn.org's key issues, while the Democratic presidential opponents focus on pummeling one another.

The need for such advertising, Pariser claims, is a direct result of the media not doing its job: "We'd rather not have to spend $10 million on these ads, but the fact is that the press and media have failed to challenge the statements that the Bush administration has put forward as facts, even when they have turned out to be inaccurate. Voters have a warped sense of the Bush policies and what they mean because of this failure."

The CBS television network last month rejected a Super Bowl commercial from MoveOn.org, saying the ad violated its advocacy rules.

Though Pariser insists he could not go into much detail at this point on the content of the upcoming print ads, he hints: "You can be sure we'll have as one focus the misleading buildup to the Iraq war and the handling of the postwar."