The New York Times’s Jeff Zeleny makes a tiny flub in writing up Obama June fundraising numbers, writing that:
..,the magnitude of [Obama’s] fundraising challenge—reaching a goal of $300 million—was underscored by Mr. Plouffe’s pitch for each of the donors to give $25 more.
In the print issue, the $25 number is even highlighted in a pull quote.
But as The Politico’s Ben Smith noted yesterday, the Obama appeal was more sophisticated. It seems that rather than ask all donors for another $25, the emails are microtargeted in tune with each recipients past donation record, and maybe other demographic data. Some report being asked for as little as $5 and others say they were asked to give the federal maximum of $2,300.
That’s not a surprising fundraising tactic, for a political campaign or any other kind of organization. But it does highlight the risk of reporters assuming that the campaign email in their inbox reads the same as the one in everyone else’s.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.