the election is over. what now?

I've read today NYT article (thanks, Brian) about Politico.com, which in the months leading to elections has become one of the go-to online news destinations. The article asks what happens to it after November 4th? The same question can be asked about any news source (plus Stephen Colbert and John Stewart shows) and any news brand. What to do now? How to keep energized voters interested (especially the young ones)? How to inspire them to come back to the sites when there is no pressing election issues going on? Those who succeed will probably need to reinvent their online presence. Traditional news brands are competing with blogs; at the same time they  are challenged to rise above them in terms of credibility (loosely used here), but to keep the blog dynamics. A though task & the one that requires a thorough makeover. Keep authority without being stodgy & rigid. Offer facts  & information, but be fluid & dynamic. Blogs are awesome in the latter, and (some) news brands are better in the former. But aside of redesigning their sites, they are faced with much more fundamental issues: who owns online political debate today? And, perhaps more importantly, can this debate even be owned? Online news consumers are faced with fragmented news, information, and opinion sources. They often need to visit a number of destinations in order to get a full spectrum of information they seek. There resides the opportunity for traditional news brands: while blogs are great in offering opinions and angle, the news brands (and not all of them, for sure) are actually still perceived as reliable sources of hard-core information (think "I saw it on CNN" t-shirts). So why not go in direction of curated aggregation? More often then not, this is a question of execution - provide enough blog links, comments links, and trackbacks. In short, bring the debate in. Instead of too often abused strategy of littering social networks and blogs with meaningless widgets and annoying "hello, you are my friend now, so better get used to it" approach, be the host of the party. (yep, RSS is a challenge, but when political issues are concerned people more often then care about others' opinions as much as about the article itself). Owning a debate does not necessarily mean having the last word; rather, it means having the first (being first in Google search results, featured on Buzzfeed, most cited on Twitter). Speaking of firsts, featuring "First 100 Days of Obama's Presidency" seems like a good start.