In late 2007, I sat down, fired up a copy of Microsoft Windows Movie Maker, and started teaching myself how to create videos for the internet. At the time, I had just started The Jed Report, a new website devoted to tracking the 2008 presidential campaign. It was my first venture into online publishing, coming on the heels of the completion of my first novel and after having spent ten years as a marketing executive for a software firm that went public and as a senior aide and advisor for a U.S. Senator.
My background:
Kos Media (Creator and Editor of Daily Kos TV and Contributing Editor for Daily Kos) [Current]
The Jed Report (Founder and Publisher)
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (Communications Director)
Maria Cantwell for U.S. Senate (Political Director)
RealNetworks (E-Commerce Marketing Director)
Ron Sims for U.S. Senate (Press Secretary)
Yale University (B.A.)
More: Currently in San Diego • Previously Las Vegas, Seattle, and DC • Seattle Mariners and Seahawks season ticket holder • Wrote a novel, playing semi-pro poker for research and extra income
Although I'd never edited a video before, I firmly believed online video would play a key role in the 2008 campaign and allow me to build a larger audience for my site, so despite a rocky start with the video editor, I stuck with it. Before too long, I started to get the hang of video production, and within a few months, armed with little more than a PC and a $99 budget, my videos had been seen more than one million times on YouTube -- each of them featuring my site's web address.
Things really took off in March, when, as ABC News reported, the Obama campaign circulated one of my videos to national media. It became an instant viral hit. (You can watch it in my video gallery.) Over the next month, my YouTube channel had more traffic than Hillary Clinton's. Soon, I hit the 7 million mark, sending traffic to The Jed Report soaring and by October, 2008 my site was averaging more than 1.5 million monthly page views. By election day, my videos had been seen more than twenty million times.
If you'd like to see some of my work, I've compiled a video gallery highlighting some of the videos I created for The Jed Report and for Daily Kos TV in 2008 and 2009. (Many of the videos were originally posted on YouTube, but thanks to a complaint from Viacom regarding my usage of 3 short snippets of video from The Daily Show, YouTube removed every single video that I posted in 2007 and 2008. Fortunately, I maintained backups of the videos so I'm able to post them here.)
Video helped my site stand out in a crowded field, but I also built traffic to The Jed Report through other means. For example, in early February, I launched a site called ObamaIsWinning.com to help frame the debate over the role of superdelegates in the Democratic nomination process. Posts from Politico and Andrew Sullivan drove tens of thousands of visits to the site, which became a major source of traffic for TJR. I also integrated features linking TJR with social media sites like Digg, reddit, and Facebook, generating even more traffic to the site.
The final element of The Jed Report's success came from Daily Kos, where I have been a full-time employee since late 2008. With one million page views per day, Daily Kos is one of the most influential politically-focused sites on the web. Before joining the Kos Media staff, I posted as JedReport in the site's community section, frequently making it to the "Recommended List," driving awareness and traffic to my site.
After the election, I placed The Jed Report on hiatus to focus on building a new site for Kos Media, Daily Kos TV. DKTV launched in February 2009 and now generates one tenth of unique visitors to Daily Kos. I remain employed with Kos Media and time permitting, I plan to integrate The Jed Report into Daily Kos when the site launches its next generation platform in 2010. Until then, you can view my current posts on Daily Kos at jed-lewison.dailykos.com.
