"The information wars are won before work"

The New York Times this morning gives an excellent insight into how a number of government offices, including the White House, handle their early morning media monitoring. As one would expect it centers on the 20 something aides getting up at 4am for a 5am, with the help of three alarm clocks, in order read and digest the news before shooting out a news summary to their boss. 


As Bobby Maldonado, Associate Manager at the  U.S. Chamber of Commerce points out "the information wars are won before work".


“Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information,” he said. “It’s reading the 1,000 stories in the papers and Hill rags, and finding that one needle in the haystack that’s going to matter.”

At the core of any communications campaign, be it political or corporate, is an effective media monitoring operation. Senior staff and officials need to be able to make decisions very early in the day on what lines to take and to work out whether action is needed on anything. If an organisation is still working out what to say at 10am, it might as well not bother.