The Libertarian Party

LNC Meeting of March 2002

LP COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT REPORT

* MEDIA REPORT 2002:

The numbers first, then an explanation.

During January and February, we averaged 124 media contacts a month. That's up 19% from the 103.7 contacts we averaged last year. (It's also almost as high as the 130 media contacts a month we averaged during the 2000 presidential year.)

In January and February, we averaged 69.5 interviews a month. That's up 32% from the 52.6 interviews a month we averaged last year.

What explains this surge in contacts and interviews? Two things: "Silly Laws" and Sheriff Bill Masters.

In late January, we adapted a feature article Bill Winter had written for the March issue of LP News -- about silly laws on the books in states and towns around the USA -- into an op-ed. The op-ed was printed in at least 7 newspapers and on one website. WorldNetDaily.com also linked to it.

Pleased by the response, we decided to recycle the topic as a press release. With the irresistible headline -- "Don't have sex with that porcupine! (A look at America's silliest laws)" -- we sent it out on January 29. To our surprise, we proceeded to get 30 calls about it. This is, we believe, the new all-time record for a single press release. The release also generated more than two dozen interviews.

Realizing that there was still quite a bit of unused material in the feature article, we decided to do a "Silly Laws 2" press release. The headline for this second release: "3 crimes you can commit in a bathtub: A lighthearted look at foolish laws." We sent out on February 11. Over the next week, it proceeded to generate 22 calls and almost as many interviews.

Hmmmm, we said. If "Silly Laws 2" worked so well, let's try "Silly Laws 3" -- again mining more unused material from the feature article. The headline for this third release: "Where kissing is a crime ... an other unbelievable (but real) laws." We issued it on February 21, and it generated another 8 calls, including one from the CNN Financial cable TV network.

The bottom line: Between the op-ed and the three press releases, the "Silly Laws" concept generated 66 media phone calls, about four dozen interviews, and coverage in several newspapers (including the Washington Times). Copies of all three press releases are attached at the end of this report.

And just to stress the obvious: Talking about silly laws allowed us to make explicitly Libertarian points. By mocking these laws and the politicians who passed them, we were able to ridicule government in general. And by ending the interviews with examples of "serious" silly laws (like the law regulating the size of toilet bowls passed by Congress a few years ago) we were able to make a profound point about the growth of government power.

Then, in February, we launched another wildly successful project: Promoting Libertarian Sheriff Bill Masters.

Master's book, Drug War Addiction, had been published in December, so we called him and asked him if he would like us to line up radio interviews for him. He agreed, and he blocked out one day. We told him we were pretty sure we could schedule between 6 and 10 interviews. So, we created a promotional fax, and sent it out. (Copy attached at the end of this report.)

For perspective, we had done a similar promotional effort for Damon Mason (the professional Bill Clinton impersonator and LP member) which generated 20 calls; and one for Rick Stanley (the Colorado U.S. Senate candidate arrested for gun-rights civil disobedience), which resulted in two interviews.

The response to the Bill Masters piece (sent out on February 5) exceeded all expectations: We got 33 phone calls, and 30 interview requests. Masters' phone was ringing off the hook, he said, when we forwarded the calls to him. Interview requests continued to trickle in for more than two weeks.

Our challenge now will be to find other colorful Libertarians like Bill Masters that we can build promotional efforts around.

* ANTI-WAR ON DRUGS ADS:

The idea was conceived by the LP national office shortly after the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) ran its full-page ads in 293 newspapers, on February 4. Their ads, of course, claimed that people who used illegal drugs helped terrorists.

Our response was simple: Show the face of Drug Czar John Walters and make the case that it was the War on Drugs itself that inflated the price of drugs, and financially enriched terrorists. In other words, take their claim and turn it right back at them.

Since we knew any advertisement we ran would be expensive, we had several discussions about what our ads should accomplish. We settled on a few goals that we believed we would be able to achieve:

1) Generate media attention. We figured that if the ads were sufficiently controversial, the media would pay attention, and perhaps cover them as a news story. We even saw the possibility that it might get us on television (although we knew this was a long shot). We hoped to get as much "free" media as the ads cost to run.

2) Drive traffic to our website. Our ad would feature a URL (www.LP.org/drugwar) that defended and explained the claims we made in the ad. We figured a certain percentage of people who visited the site would stay to get more information about the Libertarian Party.

3) Launch our Drug War Strategy in a high-profile way. We wanted to make a statement to our members and to the drug war reform movement that the Libertarian Party was serious about playing a major role in the battle against drug prohibition.

It took several days to find a suitable photograph of John Walters and gain permission to use it. It also took several days to decide which newspapers we would run the ad in, select the best publication date, get information about advertising costs and policies for USA Today and the Washington Times, plan our day-by-day strategic time-line, create a mock-up of the ad, and draft the first fundraising e-mail message.

We understood the difficulties we faced in raising the amount of money we would need to run the ad. (The ads were quoted to cost us $69,000, although they ended up being about $72,000.) We had never before raised more than $25,000 from any single previous e-mail fundraiser. However, we were confident that our members would be excited about the project, and would rally to support the effort.

You know the rest of the story. We sent out four e-mail fundraisers, starting on Thursday, February 21. By Monday, February 25 (the day before the ads were scheduled to run) we had raised $69,300. Astonishingly, over 25% of that came from non-LP sources -- mostly from drug war reform lists that had forwarded one or more of our messages.

Did we accomplish our goals? To a significent degree, yes:

1) Generate media attention. Our campaign was covered on WorldNetDaily.com (top story), AlterNet.org, PoliTechBot.com, CNSNews.com, National Review Online, and Free-Market.net. The ads generated interviews for LP spokespeople on 112 radio stations. They were a major topic of discussion on Neal Boortz's radio show and on the Dean Edell radio show. (Each of those syndicated shows reaches about 1 million people a day.) We were covered in the Daily Collegian (Penn U.), and expect to hear about more newspaper coverage as articles trickle in from our clipping service.

