Former MSN Exec Named RNC New Media Director
Todd Herman, former Microsoft and MSNBC.com employee and streaming media expert, has been named the Director of New Media for the Republican National Committee. Herman founded and ran SpinSpotter, a startup that provides tools to detect spin in news stories.
Context & Ripple Effects
The hire extends an exodus of senior MSN leadership into adjacent industries: Todd Bishop reported an MSN exec leaving for an ad company back in March 2008, and AdAge covered Microsoft hiring former Time Inc. executive Domeniconi to lead U.S. ad sales that November. Herman, who founded and ran spin-detection startup SpinSpotter after stints at Microsoft and MSNBC.com, now takes those streaming-media credentials to the Republican National Committee.
For the RNC, the move lands just months after the 2008 cycle exposed how far behind both parties' digital operations were, and it puts a career web-video operator inside a committee whose media machinery was built for broadcast.
First-order effects
- The RNC gains an in-house director with hands-on streaming and MSNBC.com production experience, shifting new media from consultant-led projects to a staffed internal function.
- SpinSpotter loses its founding operator at a moment when its news-spin detection tools were still early, leaving the startup's trajectory dependent on whoever succeeds Herman there.
Second-order effects
- Party committees on both sides now compete directly with startups, agencies, and portals like MSN for the same pool of consumer-web executives, raising the price of digital talent in Washington.
- Digital consultancies that owned party video and online outreach risk being disintermediated as committees like the RNC bring streaming production in-house.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, party committees institutionalize new media as a permanent staffed division rather than a per-campaign purchase, mirroring how they professionalized research and communications decades earlier.
The trend: Political party committees are recruiting consumer-web and streaming executives to build permanent in-house new-media operations instead of renting digital capacity campaign by campaign.