Whistlestops in cyberspace

When Gary Selnow thinks of political campaigning on the Web, he doesn't imagine information sent out over electronic lines. He sees train tracks.

Each computer connected to the Internet--whether installed at a corporate suite in midtown Manhattan or a pine cabin in Whitefish, Montana--is, for Selnow, like a whistlestop town of a half-century ago. Just as in 1948, when Harry Truman stopped his campaign locomotive at "whistlestops" across middle America, the Internet now brings campaign information to individual Netizens.

A professor of communications at San Francisco State University, Selnow has spent much of his life examining the best way to target an audience, through print, radio, and TV. But with the Internet, all that he has studied is about to change.

"This medium has something that is different than any communication medium the planet has ever seen," he said. "Political campaigning will be one of the best ways to chart the way that the Internet revolutionizes communications."

As November approaches, Web pages have become a campaign staple for many politicians, especially those who want to show that they're in touch with younger voters. Politicians covet the ability to spread their message to millions of voters unfiltered by the news media, all for the relatively low cost of building and maintaining a Web site.

The new tactic has created yet another cottage industry on the Net, one for developers and designers who are quickly learning the particular needs of a political Web site.

"We look at politics as an area where the Internet [fits] naturally because successful politics is about effective communication," said Josh Ross, CEO of USWeb Networkers, a Palo Alto, California based-affiliate of USWeb, a company that has helped build, maintain, and update campaign sites for candidates such as Silicon Valley Rep. Tom Campbell (R-California), Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot.

Yet despite the Net's sudden popularity as a political device, it is too soon to trumpet the unbridled success of online campaigning. Candidates complain about the staff and resources they devote to the Net, saying that it simply doesn't reach a wide enough audience. And those surfers they do reach say they are unsure whether the information presented on the sites is credible or just another form of political advertisement.