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Who: Stephen Smith, 25
Job title: Director of online communications for the Romney campaign
Job description: Interacting with other conservative bloggers and new-media sources and getting Romney's message out to the blogosphere, setting up interviews and coordinating "rapid response" to online attacks.Background: Smith, who hails from Brentwood, Tennessee, had never blogged before joining Romney's campaign in January, but had been an avowed "political junkie" for most of his life.
He studied political science at Princeton before going to work on the re-election team for former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist in 2003, which is when he caught the campaign bug.
"I'm a voracious news consumer and I found that I was getting more information from online sources, and so when I graduated in 2005, I was looking for a way to put my passion for new media and politics into play," said Smith, who was reading more than 30 blogs a day at that point.
His first gig was helping onetime presidential hopeful Frist construct an online presence, record podcasts and blog, which led to an opportunity to help do the same for the Romney campaign.
(You can check out Smith's work here.)
Trial by fire: Smith had barely gotten his bags unpacked on New Year's Day when he was faced with his first viral crisis.
While monitoring th...
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