The Death of Robocalls?

Matt Lewis | October 23, 2008 3:12 PM

I co-moderated a panel last night at The National Press Club, and one of the Democrats on the panel made a very good point regarding how the internet has undermined the usefulness of a

traditional campaign tactic: the Robocall.

She remarked that one of the primary purposes of using "Robocalls" is to spread a message to targeted voters in an "under-the-radar" / sub rosa manner (the other advantage to them is that they are relatively inexpensive).

The problem, though, is that now days, bloggers are using inexpensive technology to capture these calls -- and then post them online. And once bloggers do this ground-work of recording and uploading the calls, it is then very easy for the mainstream media to simply steal the audio -- and report on the calls (since bloggers have done the work for them).

Of course, this undermines much of the rationale for using Robocalls...