I read the article from yesterday’s ArmyTimes.com with interest; it’s been a topic of disagreement/discussion at the VFW Post where I’m a member for quite some time. Here’s the lede:

Traditional vets groups turn to social media
By John Ryan – Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Nov 21, 2010 8:28:29 EST

Some traditional veterans’ groups have updated their recruiting campaigns, using social media to attract younger veterans.

Groups have opened Facebook and Twitter accounts and written blogs to connect with roughly 4.3 million veterans who have served since the Persian Gulf War — and to replenish a steep decline in membership.

Lost membership and dues have forced groups like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars to close down some social clubs across the country, as about 1,650 veterans from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars die each day.

Organizations have turned to Internet-wired veterans to help keep their national networks of posts intact, community and soldier programs running, and their voices relevant on Capitol Hill.

But organizations founded before 1990 are losing the social media battle to recent upstarts such as Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, according to figures on Facebook.
(rest of story at ArmyTimes.com)

What can we – as Progressives that embrace social media – learn from it?

The point to me, as a Member of the VFW, is that it doesn’t matter that the older Veterans don’t do social media; it DOES matter that younger Veterans do. And to reach them – to get your message to them; to have a conversation with them – you simply have to communicate with them in the form they are most comfortable with.

We’ve had this discussion for months and Months and MONTHS at the local VFW: older veterans that say they don’t want to implement social media because THEY don’t use social media.

That the older Veterans don’t use social media doesn’t matter to the younger Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan; these returning Veterans do use social media. And the VFW and the American Legion have found out the hard way that if they won’t use social media, the younger veterans will join the Veteran Organizations that are – such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Let’s take that example and compare it to a discussion we social media types have been trying – TRYING – to have with DFL Powers That Be; “Powers That Be” that have been discouraging DFL candidates from using social media while at the same time, the GOP has been encouraging candidates to be using social media.

Simply put, the GOP Leadership views social media as a tool while current DFL Leadership views social media as a social disease.

And just as VFW and American Legion National Leadership has come around and are now embracing social media because they’ve been forced to; the younger upstarts are man eaters that are eating the oldster’s dinner.

It’s clear to me that the GOP is using social media to reach our younger Veterans. If we want to complete for these younger veterans, we’re going to have to use social media to do so. We simply must have DFL Leadership that understands this – starting with the Chair.

The younger Veterans insist on it – as the VFW and American Legion have found out.

And does anyone doubt that the younger non-veterans insist on it, too? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a college kid reading a dead-tree edition of a newspaper….

It’s really rather patheic, that the old-school Veterans Organizations are getting with the program before the od-schoolers on Plato and elsewhere are.

(cross posted from MnProgressiveProject.com; comments welcome there)