News
Mar
11On Mar. 10, the Julian Castro for Mayor campaign hosted an online town hall with both social media bloggers and reporters.
The town hall featured an online chat room and live webcast, providing the citizens of San Antonio the opportunity to directly engage with mayoral candidate Julian Castro.
From the San Antonio Express-News:
Seated at a conference table, the 34-year-old former city councilman fielded questions for an hour on job creation and training, light rail and Mayor Phil Hardberger’s Mission Verde initiative from half a dozen bloggers, plus reporters from the San Antonio Current newsweekly and the San Antonio Express-News.
At its peak, about 30 people followed the live Webcast and fed questions to the moderator, Alan Weinkrantz, a freelance guest columnist whose column appears in the San Antonio Express-News’ business pages.
Like DeBerry-Mejia’s, it was a soft-focus event.
“This is really an opportunity to bring the power of social media to bear on a local campaign,” Castro said. “One of the things that’s going to be essential for us to do is to make sure that folks are fully engaged in the democratic process.”
Taking a page from President Barack Obama, he later said, if elected, he’d incorporate social-networking technology into the running of City Hall.
Old media, however, wasn’t out the window for Castro’s camp either. Campaign manager Christian Archer made that clear after the session, as Castro answered a TV reporter’s questions.
He shrugged the suggestion that none of the major mayoral campaigns had ignited voters’ interest, despite all the Facebook updates and tweets.
“The only reason people are saying that is because of TV — we haven’t started advertising yet,” Archer said. Once Castro’s run of spots starts, he added, that talk will dissipate, at least in regards to his campaign.
Archer then talked up the old standbys — 4,000 yard signs posted to date, nearly 10,000 mailers stamped and addressed on Tuesday alone.
At one point, the two events collided — virtually, anyway.
Nan Palmero, who helped organize DeBerry-Mejia’s event, sent Weinkrantz a tweet: “We miss u! :)”
Weinkrantz obliged with a reply, which showed up on the big screen behind DeBerry-Mejia. “Ditto!! :) #castro4myr”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/Castro_DeBerry-Mejia_tout_social_networking.html
