[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps

Mon Jul 26 09:40:54 PDT 2004

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Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps

July 26, 2004
 By JENNIFER 8. LEE 

Jeralyn Merritt had expected the news to come by e-mail
rather than by snail mail, otherwise known as the United
States Postal Service. 

But she had to rip, rather than click, to open the message
informing her that she had received press credentials to
cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston for her
Internet Web log, or blog, at TalkLeft.com, where she
offers a running commentary on political and criminal
justice issues. 

"A big smile broke out on my face and I just went 'Yeah!' "
said Ms. Merritt, 54, who works as a criminal defense
lawyer in Denver. "It was someone who was judging me on the
work that I was doing for free over the last two years and
found me worthy." 

Even as many networks are reducing their coverage of the
increasingly predictable political conventions, the
political blogs, which have become a fruitful alternative
for individual voices, have been ablaze over the prospect
of officially covering conventions for the first time. Ms.
Merritt is one of about three dozen bloggers who have been
given press credentials for the Democratic convention in
Boston, which begins Monday. Another, Ana Marie Cox from
the Washington gossip site Wonkette.com, will be working as
a correspondent for MTV. 

Organizers of the Republican convention have said they plan
to issue credentials to 10 to 20 bloggers. 

"Whomever they decide to let through the gate is now the
press," said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York
University who will attend the convention for his blog,
PressThink.org, which appraises media coverage. "What the
credential means to me is that someone just expanded the
idea of the press a little bit." 

If the 1952 Republican convention was the first television
convention, and the 1924 conventions were the first radio
ones, the 2004 election will be remembered because of them,
the bloggers insist. 

"I give them full credit that they opened up the convention
to bloggers," said David Weinberger, 53, who blogs at
Hyperorg.com and will attend the Democratic convention.
"That took guts, because bloggers are always off message." 

The question facing many of the bloggers, who do most of
their work without venturing from their desks, is how
exactly they will cover a live convention. Most built their
followings by ferreting out interesting but obscure
information or by providing commentary on events and on
news coverage of those events. 

"What we don't usually do is talk to primary sources," said
Tom Burka, a lawyer in New York City, who maintains a
satirical blog at TomBurka.com. "We've never been put in
this position as bloggers to have this kind of access." 

The bloggers predict that they will provide coverage on
issues too narrow for mainstream news media, while offering
an irreverent eye on the media-political complex and
gossipy accounts of behind-the-scenes convention life. 

"I look forward to the world that exists in the margins,"
said Patrick Belton, a 28-year-old Oxford University
graduate student who blogs at Oxblog.com and calls himself
a "liberal hawk." 

"It will be interesting to get around the televised
spectacle and see it as a meeting place for the different
factions of the party," Mr. Belton said. 

Jessamyn West, a 35-year-old librarian in Rutland, Vt., who
shares her liberal positions on library issues at
Librarian.net, said, "I've been trying to make the
librarian voice in politics stronger and louder." She plans
to discuss freedom of information issues in the party's
platform. 

Some observers are uneasy with how the convention is
expanding the definition of journalism. 

"I think that bloggers have put the issue of
professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail,
professor of media studies at the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be
professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to
objectivity. They don't cover both sides." 

Even so, large news media organizations are paying
attention. 

"I'm intrigued at the way that bloggers and blogs have
forced their way into the political process on their own;
that's why I want to incorporate the blogs into our
coverage," said David Bohrman, Washington bureau chief for
CNN, which is coordinating with Technorati, a blog-tracking
service, to provide online commentary for the convention. 

Earlier this month, as acceptance and rejection notices
went out to more than 200 people who applied for the
Democratic credentials, blogs were awash in chatter on a
variety of related topics, including the fact that the
credentialed bloggers are overwhelmingly white and male - a
reflection of the larger world of opinion journalism, some
note. There has also been discussion about which bloggers
were given the coveted "hall" credentials versus the more
limited "perimeter" credentials and whether Atrios, a
well-known but anonymous political blogger, will unveil
himself at the convention. 

Convention staff members visited the blogs of every
applicant, choosing the finalists based on three announced
criteria: readership, professionalism and originality. 

"It was very difficult," said Peggy Wilhide, communications
director for the convention. "It was a new medium.'' Some
of those selected, like DailyKos.com and
TalkingPointsMemo.com, have such large followings, in the
tens of thousands, that they feature guest writers when the
main bloggers are on vacation. Pacificviews.org, run by a
29-year-old woman from Seattle who only identifies herself
as Natasha, averages only 300 views a day. 

While a few of the bloggers also work as freelance
journalists, others call themselves amateur pundits. Many
unabashedly identify themselves as political activists,
either having volunteered for campaigns or done extensive
political fund-raising through their blogs. 

"What bloggers do for the Democrats is that we enable the
party base, those who are in the middle or upper class who
are deeply involved in Internet and activism, to get a
viewpoint they can get fired up about," said Stephen
Yellin, a 16-year-old high school student from Berkeley
Heights, N.J., who was credentialed to attend the
convention. Mr. Yellin has attracted a large online
following for his contributions on DailyKos.com. Markos
Moulitsas Zuniga, a lawyer in Berkeley, Calif., who runs
DailyKos.com, has raised around $400,000 for Senator John
Kerry's campaign, the Democratic Party and other political
candidates. He also says that his blog has begun to bring
in a comfortable advertising income in the last two months,
enabling him to pay off his credit card debt. 

"I'm one of the biggest fund-raisers for the Democratic
Party, but also one of the biggest critics," Mr. Zuniga
said. 

One thing that separates bloggers from traditional
journalists is the expense account. Most of the
credentialed bloggers have had to find creative ways to
finance their trips to Boston. 

Ms. Merritt put a request for donations, accepted through
Amazon.com and PayPal, on her blog, as well as a wish list
of technological gadgets. So far she has raised more than
$2,000 of the $3,000 she needs. 

Others, including Mr. Yellin, are tapping an old-fashioned
source of financing. "My parents are paying," he said. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/politics/campaign/26blog.html?ex=1091860054&ei=1&en=1fb1363ae3621763

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