The Fireside Chat Vs. The Podcast

Democrats are gathering in Denver this week for their national convention, and Republicans get together in St. Paul, Minn., next week. Today on Word of Mouth, we look at some of the issues facing future presidents.

Seventy-five years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as America’s thirty-second president. One week after his inauguration, he took to the airwaves, to speak directly to the American people.

FDR delivered thirty informal radio speeches between 1933 and 1944, spanning the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War. He used the growing power of radio to invite listeners into the White House, and to join them in their living rooms.

What will be the next version of the fireside chat? Sam Ford is research affiliate at the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, and is director of customer insights at the New York-based strategic communications firm Peppercom, Inc. He wrote about Web 2.0 as the key to connecting government and business leaders with their constituents for Business Week. He joins us from New York to tell us about how communications technology can revolutionize transparency in business and government.

(Photo by Thomas Hawk)