The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived

[babylonsister]

The Year of the Political Blogger Has Arrived

By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS
Published: August 22, 2008


WHEN Pam Spaulding heard from two contributors to her blog, Pam’s House Blend, that they couldn’t afford to attend the Democratic National Convention, she knew that historic times called for creative measures.

Getting convention credentials for her blog, a news site for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, was the easy part. As air fare, lodging and incidentals began piling up, paying for the trip to Denver became the bigger obstacle.

For Ms. Spaulding, 45, who works full time as an IT manager at Duke University Press in Durham, N.C., blogging is her passion, an unpaid hobby she pursues at nights and on weekends. So she called on her 5,500 daily readers to help raise funds: “Send the Blend to Denver” reads the ChipIn widget on her blog’s home page that tracks donations from readers; so far they have pledged more than $5,000 to transport Ms. Spaulding and three other bloggers to the convention.

Beginning Monday, hundreds of bloggers will descend on Denver to see Barack Obama accept his party’s nomination. Next week, hundreds more will travel to St. Paul to witness John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. But now these online partisans, many of whom are self-financed, must contend with all the logistical and financial hurdles just to get there — not to mention the party politics happening behind the scenes.

This year, both parties understand the need to have greater numbers of bloggers attend. While many Americans may watch only prime-time television broadcasts of the convention speeches, party officials also recognize the ability of bloggers to deliver minute-by-minute coverage of each day’s events to a niche online audience.

“The goal is to bring down the walls of the convention and invite in an audience that’s as large as possible,” said Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the Democratic National Convention Committee. “Credentialing more bloggers opens up all sorts of new audiences.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/fashion/24blog.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[grannie4peace]

1. that's because

the dems are not afraid someone will find out the truth about something. oops!!! i forgot about j edwards in the excitement of the day

[givemebackmycountry]

2. I love Pam Spaulding and I love John Avarosis and I love Bartcop and I love KOS and I love DU!

I learn more from these web sites, than I do from any news outlet.
We may not be right 100% of the time, but I'll take their track records over CNN, and the Washington Post, and The New York Times any day of the week.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Good! We can shortly tell the Corporate media

to kiss our collective asses, although I already do it everyday.

Since the Corporate media insist on spewing the GOP's talking points and run McCain's predictable tacky ads, we need to go around them.

I will be watching C-Span, Television One, and a little teeny bit of MSNBC (if they start to froth at the mouth of McCain, I'm switching them off).