March 6, 2009

GOP Gets LESS Tech-Savvy

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The RNC’s top in-house new media and tech guy, Cyrus Krohn, is resigning his post, setting the GOP even further back in its effort to match the Democrats’ use of web tools to organize, raise funds, and message. (I’ve written about the GOP’s tech deficit before.) I asked Matt Lewis, a conservative blogger, for his thoughts. They are below.

“I think Cyrus’ departure is very bad news for the RNC. It is important for any organization to maintain institutional knowledge, and a lot of that knowledge just walked out the door.  This — coupled with the fact that the RNC still has not filled key staff positions — raises serious questions about the RNC’s ability to fulfill basic logistical functions.

“Cyrus was a tech guy, which is important because it is easier to teach a tech guy politics than to take a political guy and make him technologically proficient. He was also highly regarded by the conservative blogosphere.”

Michael Steele is off to a rocky start as the new head of the RNC. The one thing everyone seemed to agree he was doing right was his unreserved embrace of the web and conservative web activists. With Krohn’s move, that too is in peril.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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