Perhaps most importantly, as I write this (March 1), Ron Crickenberger is scheduled to appear on the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News to discuss the ad campaign. We will try to leverage that appearance into other TV invitations.

Overall, the media coverage was less than what we had hoped for. But we almost certainly did reach more people via the "free" media coverage than we did through the ads themselves.

2) Drive traffic to our website. On February 26 and 27, we generated an additional 26,000 visitors to our www.LP.org website (over our daily average). At least 800 to 1,000 signed up for the LP.announce list.

3) Launch our Drug War Strategy in a high-profile way. Our ads got a very positive response -- both from LP members and from the drug reform community. We got compliments and/or donations from NORML, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, the Alameda County Alliance of Drug and Alcohol Programs, Indiana NORML, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, CannabisNews.com, the Queensland (Australia) Intravenous AIDS Association, and the UK Cannibis Internet Activists.

* OTHER MEDIA NEWS:

* Press releases: Over the last two months, our most popular press releases/promotions were:

Interview Bill Masters (2/5) --	33 contacts
Silly Laws I (1/29) --	30
Silly Laws 2 (2/11) --	21
State of the Union Speech (1/30) --	11
Silly Laws 3 (2/21) --	8
LP ad in USA Today (2/26) --	8
Emergency Health Powers Act (1/14) --	7
Super Bowl Drug Ads (2/4) --	5

* TERRORISM & THE MEDIA:

* TELEVISION:

(The O'Reilly Factor interview request came on March 1.)

Attached to this report are three charts tracking LP media accomplishments from 1993 to 2002: The average number of monthly media contacts; the average number of monthly interviews; and the average number of monthly stations. (The chart figures for 1993 include only June to December. And the chart figures for 1996 include only the non-presidential months: January to July and November & December.)

* LP NEWS OVERVIEW:

* WEBSITE CONTENT:

* LP NEWS COVERAGE QUESTIONS:

An examination of the facts reveals that this is simply not true. Over the past year, Cato has gotten three times as many mentions in LP News as ALF.

I reviewed the last 12 printed issues of LP News, from the March 2002 issue back to the April 2001 issue. (I reviewed the 12 issues of LP News pretty quickly, so I can't guarantee my numbers are 100% accurate. However, I'm confident they are very close to reality.) Here are the facts:

Over those 12 months, ALF or Harry Browne was the focus of two News Briefs; two essays in the Forum section; three mentions in the Politics 2001/2002 column; one contribution to the "Reactions to Terrorism" round-up; and one feature article. (The feature article appeared in the April 2001 issue, which went to press before the Perry Willis "smoking gun" memo was release at the April 2001 LNC meeting.)

That's a total of nine mentions in LP News for ALF/Harry Browne.

During that same time, Cato was the focus of two News Briefs; 14 mentions in the Upcoming Events section; two essays in the Forum section; nine items in the Talking Points section; two contributions to the "Reactions to Terrorism" round-up; one portion of the "Best Libertarian Websites" feature article; and one book review.

That's a total of 31 mentions in LP News for the Cato Institute.

(Note: Cato's numbers are, if anything, underrepresented, since we routinely quote Cato studies in the Libertarian Solutions column and other articles. However, those have not been included; I only counted items where a group was a primary focus of an article, listing, etc. And the Harry Browne/ALF numbers don't include the 10-20 letters to the editor criticizing Browne for his statements about the September 11 attacks.)

ALF's presence in LP News also pales in comparison to the total amount of coverage given to all libertarian-leaning think-tanks and advocacy groups. During those same 12 months, a total of 27 other such groups were mentioned 69 times in LP News. These other groups were the focus of feature articles, News Briefs, Upcoming Events, Talking Points, Politics 2001/2002 columns, and Forum essays.

Here's the breakdown: Institute for Justice (mentioned 1 time); Independent Institute (3); NORML (3), GOA (1), Hoover Institute (1), IHS (1), Second Amendment Foundation (4), FEE (4), MPP (1), ISIL (6), Acton Institute (2), National Taxpayer's Union (3), Reason Foundation (9), Competitive Enterprise Institute (4), Cascade (1), Von Mises Institute (2), U.K. Libertarian Alliance (1), Harm Reduction Coalition (1), Advocates for Self-Government (7), Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (1), Alliance for the Separation of School & State (4), Pink Pistols (1), Ayn Rand Institute (1), and the Future of Freedom Foundation (3).

To highlight a few of those groups: The Advocates for Self-Government has gotten seven mentions in LP News over the last 12 months; the Reason Foundation got nine; and ISIL got six -- all very similar to the amount of coverage that ALF received.

Now, these various groups didn't necessarily get the same kind of coverage that ALF got. Cato is a think tank, so much of its coverage was for upcoming events, for studies we quoted in Talking Points, or for essays we printed. The Advocates is a more action-oriented group, so all six of its mentions were either News Briefs, sections in feature articles, or stand-alone news articles. Reason is more policy-based, so it got more coverage in the Talking Points section.

Meanwhile, ALF was just getting started in 2001, so it got more slightly more news coverage as it launched its website; changed presidents; and aired national TV ads.

But again, the bottom line: Over the past year, ALF has received only about 8% of the total amount of coverage that LP News has given to libertarian-leaning think-tanks and advocacy groups. And it received only one-third the mentions of the Cato Institute.

* LP NEWS ADVERTISING:

Attached to this report at the meeting will be two charts, tracking LP News page counts and advertising revenue. (Note: Advertising revenue numbers are estimates from our ad-tracking spreadsheet, not "official" revenue figures.)