In Profile of Jeri Thompson, A Glimpse of the Early Political Web
Sunday’s fascinating Post profile of Fred Thompson’s wife Jeri contained a little glimpse of the Good Old Days of the early political Internet. Turns out, when they were first dating and her last name was still Kehn, she pitched him on a personal political website separate from his official Senate site:
On Aug. 5, 1997, Kehn sent Thompson’s Senate office a 12-page proposal to “design, develop, host and maintain a world-class multimedia Web site” at a cost of $45,000 per year. As her qualification for the contract, Kehn cited her job at a small Nashville firm that provided daily news summaries to health-care companies.
Two weeks later, Thompson’s staff sharply rejected the proposal, according to memos located by the Memphis Commercial Appeal in the Thompson Senate archives, stored at the University of Tennessee. “I consider this project technically vague and stunningly overpriced,” a staff member wrote.
I remember those days! When people threw around “multimedia” and “interactive” without the slightest idea what they were talking about — but every proposal needed those magic words.
1 comment August 6th, 2007 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us
