Parties to Allow Bloggers to Cover Conventions for First Time

Washington Post – Parties to Allow Bloggers to Cover Conventions for First Time (washingtonpost.com) (as seen in the forums of Daily Kos):

But he and other Democrats said the plan also gives the party a chance to reach a larger audience. Although television networks have cut back on their coverage of the conventions — saying they yield little news — some bloggers have attracted sizable audiences. Lina Garcia, a spokeswoman for the convention, said she hopes the bloggers will help the party reach young people. “A lot of young people blog now, and they’re important to us,” she said.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer who runs one of the most popular liberal blogs — Dailykos.com — predicted that many bloggers will beam a reliably pro-Democratic message back to their readers. “We’re all partisan. We don’t pretend to be otherwise and would not be constrained by bounds of having to balance out what we write with the other side,” he said. “So it’s a much more direct way to get out the party’s message to its constituents and potential constituents.”

More evidence of online social forums affecting the “real world”. Add in the fact popular blogs such as Daily Kos help raise money for local congressional races from a national audience and you can see this is the first federal election cycle where the Internet is very noticeable.

Sites such as Daily Kos are a positive thing because they help encourage small donations from many donors as opposed to money from special interests and the upper class. The downside is it also exposes how your average senate or house seat election involves money from outside the represented districts. The only new thing here is the fact more small donors from the outside are donating and joining the larger contributors.

(Hint: The BugMeNot Firefox extension helps you avoid all those forced registrations to read free content.)